OK, we did have a few warm days last week…maybe 2 or 3 of them…and it was only warm if the sun was out.  (Warm = 70 degrees F. )   We are still waiting for the real summer to start, but it is looking a bit bleak. Anyway, we’ve actually been out camping once so far this “summer”—4 days down in Homer in early June, staying at the Heritage RV Park.  We’ve stayed there 3 years ago, and as before, we really enjoyed it. We rented a spot right on the water and had a gorgeous view. Of course something usually goes wrong on each trip, and this time we found out that we didn’t have any hot water. This was apparently because the hot water tank was never filled up and reconnected when we had the camper de-winterized. After unsuccessfully trying to get it to work, we finally gave up. This meant that if we wanted to take showers, we had to take them in the Heritage Park facilities. Well, this turned out to be a nice surprise…I’m not a fan of taking showers in public facilities, but in this case it was a pleasure. Heritage Park does a great job of keeping the facilities clean (I mean, really clean!). Also, the shower worked great 

One problem with this trip was that it rained for much of the time, and it was cold and windy. This made it difficult to bike ride or really want to go hiking or anything. However, the highlight of this trip was an 8-hour excursion with the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies. We went on a low tide tour and coastal forest hike where we saw a variety of marine and coastal life, and geological formations. The tide was at -5, making it a unique experience (much more sea/coastal life was exposed with the tide this low). It was a great experience and I highly recommend it if you are in Homer. One night we took the Kachemak Bay Ferry (the Danny J) across to Halibut Cove where we ate at the Saltry Restaurant where we had a mouth watering meal, drank too much wine, and then walked around to look at some of the galleries on the island.

October 9, 2007

10 hours 40 minutes of daylight

Low temps: 20s, high temps: 30s

Eagle River Nature Center has miles of trails, nature programs for adults and kids, and public use cabins for camping. Since we live only about 10 miles away it is one of our favorite spots for hikes (short or long) and quick get-aways. We just did a short hike (about a mile) and enjoyed the views and fall scenery. Unfortunately it was a bit overcast, which didn’t result in great pictures and also kept the temperatures quite low. Lots of indications of bear activity, but we didn’t see any bears. In the slides below I’ve included a picture of bear scat on the trail. This was a large pile (ie: large bear) that was full of berries.

September 2nd 2007

14 hours 9 minutes of daylight

After a hectic week with visitors from the lower 48, we decided to ease down by spending a couple of nights at the Eklutna lake campsite in the Chugach mountains. Since it is a holiday weekend and the campground would be busy, Michael took the camper (and the 4 animals) up early on Friday morning, and the rest of us (Susan and 3 kids) came up after school. Great weather with high temperatures in the 60s and lows in the upper 40s.

Eklutna has some nice hiking opportunities, and we hiked up (and I do mean UP—oh my aching legs!) the Twin Peaks trail. It took us an hour and 40 minutes to hike up, partially since we were busy picking berries along the way.

The trail is steep in places so frequent stops were a good thing. Too bad it was cloudy and when we got to the top there wasn’t much of a view to enjoy.