Walks

Sunday, the day after we arrived, was a day of rest.  It rained hard in the morning - interrupting our first hike, but then it got sunny and beautiful.  We rested and took hikes.  Also puzzles and a lunch with Stuey's namesake, Stewart.  More on the latter two activities in a later post. 
This post is all about walks outside in the late autumn sunshine.

Living in Alaska, the only thing I ever really miss about New England is the deciduous forest in Fall.  Colored leaves, dead leaves on the ground, and stark tree outlines against the sky.  This is something you just can't find in Alaska.  Cottonwoods can come close, but New England has all the hardwoods.  And ticks.  My kids are terrified of ticks.  So maybe it is good that we live on Kodiak.  Nothing to fear there but the bears. Patrick

Wellesly Waterfowl

Monday on the way to the mall with Granny Coco we stopped at the Wellesley town hall so that Grandma could contest a parking ticket.  What a town hall!  It was set in a park and in most towns would be considered a tourist attraction.  While we waited for granny to come back we checked out the geese and ducks in the park.  I think they thought we might have food.    Patrick

Travel with Kids

Sliver Gulch Brewery Restaurant in Anchorage - the trip begins

We've been in Massachusetts for 2 full days now so the sleep deprived part of the trip has already faded a bit from memory.  But it is all there in the photos.  The theme of this trip was LONG layovers.  After beating the winds out of Kodiak (I think we were on the only plane in or out that day) we had a 6 hour layover in Anchorage.  And then another 5 hour layover in Chicago.

We usually fly through Seattle and its familiar food court.  This was our first trip through Chicago O'Hare.  Nora says she prefers Seattle.  She says Chicago was 'really crowded, felt germy, and had bad restaurants.'  Chicago did seem MUCH bigger with food courts full of fast food all over.  We found a nook by some pay phones and 'napped' (ie no sleeping!).

The kids actually did really, really well.  With only one melt down in Chicago. We got to Boston after almost 24 hours of travel and Grandma Coco was there to pick us up.  We got to grandmother's house and the kids quietly read, before eating dinner and going to bed.  Unbelievable!  We had arrived.  Patrick

Boarding the red eye at 11 PM to Chicago

Look we found some REAL phones to hang out by in Chicago - daddy's kind of place

Travel medicine for adults

Ash Haze

It's been windy a lot lately.  Strong winds out of the West that have been stirring up old volcanic ash on the Alaska Peninsula and blowing it across the Shelikof Strait to Kodiak.  Here on Kodiak the ash appears as a haze in the air - almost like smoke from a forest fire.  What's cool is that this ash is from the biggest volcanic eruption in the 20th century - Katmai Volcano in June 1912.  It buried the city of Kodiak almost 100 miles away and created deep and widespread deposits on the Alaska Peninsula at its origin.  These deposits still have not totally grown over with vegetation and stabilized and when it gets super windy the ash gets thrown airborne once again.  Sometimes the ash in the air is so bad that planes are grounded.

It also makes for atmospheric pictures!
 Patrick

Waiting on Snow

Hunting season is over and ski season has not really begun.  I'm in Limbo - on the edge of each season but really in neither.  I was kind of hoping for more 'bow for goat hunts' - the kind where we do not get a goat but do a lot of hiking.  Not that I'm complaining about getting a goat on only one try - but a few more excuses for good hikes might have been nice...

Every day I have been taking the doggies up Pyramid.  Last week I took the skis a few times, but it is even too marginal for me.  But soon - soon there will be snow (fingers crossed).  In the meantime I'll eat goat.  Patrick

Mountain goat stir fry for dinner

Reward

It's Monday and my legs are still sore from Saturday's steep downhills with a heavy pack.  It's always the downhills that get me - not the uphills.  But yesterday Philip and I got to take care of the reward.  Philip had never cut up mountain goat meat before and he was impressed with the light color.  'It looks like pork,' he commented.  Wait until he eats some!  I also have to add that I appreciated how much less meat was destroyed by the arrow as opposed to a bullet, and how the meat was so well bled out.  The meat quality was excellent.  Goat is Great.  Patrick

How I ruined Philip's hike

We beat the sunrise to the alpine

Yesterday I convinced Philip to help me go bowhunting for mountain goats.  I told him that there was absolutely no chance that we would actually catch a goat. And he believed me.  The bowhunting aspect was just an excuse for a glorious hike in the sunshine.  As Philip put it early on during the hike, 'one thing I like about hunting is that you go places where you would never go if you were just hiking'.

And let's face it - I'm not much of a bow hunter.  Given the choice I'd use a rifle every time.  I only bow hunt because at this time of the year it is the only legal method to hunt goats on the Kodiak Roadsystem.  And with no snow for skiing I need an excuse to get me up in the mountains. Goat meat is pretty tasty stuff too!  Philip knows me well enough to know that I was NOT going to chase goats in scary terrain.

And so at the crack of dawn away we went up into the mountains (another good aspect of hunting - who leaves on just a hike before dawn?).  We caught the rising sun just as we reached the alpine.  Philip breathed a sigh of relief when we glassed the surrounding mountains and did not see a single goat.  It looked like the hike was safe!

But we had to go through with the charade, and so when we reached an area where I had seen goats in the last few days I donned the 'goat camo' (white painter's suit) and unpacked the bow.  No more talking, no more fun - we stalked across the plateau looking for goats, and there they were!

Philip stayed behind while I stalked up on a herd of goats.  He later told me that as he was watching me close with the goats he was thinking, 'crap this might actually work'.  But it didn't.  I got to within 20 yards of a goat but he bolted before I could get a bead on him.  There were goats everywhere, but no good shots.  And to my credit I passed on some iffy ones, and on a baby goat that I did have dead to rights at 20 yards (he/she had no horns and reminded me of an emoticon - the one for cute baby goat).  The goats all ran up the mountain and into the cliffs and I hiked pack and joined Philip.

We checked out the area where the goats had been hanging out and it was warm and out of the wind.  A nice place to stop before we headed back to the car.  We spotted some goats a 1/4 mile away on a steep hillside that had not run away.  We watched them, but there was no way we were going to chase them - too scary.  But then they started walking towards us!

Shortly there after a billy goat appeared on the other side of the ravine and was following the trail that lead right to us.  He climbed up out of the ravine and there he was only 10 yards or less away from me - we actually locked eyes.  And so I ruined Philip's hike. Philip did not hear the commotion when I shot, but when he heard me talking he feared the worst.  I'd actually caught a goat.

And then the brutal part began.  After we butchered the goat we had to take the shortest way to the car and this entailed climbing down a ravine and a steep alder, devil's club, and salmonberry choked hillside to the valley below.  Then we had to climb 1100 feet up and over another mountain.  That was an interminable climb.  All this with heavy packs full of goat meat on our backs. We finally reached the car an hour or so before sunset.

Near the end I commented that, 'as far as goat hunts go this one, despite the brutal pack out, was actually pretty straight forward'.  Goat hunts can go very wrong (click here for a goat hunt gone wrong).  Philip agreed and commented, 'and that's why I am not doing this again next year'.  Oh Philip - tell me it 'aint so!  Next year I swear we will absolutely NOT catch a goat.

Now that we got the goat home the best part is that goats are VERY tasty and make the best Italian sausage.  The last few years, lacking goat meat, we have tried to make do with deer or elk meat.  The results just have not been as tasty as with goat.  And so this year we got us the ingredients for some REAL goat sausage.
Patrick

We would later hike home over the top of the mountain the sun is rising behind

Goat country

The 'fun' part of the hike ended right about here

Goat Sausage!

Philip's right - no one in their right mind would hike down this slope unless they were hunting!

This worked for a while - until we hit the frozen waterfalls

Nearing the top of the interminable climb that followed the hellish descent