Denali High Adventure Boy Scout Camp

The Great Alaska Council bought some property a couple hours north of Anchorage ten years ago to develop a new Boy Scout camp.  All these years later, the camp finally opened.  Denver got in as a work crew helping develop the trail, and in return he got a very reduced rate for the second week of fun at the camp.  Last week I ran up the road to pick him up from his 2-week adventure.  Of course "run up the road" cannot be less than a 2-day expedition since the camp is about 8 hours north of Homer!  Here's the story of my adventure!

Thursday night saw me heading up to Ninilchik to pick up my aunt, who was going to be the official "keep-Michelle-awake" person, as well as my berry-picking companion.  Friday morning the plan was to drive one of the Lindeman's summer visitor's neighbors to the airport.  When I introduced myself to the man before we loaded his stuff he said, "Are you Michelle from Homer, the blogger?"  He'd told his wife that a Michelle was going to be driving him to the airport and she said, "Michelle from Homer?"  Apparently she is a faithful blog reader of everything Ninilchik, and that occasionally includes mine!  So that was a fun time and I got promised a blackberry pie when Cam comes up to visit next summer in thanks for the ride.

Heading up the road we scoped out berry patches and have discovered that the watermelon berries and raspberries are ripe on the Kenai Peninsula, and north of there we discovered ripe blueberries (Yes, I am being vague on purpose.  I wouldn't share my coveted berry patches with the whole world!), the bushes which were about three-fourths ripe.  In Palmer we scored in my cousin's raspberry patch:  one gallon in less than an hour from a patch that produces that much every couple days.  I want a patch like that!

Lost in a berry patch!  Look at those luscious raspberries!!

Saturday morning we headed north in pouring rain, standing water on the road but thankfully light traffic.  Two hours got us to the McKinley Princess Lodge, which the Denali Boy Scout camp is near.  A two mile gravel road greeted us.  It was one of those roads that you're wondering if you're really going in the right direction, is it going to go anywhere at all, and when is it finally going to get there?  It went up steep hills, down steep hills, over a single-lane bridge, past trees hanging with moss.  The work to develop that road was quite extensive as there were numerous areas where the hills were cut down to make the grade less steep. At some random spot, there were a bunch of cars parked so we figured we'd arrived.  Of course there were no signs or anything!

The warehouse

The warehouse is one of two buildings.  It has picnic tables inside that the kids ate at, 4 showers and an office.  Behind it was what was called "tent city" by the boys where the staff (which they were the first week) had tents with cots for sleeping quarters.  There is no kitchen (except a 4-burner stove for staff) so food is cooked outside as if they were camping, which they were.  The boys only used the warehouse at mealtime and besides that were out and about.

Only 6 kids did the work week, most from the Kenai Peninsula, while about 60 did the camp week.  We arrived at the beginning of pick-up time so there were masses of kids at the picnic tables, a typical buzz of movement and voices of young, energetic boys.  After chatting with the counselors, camp director and scoutmaster, we headed to the camp tent area to pick up the gear.  

The camp area was a quarter mile further up the gravel road.  There was room for plenty of tents, and there were probably 30 or more tents set up that second week.  We got to see the other building at this camp:  the very nice 4-stall outhouse.

The only problem with the outhouse is there were no skylights nor electricity so they were pitch black inside!

Near the outhouses we saw the trail that leads to Blair Lake, where the kids paddleboarded, kayaked, swam and did trail work.  Apparently it is a warm lake, which Denver thought was so neat because he hasn't been able to swim in lakes in Alaska because they're so cold.  He said he only had to come out once in 2 weeks because his feet were frozen, but otherwise he was in the water for up to an hour at a time.  There were beaver in the lake, which was the main wildlife they saw in their 2 weeks there.

As we headed back up the road to the Parks Highway the boys pointed out flagpoles they'd put up (birch trees planted in the ground), the archery range (some brush was cut), a trail (I couldn't see it), and the shooting range (rock-free with a more sophisticated flagpole that had a rope to raise a flag).  It all seemed one step away from Leave No Trace, which totally cracked my aunt and I up.  "Rough" and "primitive" are two words that came to mind.  

Despite that they had great experiences white-water kayaking, pistol shooting, paddleboarding and more.  They said the work week was as good as or more fun than the camp week despite the work being very physically demanding.  They were up at 6 am each day and bedtime was at 10 pm though apparently it ended up being later than that.  Only a few black bear were seen both weeks (they were smart enough to stay away!), though the 2+ people together at all times rule was enforced and the counselors were trained in the use of bear spray.  Both boys want to go back next year, for sure.

Denver's duct tape bowl

One entertaining sidelight:  Denver didn't realize he needed his mess kid (bowl, spoon, cup) so the first day of the camp (not the workweek) someone said to bring your mess kit to breakfast.  Denver didn't have one so he ran back to his tent and grabbed his trusty duct tape and made himself a bowl which he ate out of all week (luckily he won a spork from his award-winning dessert in the Dutch oven cookoff).  He also made himself a cup, but when he put hot liquid in it the cup started leaking so he had to make another one.  His bowl was ingenious though, and lots of other boys came up and checked it out.  It was collapseable and lightweight, and he just rinsed it out after each meal (scrubbed after the meal of spaghetti).

So that's the new Denali Boy Scout camp and some adventures at it this year!  And yes, there is an amazing view of Denali from parts of it, which they were able to see the first hot, sunny week but didn't see at all the rainy, foggy second week.

Kachemak Bay Morning

The sun came out for the first day in a week and it was a quiet, calm morning so I wanted to capture some fireweed and the mountains.  With a lot more time and equipment I could get better photos, but I specialize in whip-out-my-iphone-and-get-the-picture-fast.  Many of the pictures in my blog are taken while walking or, in the case of the other day, from the back of a 4-wheeler.  Here s today's picture I wanted to share:

Grewingk Glacier and the Kenai Mountains with fireweed and cloud-covered Kachemak Bay in foreground

Gardening Update

I know I said I would give gardening updates this summer, but my gardening is a sideshow to my traveling and adventuring so I don't pay my garden much attention besides talk to it as I walk by, giving it words of encouragement to keep growing, growing, growing!  Yesterday's weeding had me twitching and going nuts slapping at what appeared to be nothing but were in fact no-see-ums.  I saw nary a mosquito but my forehead was a mass of red welts by time I was done.  I didn't realize no-see-ums could be so nasty!

I didn't realize the beans were climbers and they've gone nuts, as have the cucumber plants further down!

Tomatoes, peppers and zucchini in the greenhouse.  Yum!

The  greenhouse has produced way more than ever before in my 3 years on the bench in Homer.  The hot weather (70's, even 80! degrees) has been awesome for everything:  peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and green beans.  The zucchini could probably go outside (I've done both), but the rest of the things are strictly greenhouse plants in this area.  I picked my first cucumbers and zucchini in early July, tomatoes a week or so later and just started picking beans and peppers in the past week.  What didn't grow in the greenhouse that normally does well was my lettuce, which is very disappointing as I love my salads and hate buying lettuce.  I've replanted it like 5 times and it doesn't even come up so I think my seed is old and I need to start over with fresh seed next year!

Outside the potatoes actually blossomed this year, which is a first.  Normally they are just beginning to blossom when we harvest in late September.  My onions and carrots are happy, growing well.  The spinach bolted early and was small, I harvested, planted again, harvested that and just did my third planting.  The kale is coming along--not great but good enough.  I'll be harvesting that next week as it looks like it won't be growing more.  I pulled out some egg-sized potatoes yesterday for tonight's dinner, so we're back into potato season again and the onions can start coming out though I may hold off to see how big they'll grow.

My second (and final) weeding of the garden is completed for the season! 
I got bitten up by no-see-ums yesterday while completing the weeding.

I will miss not having cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli, but that was the price I paid for cavorting around for 2 months.  I am a lazy gardener at heart, only weeding my garden twice all season, watering if it is dry deeper than an inch, and not fertilizing too much.  If I were around more I would do that.  Actually, that is my plan for the next couple weeks:  visit the fish dumpsters on the spit and get fish flesh and carcasses to sidedress (bury next to plants) in the garden and make fish gurry (soak carcass in water for a few days then use as fertilizer).  A friend just told me about sidedressing this week.  And then I need to visit my friend that has chickens and get some poop!  That stuff's the best! 

From here on out the potatoes, onions and carrots are going to go nuts and grow, and I just keep on encouraging them, looking forward to bountiful harvests!

Rainbow Over Kachemak Bay

A rainbow over the mud flats at the base of the spit.

A rainbow hung over Kachemak Bay yesterday as we discovered while out walking on the spit.  Four hours later when I went out to weed my garden it was still there!  Lots of rain across the bay, and just enough sunshine to illuminate a rainbow.  That was the murmur around town (Did you see that rainbow?).  I don't recall those clouds being so dark and dramatic looking as they appear here!

Sea Lion on Mariner Beach

As we were walking north of Mariner Park yesterday along the beach towards the breakwall, we saw what looked like an unusually shaped rock that we didn't recall being there before.  As someone's dog ran towards the rock, it began to move and we saw it was a sea lion.  It dragged itself towards the water, and as the dog ran off and we walked closer, it stopped every few feet and looked over its shoulder at us.  Within a few minutes it was in the water, swimming slowly away from shore.  Because it looked injured (and because it was on the beach in the first place) we called the Marine Mammal Stranding Hotline (1-888-774-7325) and reported it, then emailed them our video.  They said that it was a good sign that it was able to get itself into the water and they might just put a lookout notice out.  If a marine mammal can't get into the water they send someone to check on it, warning people to keep their distance from stranded animals.

(You may want to turn down your volume before clicking on the video as the wind noise is a bit loud.)

While we've seen a sea lion on land before (over at Right Beach a couple years ago one pulled itself out of the water and up the beach to check out our campfire), we've never happened upon one while walking, with the animal just sitting there.  That was a new experience for us.  We were very happy that the owner of the dog called it off, and that the dog did not harass the seal, and that it was able to get itself back in the water.

4-wheeling: The Switchbacks, Beach and Head of the Bay

Some friends just bought a 4-wheeler and wanted an introduction to 4-wheeling in the area so yesterday we took them out to Voznesenka, down the switchbacks at the end of East End Road, along the beach and then the other direction to the head of Kachemak Bay to the Fox River.  I've blogged about this before but have not gotten as many pictures so this one will be more of a photo entry.

The sandstone cliffs are an interesting feature along the beach heading towards Homer from the base of the switchbacks.

The cliffs, with the coal and other layers clearly delineated

There is a cute little waterfall around behind the cliff just past where you cross a small stream

View of Kachemak Bay, looking towards Homer, from the waterfalls

Heading back towards the switchbacks the cliff rises like a monolith

The other direction, past the Old Believer village of Kachemak Selo towards the head of the bay, there was a 4-wheeler-sized cattle guard

Cattle wandered the mud flats towards the head of the bay.  The dirt section is the 4-wheeler highway to the head of the bay.

A grassy section along the Fox River

Skyline-Bear Mountain-Hideout Trail Updates 2013

While my husband was at beginning-of-the-year administrator meetings this week in Soldotna, my daughter, a friend of hers and I decided to take a day to go hiking.  Skyline is on our list to hike every year, so even though my quads were still sore from climbing Bird Ridge days before, I agreed to give it a shot.  Our plans were foiled from a direction we didn't expect.

As we walked up to the Skyline trailhead information board, we noticed a "Brown bear in area" sign posted, dated June 6th.  "Uh, oh," I said, "time to get out the bear bell."  I dug in the backpack and velcroed the bear bell onto my pack while my daughter snorted her derision.  We'd never seen a bear on this trail, nor even bear scat in all the times we'd hiked it.  Twenty or thirty minutes later as I was climbing along, I heard the girls chattering excitedly and heading towards me.  My first thought:  bear!  What else could get them to turn around and practically run down the trail, far from the summit? 

Apparently Aurora, who was in the lead, thought the bear was a dog at first.  The black bear was heading down the trail and she was heading up and they were about 10 feet away before they noticed each other.  The bear immediately melted off into the brush and Aurora and her friend immediately got out of there as fast as possible.  When I asked if they got a picture they laughed and said, "Uh, we weren't really thinking about anything except, 'Bear.  Get out of here!'" so my apologies to my readers for no picture!

The bear was small enough the girls figured it probably had a momma nearby, so rather than just keep going (which is my natural inclination), we opted to head down and find another trail to hike.  Too bad because the Skyline was in better shape than I've ever seen it, with so little rain this summer.

View of Skilak Lake from Bear Mountain trail.

Ironically, the next hike we chose to do was Bear Mountain, off Skilak Lake Road.  This is an easy hike--.8 miles one way, 400 foot climb (well, certain easy compared to Skyline's 2000 foot climb in 1 mile!).  It was mostly in the shade, the trail doesn't get grown over, the bugs weren't bad, and the view is nice, topping out at 1300 feet or so.  Twenty-five minutes got us to the top, a 10 minute run got us back down, and we were a little unsatisfied so decided to find another hike.

Another view from the top of Bear Mountain, looking towards the Upper Skilak Lake Campground

The Hideout Trail, only about 1 1/2 miles off of the Cooper Landing end of the Skilak Lake Road, was our next choice.  It is a .75 mile hike, though the climb was about 865 feet (somewhere around 800; I'm recalling it from the sign).  I was impressed:  this trail has been weedwhacked a couple feet on each side, so what would have been overgrown with pushki and grass was a pleasant trail, hard-packed and in great shape.  Having it trimmed makes all the difference between a pleasant hike or a bit of an annoying hike.  On top of that, there was a breeze keeping all the bugs away, and the sun had gone behind the clouds so it was cooler. 

This trail is not in the shade so it would have been hot had the sun been out.  What this trail offers, though, that Bear Mountain does not, is the feel of being in a mountain meadow.  There were fields of fireweed (of course!) and views of Skilak Lake and the surrounding area much of the way up so those huffing and puffing breaks can be enjoyable scanning the Kenai River, Skilak Lake, nearby peaks and weather, not that I got many breaks at my daughter's focused pace.

Once we got to the top we were a bit sweaty and had to pull out jackets to stay comfortable.  There's a nice rock to lounge on and enjoy the sights.  After a little snack we jogged down this trail as well, which is easy enough to do with few loose gravel or rocky spots.

View from partway up Hideout Trail

So between the three hikes we hiked about 3 1/2 miles and climbed about 1800 feet--more distance and less elevation than Skyline so it wasn't as difficult.  I hatched an idea to have an annual event called "The Great Skilak Challenge" to hike all the trails in the Skilak Lake Area in a day (seemed like we were working towards that!).  I think that would be fun, and it would be a challenge!  It was a fun few hours and we got to check out 3 different trails!  It was a good day to be in the woods.

View from the top of the Hideout Trail.  The ribbon of river is the Kenai before it empties into Skilak Lake.