these are pictures from a weeklong kayak trip in harriman fjord. we camped at a different glacier every night. very beautiful scenery and the weather was awesome. thought i was done for when the entire face of a glacier came down our last day of paddling. the waves created were so large the mountain and glacier weren't visible any longer. above is an amazing waterfall...no photo could do it justice and the sun was hitting it. below are some marmots out enjoying the sun, waiting for us to sleep so they could raid our food...whatever they thought they could find.
not much explaining required for the rest of those pictures. we've had yet another lovely alaskan summer day. took the dogs to kincaid to test out some loops off the jodphur trailhead. i love the butt diminishing hills of kincaid. the pond that had filled in the trail a few weeks ago is gone and so the trail was again walkable. no lakes so the dogs needed a few bottles of water from thier gulpy bottles(those are the best things!) blossom lays down when she gets thirsty. with that thick coat on a day with temps in the 70's she can get pretty hot. 70's is really about as hot as it gets here. this fact is fine with me.
from kincaid i headed to costco to compare thier price on the canon rebel Xsi to that on the ad for best buy. costco is en route to best buy...they price was really the same with costco slightly lower. i went with costco and bought my new camera for my alaskan summer adventures. should be a fun summer.
this weekend we head to homer for some kayaking and yurt camping. in june kelly and i will drive the denali highway, i think she'll bike it and i'll be road crew. we can stop and take some little treks with the dogs too i think. should be cool. then july takes me to kodiak to catch the ferry to dutch harbor and august is another roadtrip to deadhorse via the haul road north. will caravan with whoever i can round up. there are a few that are coming already. figured that way if someone gets a flat there are several of us to help each other out. was out to dinner with a few who want to come so the plans are getting made.
went to martha's viewing this afternoon. the quilt we made for her was laid on her coffin. it took us just a few weeks to put that quilt together, but it gave her such joy to have a quilt with pictures on it from the trail that she had loved so much. she had loops put on one end so she could hang it up and look at it from her bed. i think it was a great idea to put it on the coffin as i think people are generally uncomfortable with a body laid out. it gave a focus point away from her being deceased and instead gave john, her husband, a chance to reflect on her happy days. he was showing everyone the quilt and talking about the trip with pride. sometimes such a seemingly simple thing done for another has an impact that you just don't realize. i just thought it would be nice for her to have a reminder of her strength on her lap when this disease was making her feel so weak. it had the intended impact and then some. john told me a few months ago that they had discussed putting it on her coffin....i was so not ready to hear that at the time,but listened intensely as john needed to be able to talk about everything. i know today was hard for him, but i think it was also so great for him to have so many people come and support him. we have all worked with both of them for years and they are both such wonderful people. it was nice to see some faces from the past.
a few of us went out to dinner afterwords. we are planning trips for the summer and we reminisced about martha. laughter and tears...
along with my birthday this coming week, it is also the aniversary of my mothers passing. she passed 3 days before my birthday 2 years ago. the chilkoot trail trip came soon after her passing. i had called my mom nearly daily so she had been in on the planning and a few years before that my mom had been on a cruise of alaska and had been on the whitepass rail with me. i got emotional the night we'd finished and quietly cried to myself as everyone else slept in the hotel in whitehorse, yt. we had finished the trip and everyone had someone to call and report in to. that would have been my mother for me and i couldn't call her. i'd been on a train that last time i'd ridden i'd ridden it with my mom. just a flood of memories that i couldn't hold back.
it's been a long and emotional day today. i think i will go fill the tub and relax before i sack out for the night.
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