Picnics and time on the water

 

One of the highlights of the trip so far was a picnic with Stewart and Sarah on Mouse Island.  Low tide was in the middle of the day and this generally precludes good picnics.  At low tide the beaches are generally terrible and the boat access is poor.  But on Mouse island even at low tide there is a clam shell beach.  Also Stuey, Sarah and Stewart were able to park the motorboat at a nearby dock and walk out to the island on a spit only exposed at low tide.  Nora and I paddle boarded all the way to the island from the house.

We lit a fire below the high tide line, cooked hotdogs and ate chips.  Pretty simple and absolutely perfect.  After we ate the kids and I took the paddle boards up Perry's Creek and went swimming.  The sun had warmed the shallow water and it was almost as warm as a heated pool.

And then when the tide started to come in and flood the spit connecting the island to the shore it was time to go home.

Once the spit started to get flooded it was time to go home!

Nora trying her hand at waterskiing - soon after this I tried to do it too with disastrous results!

Lobster on the deck

 

Maine vacation continues.  We were supposed to continue on to Iceland before returning home to Alaska, but I tore my hamstring and am now couch bound and writing blog posts.  So our Maine vacation will be extra long!

Before I tore my hamstring (waterskiing for the first time in 40 years) the kids and I had a lobster picnic with Stewart and Sarah.  We had intended to travel to a remote beach and cook the lobsters in a fire pit covered with seaweed.  But it was too windy for beach fires and we decided to just cook the lobsters in the kitchen and eat them on the porch above the water.

It was pretty perfect.  As we ate the lobsters and threw the shells right back into the ocean.  A few gulls and even a large crab joined us and scavenged the shells on the beach.

Patrick

Stuey ripping it in the kayak

Stuey and I took the SUP and kayak to Mouse Island

we returned the next day for a picnic (another post to follow)

Lobsters on the deck

I cooked them in seawater on the stove and we ate them on the deck

Maine Vacation 2022 - it begins

 

Boarding the Alaska Airlines jet in Kodiak

The kids and I are in Maine!  We have survived the long journey by planes, automobiles, and a ferry to reach our destination in North Haven, Maine.  As usual we are staying at my grandmother's old house overlooking the Thoroughfare (Great Granny Thurby's House).  It is built directly out over the water and at high tide you can jump from the porch right into the water.  The water is a lot warmer than it is in Alaska!

We have been visiting with Granny Coco, and when we first arrived in Maine we drove directly to her house in Rockport.  Then while we waited for it to be time to take the ferry we went for a walk.  Nora loves to check out the Maine houses and gardens.  We took the late ferry to North Haven and basically made it to the island after a day and a half of travel.

En route we had layovers in Anchorage and Seattle and Nora suggested that we use the Alaska Airlines lounge.  I was a little reluctant because you have to pay, but in the end it was a GREAT idea.  All the food you want, 'free' beer, and no crowds.  It was a lifesaver for the 8 hours layover in Seattle.

Patrick

Arrival on North Haven - walking to house from ferry landing

Ferry arriving at North Haven

Pretty yards in Rockport - we went for a walk to look at houses

Great grandma's house in North Haven

Reading on the deck

Living room with a view

Ame's Knob - all 145 feet of it!

Quick summit on Ame's Knob

Stuey paddles across the Thoroughfare

The Alaska Air Lounge - 8 hour layover in Seattle en route to Maine

My barbecue deer and goat ribs recipe

The other night I cooked some deer and mountain goat ribs on the grill.  This is one of my favourite recipes (more a method than an actual recipe), and one that I have refined a great deal over the years.  I can remember the first time I tried to cook deer ribs on the grill and we did not even bother to pre cook them.  With all the fat they caught on fire and the flames burned as high as the roof.  Then for years we simply froze the ribs unprocessed and would then thaw them out and then make the sauce and do all the rib prep the day before we cooked them.  This was a serious hassle and meant that cooking ribs was always something that you put off.  

In the beginning the ribs were always sort of something that you had to take care of because to not do so was wanton waste of game meat. But not anymore, these days the ribs rate high on the list when it comes to divying up the game meat between hunters after a hunt.

We've also learned that you take care of them start to finish.  I am very careful to keep them clean when I butcher the deer or goat in the field. I also try to not over process them because I want to have something to trim for when I do the final clean up.   Then when we get home they are the first cut of the animal that we process.  On getting back to the house I immediately trim and clean them up (hair and excess fat) and cut off the chine along along the bottom.  I then use gardening sheers to cut the ribs in half longitudinally.

Next step is to put them in my biggest La Creuset pot with lid with a couple inches of water inside, and cook them in the oven at around 180 degrees for 12 hours or so.  Philip cooks them sous vid (click here to see his elk ribs) - but that is a little too complicated for me. After 12 hours or so I pour off the fatty water and use a bottled barbecue sauce (like Tubbs) to liberally coat all the ribs. You can also make your own barbecue sauce but this is also usually the day you are butchering the rest of the deer - so why create more hassle and work? Once coated in sauce, I cook them at low heat for another hour or so.  Then I pair up the half racks 2 or 3 to a package, wrap them in plastic and butcher paper, label and freeze them (see top photo).

Now when you want ribs for dinner you just take them out of the freezer, thaw them out, and they are all ready to go on the grill.  I usually put a little more sauce on them for the grill, and cook them just like those precooked and premarinaded ribs that you buy all wrapped up in plastic at Safeway.  Except mine are WAY better.  I've also found that they last a long time in the freezer - far less subject to freezer burn than the un precooked and processed ribs that we used to freeze in the past.  

And so convenient!

Patrick

Full Color

 

seed pods

After all the pictures taken with the 'color select' filters here are a few from the last couple of weeks that are in full color. I just noticed that a lot of them are of birds - it seems I have been taking a lot of bird pictures lately. The Parasitic Jaeger and Aleutian Tern are from my trip out to Chirikof.  

The Parasitic Jaeger is a sea gull that harasses other sea gulls and steals their food.  They are cool to watch chasing other birds around.  In Europe they are called Arctic Skuas.  Both the Jaegers and Aleutian terns migrate incredibly long distances between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and spend the summers on Chirikof where they nest and breed.

The semipalmated plovers are incredibly common and we see them every time we go for a walk on the beach.  They nest near the beach and are always making cries and pretending they are wounded to draw us away from their nests.  They fool Bode every time and he chases and chases them, and then when they have Bode sufficiently far from their nest they fly away and leave him.

Patrick

Raven in motion

Shooting star

Semipalmated Plover pretending it has a bad wing

Parasitic Jaeger - these guys are quite the aerialists

Foggy day at Abercrombie

Aleutian Tern - a pretty rare bird

Rainy Day

 

So far this summer it has not rained much.  Since my Kiliuda Bay survey in early June - and I know for a fact that it rained a lot that week - it has barely rained at all.  My lawn has even started to turn brown.  So yesterday I welcomed the rain.  It has been a while.

In the morning Nora and I took Bode for a walk in the rain at Abercrombie.  Bode has been a little lonely of late without Brewster for company, and at the park he loves to play with other dogs.

Then in the afternoon, Nora and I floated the Buskin river with Uncle Dicky and cousin Leo.  Leo, Nora and I were in a big inflatable raft while uncle Dicky was on a stand up paddle board.  It had rained an inch and the river was quite high.  In places it was a bit scary and I did not dare to pause and take pictures.  I had to be alert to keeping the raft pointed straight!

At the Buskin River mouth we paddled out into the surf and tried to catch a few waves in the raft.  The waves tried to flip us over and we caught a few short rides.  

A good way to spend a soaking wet day - soaking wet and loving it!

More Playing with the Color Select filters

 

Color select green only - the yellow flowers disappear

This Spring I've been playing a lot with the color select filters on my camera (click here for some earlier blog posts). It's been fun seeing what happens with an image when you select just one color.  This past week I've been mostly taking pictures of the yellow cow lilies.  If I pick yellow only then the cow lily flowers really pop out.  It is a good way to isolate a subject. That said, I am finding that in general, seen side-by-side, I prefer the image with all the colors.  But sometimes picking just one color really seems to work.  

Near the bottom of this post are 2 pictures of white bunchberry flowers.  If you look at them they are not obviously taken with a color filter.  The flowers are ordinarily white anyway and the leaves green.  But by choosing green only the leaves stand out from the moss and ground litter.  It makes for a bit more dramatic photo.

Patrick

No color select

Color select yellow - the cow lilies pop out 

Color select green really works here and the flowers are white anyway