Another sunny Day

Taken from the parking lot at the Breeze Inn by the Douglas Bridge - out for an afternoon of biking. Who know that only a few hours in the sun would sunburn my pale white legs and cause me to wear long pants for the rest of the weekend!

After biking for 16 miles on Saturday after I returned from Fairbanks, we enjoyed a very sunny evening hanging around the house and planning our next adventure. I flew back on Saturday morning getting me back to Juneau about 9:30 am but it was too late to attend the weekly Audubon walk. This week was a trip up Sheep Creek trail, a trail that we had yet to do. On our bike ride we ran into someone who had gone on the walk and gave us the bird report. We decided to tackle the trail on our own on Sunday. Since we had a suggested bird list that would make things easier for us not-very-experienced birders.



We actually studied the book and listened to the Birds of Alaska CD...pretty intense! We didn't see the MacGillivray's Warbler but we saw a lot of Wilson's and Yellow Warblers. Here's my picture of the yellow - my point and shoot doesn't have that long or wide of a lens but it does fit in my pocket.


The camera that fits in a pocket is pretty nice unless you switch it to video and then accidentally hit the play button and take a 6-minute video of the inside of your pocket while the audio is recording. If you're interested - let me know and I'll send it to you! Anyway, it made me laugh!

On Monday we decided to do a shorter hike and some fishing. We hadn't been out to Tolch Rock near the Mendenhall Glacier. Its actually a big erratic out in the middle of the woods. It was a short flat hike which was just right after the long bike ride and hike from the previous days.

Five Ships at Once

Today was a busy day downtown. At one point when I looked out there were five huge cruise ships either tied up or anchored out in the channel.


This information was taken from the Juneau Empire from Wednesday:

DATE	SHIP	ARRIVE	DEPART	CAPACITY
• Wed, May 28	Norwegian Sun	07:00	13:15	2,970
	Sapphire Princess	06:30	16:00	3,840
	Star Princess	13:30	22:00	3,700
	Westerdam	07:00	20:00	2,716
	Zaandam	07:00	22:30	2,039
DAILY CAPACITY				15265
• Thu, May 29	Coral Princess	08:00	21:00	2,880
	Mercury	08:00	18:00	2,795
	Serenade of the Seas	07:00	15:00	3,360
	Spirit of Ô99	08:45	18:00	122
	Volendam	08:00	18:00	2,020
DAILY CAPACITY				11177

It looks like the Norweign Sun and The Star Princess switch spots on the dock but the Princess was a little early coming in and the Sun was a little late getting out so it caused a traffic jam downtown!

But its been gorgeous out so the tourists must be loving it!

Baby Cap

The directions said that this cap for a premie should fit around an orange. I made one size larger and I only had a grapefruit and a mini-orange so I used an onion for display purposes. It would probably fit the grapefruit but I didn't want to stretch it out. This was made from Lion Brand microspun (free pattern)–its very soft. The pattern was quite easy and it was a quick knit. It look me longer to decide where to put the ribbons than to knit up the cap!

Hello, Naomi?

Dolly fishing on the Point

It took a couple of hours before the firsh starting to really hit but once they started it was almost every cast!







With help from Uncle Tim:

Cappy has a new friend

My nephew Robert is visiting from Fairbanks in between finishing up his first year at UAF and begining an intership at Flint Hills in the Chemistry lab. We've been all over the area looking, walking and even a little fishing. So far the weather has been pretty nice during the day and we've even had some sunshine! Today he's off to walk around town and then maybe up to the top of Mt Roberts on the tram.

Here we are Out the Road looking for whales - Chilkat Mts in the distance. All we ended up seeing was a group of our acquaintense looking for birds with their scopes and an older couple from Minnesota on their way to Soldotna where the lady was going to work for as a nurse for the summer. We had quite a chat - if there's anything you'd like to know about them we probably could tell you.



We thought we'd try fishing off Point Louisa - by the Auke Rec Area. Its a little hard to fish here though because its to rocky and you have to watch what the tide does. At any time you can find yourself on an island. We casted for about a hour and then decided dinner was sounding pretty good and a better way to spend our time.



The Shrine of St. Therese is always a cool place to go - it was a beautiful day and there were a lot of fishing boats out spending a beautiful Mother's Day on the water.

Skunk Cabbage as seasoning

I'm reading a book by Jim Rearden based on the journals of Sam O White, called Sam O. White, Alaskan: Tales of a Legendary Wildlife Agent and Bush Pilot and came across one of many passages that talks about the menu (or grub) that he had while on the trail (either surveying, trapping, running dogs, etc.). In this specific passage he talked about a delicious moose stew he made with a leaf of skunk cabbage in it to give it just a hint of a garlic taste - but not too much or it would overwhelm the stew. I'm not brave enough to try it out but don't think I haven't thought about how to use those huge leaves for a salad or something. I came across these references on google:

Salmon baked in skunk cabbage leaves
The day you bring home skunk cabbage is the day you eat out
Funniest Kitchen Incident for Wildman Steve Brill
Nutritional Data (very high in sodium)

I guess you never know - I'll be sure to make a post if I get brave enough to try it!

Dancing with Peeps

The weather has been very nice here and its been hard sitting inside at a desk when you can catch a glimpse of the sky. So we decided a picnic-dinner-walk out at North Douglas was the plan for the evening. While we were making sandwiches it started to sprinkle…but we went anyway. So what started out as a picnic-walk, turned in to a quest for identifying a group of shorebirds perched on a rock.



Which lead to an amazingly huge (maybe 400-500) mixed group of Ruddy Turnstone, Black Turnstone, and Rock Sandpipers. There might have been more species mixed in the group but we're not that good and we didn't bring the scope for the best clarity.


I was actually able to get quite close to them and they didn't seem to mind my presence until I started dancing!

Splish Splash I was taken a Bath…

and glad to have this knitted towel (pattern) with hood to slip into afterwards so I wouldn't get chilled. This was fun to knit–very easy stockinette stitch. The little elf hood is kinda funky and not exactly what the pattern picture looked like but I like it. I added the big pompom on the end for extra floppiness. I also dug out my crochet needle and attempted to crochet a row around the towel to make the border a little thicker. That part actually was fun and makes me think that I might try more crocheting. I used a variegated cotton yarn and I like how the stripes turned out.

I knitted a matching washcloth to go along with the towel. I don't have any of my dolls or stuffed animals except for this little gal, so she got to act as model!