Tuesday, after a night in the lower bed of one of the three bunks in our expansive cabin, I drive Kathy to work, return, take a shower, and finish packing. I hear voices on the patio, and go out to find Wayne and Donna, the owners, and Wayne’s sister Terri and her husband (they from Tehachapi), talking, and I let our dogs out to join their two cocker spaniels, and join the conversation. They are all very nice people, and empathize with our plight. Wayne tells me of a very nice house two blocks away that recently went on the market. Buying a house is our Plan C, or D. Houses are less expensive here than in San Diego, and since we will be here for two years, it seems reasonable that there will be some measure of economic recovery by the time we consider leaving, so could sell for what we paid, or hopefully more. Renting is one of those things we aren’t looking forward to returning to either, so buying would eliminate that concern. Of course, it would present other challenges, like, could we even qualify, with just one of us working, and already having a mortgage. With excellent credit and loads of equity in the house, it just might be possible. We’ll see.
I finish packing up our stuff, again, load the dogs into the car last, and off we go.
It’s time to give the dogs some exercise. We go back to Cemetery Island. We walk the entire trail to the end of the island, about 30 minutes one way. We have the trail to ourselves, and it’s a beautiful walk through the forest, not far from the shore. We hear a kingfisher calling, and a bald eagle crying (I can’t call it a ‘call,’ it’s just too pathetic). I see harebell, wonderful harebell! Salal, too, finally. We reach the end of the trail, and a rocky beach, with beach rocks and strata tilted at 90 degrees. It’s a beautiful, cloudless sky, in the low 70’s. On the way out, we see a few people swimming even: we hear that their summer has been very cool this year, so there is pent-up desire for warm weather and sunshine.
The dogs are doing very well, considering what they’ve been through. Quilan is nervous, in fact they are both jumpy. Lakota isn’t eating (which isn’t terrible: she needs to lose 30 lbs.). Last night was our 10th different place on our 13 day adventure, for one, and they spend a lot of time in the back of the Subaru, which isn’t exactly spacious. We are monitoring their poop, though, so I have to watch this on our walks and report back to Kathy. I feel like we have a new baby, ugh.
Kathy works to 5:00 PM. I pick her up, and we go to Craig to look at houses for sale, and the place at 603 Beach St, our next ‘home.’ The day remains beautiful. We have home-made turkey sandwiches for dinner, and chocolate bars for dessert, yum!
The fireweed, pervasive across Alaska (and seen in virtually every picture of Alaska), has new colors in the sunlight. It’s too bad it has weed in it’s name, as I consider a weed nothing more than an obnoxious pest: fireweed does grow everywhere, but it’s a native, and provides great color against the greens of the temperate rain forest, with its long tall spikes of pink-magenta flowers. This evening in the late light, they looked especially bright. In the shadows, they looked especially intense, very different.
We take the dogs for their evening walk, and again hear a kingfisher calling, and flying this time. We walk across the causeway bridge that has construction going on. This is the location of the only traffic light on the entire island, because the road is squeezed down to just one lane. Seriously, it’s the only traffic signal on the entire island!
Kathy’s second day went fine. She counsels her first client tomorrow. I got my hair cut today. Ate at new place, a diner. Maybe I’ll have breakfast there tomorrow.
With this post, I'm finally up to date. I have lots of pictures to add, but they are all on my Blackberry, which gets no service here, and I packed the connecting cables where I can't get to them. I may just buy another one so I can get pictures to go with my blog.
The scenery is just incomparable. This forests everywhere, water everywhere, either rivers or bays. The sitka spruce, western hemlock, and yellow-cedar create the deep greens, and the alder other deciduous trees create contrast and fluttering displays in the breeze.
Still haven't seen our first black bear yet, but we know it's only a matter of time. Tomorrow begins the traditional totem pole raising ceremonies in Kwalock, which will last four days. This will be very interesting, and provide us more opportunties to meet people. Hope all is well with everyone in the Lower 48!
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