Auke Bay and fog in the valley

We've had mostly sunny and cold weather this past week - and stong winds (70 mph gusts) downtown on Thanksgiving.  We took Seca for her usual walk down to the marina and took a couple of pictures.  Look at the top picture and you can see the fog over the Mendenhall Valley - the glacier often creates it's own weather.

Here we're looking across Auke Bay towards what I think is the mountains on the north end of Admiralty Island (however, I could be wrong and it could be the mountains on Douglas Island - I'll have to investigate and get it straight!). 

Douglas Island is where the local ski hill is located.  Steve and I just bought new ski boots and I got a helmet.  We're excited for the season to open - word on the street it that it should be open around December 1st!

Seafood

We've been very fortunate in that many friends and neighbors have given us wild caught seafood.  Our neighbor Darren works as a commercial fisherman and has been incredibly generous - whole salmon fillets, huge chunks of halibut, smoked sablefish...amazing.  We'd also gotten smoked salmon and more smoked sablefish from other close friends, many of whom catch and smoke it themselves.  It's very expensive for an out of state fishing permit up here - $145 for an annual permit (per person) compared to $24 for an annual permit once you become a resident.  Here's the kicker though - you need to live in AK for 12 consecutive months to be classified as a resident.  Because of this, we don't qualify as residents and don't yet have fishing licenses.  So it's great that others have been willing to share with us!

This was what I made for dinner the other night - wasabi salmon, salmon compliments of our neighbor Darren.

Irv oven

 

I'm getting better and better at using the small oven in Irv.  Its tricky for several reasons...1) it's smaller in every dimension compared to a 'normal' oven, so standard cookie sheets won't fit, and you're always cooking closer to the flame than in other ovens. 2) The burner is pretty much in the middle of the oven, making the oven even smaller.  It's propane so the flames fire up underneath a metal tray (fixed in place), above that is one adjustable shelf.  To bake, you put food above the flame on the adjustable shelf.  To broil, you set your item on the floor of the oven, with the open flame above.  3) I think cooking closer to the flame has resulted in darker bottoms on my pizza, which is generally good, but the top isn't done yet when the crust is perfectly done.  I've fixed this by first baking a pizza in the top half of the oven until the bottom of the crust is done, then moving it to the broiler!  It works pretty well but it's a bit more hands on than I'm used to since it has to be watched pretty closely.  In addition there's no light in the oven, so we keep a flashlight handy to check food.

The biggest challenge is the size of the oven, and the small amount of space above the flame.  Our big stock pot barely fits inside, but only without the lid, so I can't braise anything (and I have lots of recipes that call for a stint in the oven).  I worry that trying to bake bread will be hard because it may burn on the bottom before it's baked all the way through.  In addition because it's so small, there's not a lot of room for bread or cakes to rise, especially if you want to bake it on a higher shelf to avoid burning the bottom.  Maybe I'll have to stick to smaller, flatter breads and cupcakes/muffins.  I'm hoping to make some this weekend...

I made what I called "stinky pizza" for dinner last night - a sort of thin-crusted mash-up of miscellaneous ingredients that I wanted to get out of the fridge.  It had a raw garlic,crushed red pepper and olive oil 'sauce' for the crust, wilted fresh spinach, green olives, (very pungent) yellow onions, blue cheese, and mozzarella cheese.  It was really good.

The lake is frozen

First, I added a picture of Irv without the couch to the previous post, go check it out!  Look at all that space!  (And I'm not even being sarcastic)

We had our first dinner party this weekend - two friends came over for homemade Thai food (potstickers and curry) and then we played cards (Euchre!).  It was really, really fun and four people DO fit at the table, pretty comfortably.

Saturday afternoon we headed up to the Glacier - we'd heard the lake had frozen over and wanted to check it out.    We played around on the ice, and on the icebergs trapped in the ice. 

 We didn't get too close to where the glacier meets the ice but want to go back and check it out another time.

As we walked across the ice Steve and I had a conversation that went like this:
Me: Wow, there's a lot of rocks suspended in the ice.  How did they get there?
Steve (as he proceeds to run across the ice, using the suspended rocks for leverage): Seriously? (gives me his "your asking a dumb question look").
Me: Yeah, how did they get there?  They're not from the lake bed.
Steve: Duh...People throw them onto the ice.  Mostly boys..it makes a cool sound.  
We proceeded to pick up lots of rocks and throw them onto the ice to make cool sounds.  :)

 It's so humid here that when the temperatures fall we get freezing fog.  Pretty!

Go Vote.

Everyone please take time to vote today.  Left, Right, or somewhere in between, this is your chance to give your input. Once you're done, go do something nice for someone else.  Be the change you want to see in the world.

Irv and the weekend plans

When we're getting rain the mountains are usually getting snow!  The Mendenhall Glacier, in the distance.

It was rainy on and off all weekend and we spent most of it running errands and getting things done around the Irv.  Last weekend after I got back from Kodiak we took the couch out of the RV and put it into storage.  We decided we needed the open space more than the extra seating/sleeping space.  It's a vast improvement - Seca can turn around now, we have a place for the dehumidifier and heater, and Seca's food dishes now sit on top of a bin to collect the recycling. 

We'd been having moisture issues in the bedroom - the cold air from under the RV and our heat from sleeping on the mattress was condensing under the mattress, which would lead to nasty mold if we didn't do something.  So, this weekend we bought some lumber and Steve build an elevated frame to allow for airflow around the mattress, similar to what a box spring and frame does for a normal bed.  It only raises the bed about 3 inches total, so it's still at an ok height.  It think it's going to work very well.

In other exciting news - Steve got a job!  He starts tomorrow at Napa Auto Parts.  Now that he has a job we're hoping to join a gym again (an expense we couldn't afford without him working), and there's only two in town.  Both are close to his work, so we'll have to visit them and pick one.  It'll be nice to get back into a gym!

Kodiak, AK

I was in Kodiak all last week for a fisheries conference.  It was a great place for a fisheries conference since it’s definitely a town where there are two primary types of employment – fisheries (fishing, processing) and the Coast Guard.  I was fortunate enough to get to see both up close.  I’ll post about the fish processing tour and the Coast Guard hangar tour separately (keep reading, they should be below).  I’ll also post a lot more of my photos from the week on my flickr site (http://www.flickr.com/photos/steadyrain/).

First, some details on Kodiak, in case you’re curious.  It’s stunningly beautiful (I’m starting to sound like a broken record though, seems like everywhere in this state could be called the same!).  The city of Kodiak is small by lower-48 standards but big for AK, with about 6000 people.  It’s about a 1 hour flight from Anchorage, either by Era Airlines or Alaska Airlines.  I was on Era for the flight there, it was a twin prop DASH-8 that seats about 40 or so.  The Alaska Airlines flights use a larger plane, often with half the cabin divided off for cargo and the back half with seats for passengers.  I’ve heard lots of tales of very rough flights, sounds like the winds can get pretty high and toss the planes around.   In a lot of the smaller airports around AK the planes taxi down the runway to the end and then whip a shitty and take off (pretty sure the pilots have another name for the manoeuver, but I call a spade a spade).  I managed to take this picture as we turned for the take off.  You’d hate the botch the take-off on a runway like this, not a lot of room for error.

One of the tour options was a visit to the windmills on Pillar Mountain.  I didn’t go on that tour, but I heard from those who did some interesting tidbits.  The city is currently largely powered by diesel, which is expensive and obviously has to be shipped in.  The windmills are relatively new and becoming very popular with the locals.  I don’t remember how much power is currently generated with them (20% is sticking in my head), but the city (maybe even the whole island?) hopes to be 98-99% wind powered by 2020.  That’s pretty neat-o.

Much like Juneau, there’s not a lot of roads on Kodiak.  Most of the ‘Kodiak’ grizzly bear viewing is far from the city of Kodiak and reached by boat or small plane.  Halibut fishing is also a huge attraction, as it should be since they’re so yummy.   I would absolutely love to live in Kodiak…I liked the vibe of the city and I’d fish every day I could and watch the storms roll in when I couldn’t.