Kodiak

July 18
Sunday we got up and went to Kodiak Baptist Church at 11:00 am. After that we were introduced to several people that my parents had been friends with over the years. Then we went to Larson Bay looking for bears. It was a thirty-mile ride on rough roads. No bears, but we got to see some beautiful mountains and coastline. {pic mountains & coast}


July 19
Monday started with Chapel at 8:00 am. Our alarm didn’t go off until 7:00 am so we were cutting it a little close. Chapel was nice. They read from the bible and prayed for friends, family and the work at hand. {pic @ chapel} After Chapel ended, my daughters and mom helped at preschool and went to a puppet show. My wife is studying for her radiology physics board exam. It's kind of a like a working vacation for her. My dad and I helped get the work parties started and ran the sawmill. One of the projects was to finish siding a house. {pic work party at house} They needed some trim boards to go around the windows. So my dad used the sawmill to cut the 1.5 x 2 inch boards needed to finish trimming out the windows. {pic sawmill} I spent most of the morning cutting scrap wood strips from the sawmill into firewood. We stopped for lunch at 12:00. After lunch dad and I went to find my daughters, mom and wife down a long the beach below the mission. They were all having a blast exploring the tide pools. They found sea glass, cool rocks and hermit crabs. Once we were done looking around at the beach we headed to the marina for a boat ride. {pic marina} The first stop was to see the sea lions. Two of them were posing on the dock and one was swimming around. They were huge and appeared to be a little scarred up from run ins with boat props. {pic seals} Once we had all stared at each other enough, we headed over to Woody Island. {pic boat ride} This place was beautiful.

The mission has a camp on the island that is also used for bible camps. The best part of the island is the woods. {pic woody island tree} The trees and ground are covered in a thick, 6 inch carpet of moss. The tall spruce trees and moss make the wood almost seem like an enchanted forest from a children’s fairy tale. {pic moss} I could have spent all day shooting pictures. After a tour of the camp we hiked up into the woods to an outdoor chapel. {pic chapel} It was some of the prettiest landscape I have seen on my trip. My brother was lucky enough to have spent a full week on this island in one of the cabins. {pic woody island cabin} We relaxed and visited for an hour at the chapel and then headed back to the boat. The fog was rolling in and we didn’t want to be caught out in the water in that. {pic woody island dock} So once we got to the main land, docked the boat, and went to get some fish and chips for supper. During our meal it started raining and has continued the rest of the day. It is now 10:30 and time to call it a night.