Wet Walk - Beaver Lake Trail

ML and I are 'training' for our impending (read 2 months to go) Peru trip.  Despite a typical Southeast Alaska rainforest day, we decided we better truck up the Beaver Lake Trail - a 4 mile sojourn that takes us up the mountain a ways too.  What a fun time!

You walk up along a stream.  Today it was full of water from the rain.  At this time of year, the periphery of the woods are VERY green.  After all, there's still a good 15 hours of light and lots of moisture.

At the top of the stream is a big falls.  Today there was a section of it, that you can just barely see in the middle, that went straight out.  Nice.  

A little further you get up to Beaver Lake.  I love the mist and clouds in hanging out, drifting through.  Sometimes the lake was calm enough to have a reflection of the surrounding mountains, and sometimes there was just enough breeze to erase the mirror.

You can see there's still some snow hanging out in the crevasses of the mountains.  

Yeah, you're right.  This is staged!

After you walk up to the lake, there's a trail around it.  You walk through a "mass wasting event" - a multiple tree blowdown that friends of ours barely survived.  Then it opens to an alpine meadow that has some real nice flowers at this time of year. 

The bridge is made of yellow cedar.  ML is laughing because I ran across the bridge thinking I was going to get a picture.  She ran right behind me to foil my attempt. 

But look at who won!

Great trail, great fun.

Fishing rods renewed!

I confess that I'm a practical sports fisherman.  I like to eat salmon, so I try and catch some.  Smoked king salmon is probably my favorite food - assuming that I've done it right.  Or, I should say that smoked king salmon right out of the smoker is definitely my favorite food: warm from the smoker, moist flesh, salty enough but not too salty, and the taste of the KING!

Anyway, any self respecting sports fisherman would be embarrassed to use my fishing rods and gear.  But they catch, so I don't worry about it much.  Finally, though, one rod had only two eyes left and one rod didn't have a tip or a second eye.  It's kind of hard to use fishing rods like that, so it was time to fix them.

And that's where YouTube comes in handy!  So far, I have never failed to find "how-to" videos on the internet somewhere. There are quite a few videos about, as I learned to call them, "rod guides."  I always thought they were little fishing eyes!

Here is the old stuff.  A rod guide is broken in the back of the photo.  In the front is a rod tip.   I can be kind of impatient, so after I followed the video instructions to use a lighter to warm up the rod tip and it didn't come off with a pair of pliers, I used my trusty propane torch.  WOW.  That thing shot right off and would have killed me if I was in front of it.  So much for not following instructions - again.

The rod tip was easy to put on - put a little warmed up hot glue in it and shove it on (of course making sure eyes/guides are all lined up.

Yep, there she is!  I know, doesn't quite look like the fishing rods in the store, huh?  But I'm pretty doggone sure that it will hold up as long as the old ones did.  With a couple tricks to start and finish that you'll have to look up on youtube, you just hold the thread and turn the rod with your other hand.  Slick!  Then you put some epoxy over it.

They've held fine so far after 6 hours of fishing or so.  And I feel good that I kept my two rods out of the landfill and I didn't have to buy new ones!!!!

Just Cruising with my Friends

I was trolling out of the harbor the other day, and saw this.  Tough to go to the bathroom.

ML's Green Thumb

Our Mom loved flowers.  As was the case "back in those days," she had certain flower gardens that were "hers" and our Dad took care of the rest.  She was proud of the gardens and they looked pretty doggone nice.  I remember her working hard in the evening when it cooled off a little and she had Dad to help entertain the little urchins (us!).  I confess that I didn't appreciate them nearly as much as I could or should have at the time, but now that no-one cares except my brother and sister, I think they were glorious.

ML also has a green thumb.  She has a real sense of what plants need to allow them to thrive.  In the last week or so, she planted some pots of flowers.  Take a look.  Pretty amazing.  The photos don't really do them justice.

This is the setting.  There is a short and cool growing season in Southeast Alaska.  But there is lots of light, although not always sunlight.  Containers, or pots, are often the best way to go and ML just sets them on the porch.

I won't ruin the beauty with commentary.  Please continue below.

Time is going fast, but there's still lots of Southeast Summer.  And the flowers will just get better.