Friday, July 7th: Sun at LAST!

No disaster has struck this morning.  Yet.  Lol.  And we woke up to the SUN! Glorious sun.  It brought back all of those years of living up here and that feeling you had when the sun was out at last - you absolutely had to be outside because you were never sure how long it would last.  I took my tea and my Bible and, after putting on about 5 layers because it’s still been in the 50’s, set my chair up in the middle of the yard in the sunniest spot I could find where I could catch a glimpse of the ocean.

The boys are off with Oliver Haines, a good friend from FL who comes up with his wife several months of the year in their retirement, to go fishing today.  The older two girls are still at Beverly’s so I truck out to the airport with the two little girls for that prescription I heard fly over that morning.  It’s always a good sign when the planes are flying :).

I was excited to spend an hour with a sweet friend of mine that was my closest friend during our time here. She and her two boys had moved to Homer about the same time we left but before that we did everything together.  Abbey and Hannah and Benny and Lars were about the same age and best buds.  Hikes, homeschooling, wild plant harvesting, birthday parties… you name it, we did it together.  Jen was the one who got me to rethink food, nutrition, health, and just our environment in general.  She’s a wonderful person and an independent thinker and I really love her.

We had met at Inside Beach where we had spent so many hours in years prior. When she had to head out, Moriah and Zip and I did what is best to do at Inside Beach - hunt for sea glass.  I don’t know why, but the sea glass gets trapped in this particular little beach better than any other beach in the area.  There’s not as much sand, but small pebbles that make up the shore.  And if you dig just a handful or two, there’s almost sure to be a piece or two of sea glass. 

Camel Rock

The girls really enjoyed the treasure hunt and were very excited to find a blue piece, which is one of the more rare colors to find. Brown and green are typical, then white, sometimes you’ll find a yellow one or a pale green, but blue and red are the most coveted colors.  Little curly-headed Hannah would spend all day with her head down digging for colors out here.  And she was very good at finding them.  To this day she is the one who spots the special tiny things that a lot of us miss.

After that I got an itch to DO something with the sunny day because I knew more rain was in the forecast.  I remembered Rose, the postmistress, offering up our old tandem kayak while we were in town.  It was sitting at church beach.  We’ve done plenty of kayaking but I’ve never had two littles by myself, but Moriah was getting old enough to paddle… I drove out to Seldovia Bible chapel to check out the boat.  I really wanted to launch it in the harbor instead. The church ramp meant heading around a huge pier and over some pretty open water before hitting the safety of the harbor.  I wasn’t sure I really wanted to try that out.  It had been a few years since I last ocean kayaked, it was a large kayak and I was alone with two little ones so I didn’t think I should experiment with my abilities on these waters.  It’s a bit deadly if you capsize out here.  And it’s not like it was a warm day - we were in winter hats and gloves and the wind was up.  As I stood their trying to decide if I should risk it, or if I had the strength to drag in the quarter mile to the harbor, or if I could muscle it into the van (was their room??)… a familiar face saw me considering and offered his dad’s help who had local kayaking apparatus.  It turned out it was the son of another old friend, Byron and Margie McCord.  As soon as Byron recognized me he sprung into helpfulness and it a few minutes had the kayak loaded onto a kayak dolly and headed to the harbor while I met him with the girls in the van.  He gentlemanly helped me get everyone situated and launched and made sure I had his number to help us unload when we were finished.  He and his wife are long time Alaskan residents who built a home in Seldovia a few years before we left town.  He is a doctor and every year he heads to Malawi in Africa to a clinic where he volunteers several months of his expertise.   Margie is a gem.  Wonderful people.

The girls and I had a BLAST on the water.  I took the helm so I could have a bit more control and Moriah really held her own with the paddle to help me along.  I was proud of her.  The best part was the sea otter we followed around the harbor.  Kind of like a squirrel that had seen a few too many humans, he seemed completely unperturbed by our presence no matter how close we got.  So we got as close as we could and had a lot fun watching all of his antics as he washed his face and his flippers and rolled around in the water.  The girls were thrilled. 

Once we picked up Abbey and Hannah from Beverly’s we decided we wanted to head out again so we picked up another of Rob’s kayaks also at church beach. This time with the older girls there to help we were able to load it into the van.  Just had to bend the rear view mirror a tad to get the bow all the way in, kitty-corner it just a tad, fold the rudder just right, shut the door, and wa-la!  It was in!

This time we went through the harbor and into the slough, which at low tide earlier that day was unaccessible.  But now we went in with the tidal waters, under the bridge as the boys fished for king salmon, and down towards the airport.  The water was moving fast and we thought it was going to be hard rowing back but it actually wasn’t too bad. 

Malachi got tired of fishing and swapped out with Hannah and we decided to row out to Schooner beach across the harbor from town.  Our little excursions reminded me again just how much I loved all of Seldovia’s little adventures right at your fingertips.  I really missed that.

With the weather finally cooperating with some fun, it was hard to make ourselves be practical and head back to have dinner at a reasonable hour of 8pm and bedtime by 10.  On the way in we met our friend the sea otter again and called everyone down to watch him warm his furry little self on the dock.  They are irristably cute, but the hissing sound they make when you get too close reminds you that they are wild and could be vicious.

Micah snags a silver salmon from the Seldovia bridge for dinner 😋

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