Kenai-Soldotna Bike Path

The other week I was up in Soldotna for a cross-country running race.  It was a gorgeous, sunny day--so warm I could wear shorts and a t-shirt (rare for this time of year!) and I decided to ride the paved bike path that runs from Soldotna to Kenai along Kalifornsky Road.  I love paved bike paths and consider them to be a major improvement to quality of life wherever I live.  My enthusiasm for the path along K-Beach Road, however, is waning as the trail degrades.

Large cracks running along the bike path

Large cracks in the trail make a bumpier ride, or an erratic one as I try to avoid them.  Worse than that, though, is the presence of 4-wheelers along the trail.  More than once I have been biking along peacefully when a 4-wheeler driven by a young adult (teenage boys most often; and not wearing helmets often enough) come careening at me, either on or right next to the path.  They veer off at the last second, but leave me choking on the dust.  Sections of the pavement have broken off where the 4-wheelers drive over, onto or next to the bike path.

The part that can't be avoided is all the businesses' driveways that cross the path.  The section of path that runs from Kenai to Soldotna along the Kenai Spur Road has fewer driveways and roads but has a couple very large hills (not so good for rollerblading).  If it were just the driveways it would be fine--I can stay alert and watch traffic though I'm not crazy about my kids biking it by themselves since they don't watch for turning traffic from both directions.  But the 4-wheelers and the big cracks in addition to the cross-traffic downgrades this bike path significantly for me.  Banning the 4-wheelers on the bike path side of the road would be a simple solution, but meanwhile it needs to be fixed up!

Berry Primer

The bright red berries are bunchberries (from the Canada Mayflower), which are edible, but don't have a lot of flavor.  I pick them and add them to smoothies.  They don't change the flavor or texture but they have nutrition and fiber.  The darker berries are low bush cranberries, which aren't fully yummy ripe till they've been hit by a frost or two.

I pick rosehips, pop off the dried, old flower bud and throw them in the freezer intact.  The fuzzies inside irritate the mouth and lining of the stomach, but if I throw them in my smoothies the Vitamix tends to take care of any issues so I get a really easy way to get a hefty dose of Vitamin C in my diet.

I call these Orange Berries; I think they're also called Pumpkin Berries for their bright orange color.  These are also edible but I avoid them as I haven't been impressed with their flavor (even less so than bunchberries).

High bush cranberries are one of our favorite berries.  Once they've been hit by hard frost, the leaves have fallen off and even better, the berries are frozen (picked in October or November or later), they are easy to gather and we can get gallons of these in an hour in the right patch.  I freeze them, then thaw them, juice them in a tomato juicer (by hand with one of those wooden mallets).  One cup of juice, one half cup of sugar and a pitcher full of water makes fresh cranberry juice that we like to serve to our guests and nearly all love it.  Sometimes a dash of lemon juice is a nice touch.

Trailing raspberries creep along the ground and often the berries are embedded in the moss on the ground.  There are never quantities enough to pick just for themselves, but we snack on them as we hike and throw them in with other berries.

I had the privilege to pick the most amazing blueberries of my life this past weekend across Kachemak Bay.  The berry bushes were loaded beyond belief and the berries were huge by wild Alaskan blueberry standards.  There are many kinds of blueberries in Alaska (like 6-10 I think) and this kind is great because they grow on bushes 3-5 feet high and are easy to pick.  These just get washed and thrown in the freezer to go into treats and smoothies all winter long.

Fruits of my labor this weekend.  The ziplock bag has black currants in it.  I am kicking myself for not getting pictures of the bushes out there because entire hillsides were covered with current bushes loaded with berries.  It was amazing.  They're not as tasty as other berries (a little musky smelling) and I'm not sure how well they'll go with my smoothies as I have never picked any quantity of them before.

This isn't all the berries we pick; I'll have to do Berry Primer II when I get to my other berries in the next month.

Fireweed Fluff

Fireweed is fuzzing out

Much as I love fireweed, I have been dreading the great fuzz-out that I know is going to happen.  All those brilliant flowers turn into thin pods, which explode into fuzz.  I'll admit that I still have fuzz on my screens from last fall, and there wasn't very much fireweed last year compared to this year.  So yesterday I was out there pulling up the fireweed directly around my house (below my bedroom window, that would likely attract large quantities of fuzz), much to my kids' amusement.  They don't care about such things as fuzz on the screens.

Last weekend while at a cross-country running race in Soldotna, it looked like it was snowing there was so much fireweed fluff in the air.  People were walking around batting at the fluff balls that were hitting their faces, coming from the field pictured above.  Like one person said, with this many fireweed seeds flying around we'll have even more fireweed next year.  That I cannot even imagine.  It was stunningly prolific this year.  I'll be curious to see how it all turns out.  Meanwhile, it is raining now with more rain on the forecast, so that keeps the fuzz under control!

Yesterday's Pickin's

Onion, cucumbers, carrots, green beans, tomatoes, kohlrabi, yellow zucchini--bounty from the garden!

This is my favorite time of year:  the garden starts offering its bounty and when it is time to prepare dinner I run out and pick stuff and start throwing it together in some yummy way.  Here's some favorite ways we eat our fresh stuff:

Cucumbers end up on our salad, and any leftovers get sliced up and salted lightly.  Keep it simple!

Cooking up the onions in water and eating them with just a bit of butter is a tasty treat we fight over!

Kohlrabi is our before and after dinner snack since we don't have many.  We love the crunch!

Green beans rarely make it out of the greenhouse as we snack on them when we're hungy.

Tomatoes go on salads and eat them plain--more "keep it simple!"

Zucchini we stir fry up, add summer sausage, spaghetti noodles and Velveeta cheese  all mixed together.  Yum!

And berry season is kicking into full swing.  With this bucket of raspberries I picked yesterday, I've picked 4 gallons, and while I picked crowberries and blueberries, the kids ate those right up so they never made it into the freezer.  The watermelon berries I snuck by the kids so those made it into the freezer too.

This has been an awesome year for berries with the warmth and now a week of rain.  No more blogging for me today.  I've got more berries to go pick!

Sandhill Cranes

The local sandhill crane couple

This is a blog post I have been meaning to write ever since the sandhill cranes started migrating through Homer back in May, but I never had my camera (aka my iPhone) on me when I saw them.  What I really wanted was to get a video of the flocks of 50-100 cranes that stalk up our road or descend on open fields or lawns next to it.  But the masses of cranes left in the spring and just a few are left hanging around.

We have 2 cranes that frequent our neighborhood these days.  And every evening I'll hear their distinctive honk as they fly over, though usually when I look up it is a group of 4 or 5 cranes honking by.  It reminds me of when I was a child in Wisconsin and a great blue heron flew over our house each evening.  The day wasn't complete unless we saw it. 

While out walking the other day we ran into a momma moose with a baby that wouldn't budge from the roadside, so we turned and walked a different way and ran into another momma moose with a baby the other direction, also chomping merrily and unwilling to move.  So we walked down our road and saw these cranes, which was a relief because we were feeling pretty hemmed in on our walk that day.  We were worried we'd run into yet another stubborn moose and not be able get enough walk in!  I'm not sure why, but I never think of taking pictures of moose when I see them--probably because I see them so often.  I'll try to fix that and give my blog readers some moose pictures!

Homer Rope Tow: Summer View

For those of you who follow my blog, you may have seen pictures of the Homer Rope Tow over the years.  I needed to run down to the warming hut yesterday and get a jacket out of the lost and found and figured I would give you a summer view of the rope tow.

View of the local rope tow slope from the warming hut:  summer view

The walk down there was a matter of wading through grass and fireweed that towered over our heads.  Normally we have our downhill ski boots on and skis over our shoulder as we make the trek so the weeds were nothing compared to that!  It seemed so quiet and lonely, though, as normally it is just a bustle of people around the warming hut and slopes.  The slope looks so much smaller in the summer....just a little hill! How could I ever be nervous about skiing down that?!  And there is just no getting away from the fireweed, though its fiery glow is now fading as the flowers reach the top of the stems, signalling the imminent onset of winter.

Homestead Summer Trail

An old, abandoned cabin along the Homestead Trail, framed by pushki and fireweed

This is a great, short hike with a bench for resting, a picnic and great conversation at the summit.  The view is delightful and always a treat, though the clouds were hanging low early in the day and we weren't sure we were going to get a view today.

Wood chips and plastic trail retainers
on the Homestead Trail

The Roger's Loop trailhead starts when you're near the overlook coming into Homer.  The trail starts with grass, dips into some boggy areas with plastic trail retainers (whatever they're called--see the picture), then on to boardwalks through the wettest areas and as the trail begins to climb, it whittles down to a single dirt track.  Yesterday the dirt was actually a slippery wet muddy trail instead since it has been a rainy week.

The trail winds through different types of areas:  boggy hummocks, thick forest and then out onto an alpine meadow.
It is only about a mile up to the bench.  When we first moved to Alaska, we never even got to the meadow and bench; the kids were younger and we were more timid.  Now the jaunt up to the bench seems like a quick little hike.

This trail is also the snowshoe trail in the winter, and I hike it more often on snowshoes than I do in the summer.  There is a loop so it wouldn't have to be an out-and-back hike, both for the summer and winter (though they follow different paths in each season). 

The trail up the meadow--final climb to the bench

View of the Kenai Mountains looking towards Homer and Kachemak Bay

View towards Seldovia and Cook Inlet

Our family is not much for sitting around admiring views.  Usually when we're out and about we've got a goal and we're very focused.  This trail has been an exception for us at times.  We've had snowball fights, explored off the trail, picked berries and of course, sat at the bench.  We end up having quality conversations sitting on the bench overlooking the area, swinging our legs, and eating a picnic.  Last year I hiked up there with the kids the day before school started, so it was on my mind to do it again this year since school starts Tuesday and we get into our highly intense school-year life of work, sports, school and berry-picking/harvesting.  The clouds lifted and the rain stopped and it was actually a humid 60 degrees.  It was just what I'd wanted--a very nice hike with family!