August 12, End of Our Second Week: We May Have a Place! See end of post.

Yea, Kelli and Jared and Brady and Faithanne and Henry called me today, on speakerphone!  It’s so good to hear all of their voices, all together on Jenny Ave.  Henry pipes up occasionally:  he loves to join in, always ready to join the conversation.  Brady and Faithanne are down to pick up the Volvo, which they bought from us, another easy piece of our move to Alaska.  Faithanne starts her new job on Monday, at a small firm in Berkeley.  They have hired her to help them grow their business.  It’s good to have new challenges!

It’s so nice to be on one place for awhile, not getting up and packing to go to the next place.  We were at FFF for several days, but it, well, lacked something.   This place, A Place to Stay, is in a great location, on the end of a street, only blocks away from the grocery store and post office, and five minutes from Kathy’s work.  It’s really well-equipped, too. Click on the link for pictures.  See the link to the Fireweed Lodge, where we also stayed, and had dinner last night. 

Kathy took the car today, for the first time.  She had to visit Hydaburg, 50 miles to the south.  She is settling in to her new position.  The SEARHC newsletter came out today, and had welcome introduction for her. 

The forest is very dense on Prince of Wales Island.  Yellow Cedar is the key tree, as far as logging goes, and makes up a big component.  Western Hemlock is the next most common tree.  Western Redcedar is another major tree.  Both of the later range down into California, and into the Rockies in Montana, and I’m familiar with them.  Yellow Cedar’s range begins in the south in Washington, does not extend into Montana.  Mountain Hemlock also grows in the forest here.  Lodgepole Pine is a forest component too, and is known as the major forest tree in Yellowstone, and extends north up the Rockies.

I found an email list that will alert me when high Aurora Borealis activity is predicted, and signed up.  It should be spectacular up at this latitude.  Speaking of latitude, you know you are way, way up north when all of the satellite TV dishes are pointed virtually parallel with the ground!  I thought the first several I saw were broken, then realized they are all this way.  It’s still strange to see.

We bought our Alaska-mobile one month ago today, and it now has 3,660 miles on it, not too surprisingly.  We left San Diego three weeks ago yesterday, seems like it was at least six weeks ago!

We may have found a place to stay!  It’s a newer duplex, not too big, not too small, with a little fenced yard, and accepts pets!  It just became available, so we have a great chance to get it.  We’ll have to wait until the end of the month to move in, but that will be a minor inconvenience to get something this nice.  Stay tuned!