Kodiak- July 20

This morning I remembered that there are some that feel this blog needs to be more facts and fewer adjectives. {pic evan}
So along that line - it's foggy this morning, temperature is 53 degrees, no wind and the humidity is about 80 percent.

I hope this has satisfied those of you who enjoy watching the weather channel. Just so you know, almost every summer day in Kodiak is like this. Oh yeah, most days its raining, sorry. So now that I have informed you about the Kodiak weather patterns, life is complete.

Today, we got up and going a little earlier. My daughters have the same zeal for the morning that I do. None! After waking them up, we are headed to morning chapel. My wife is off to the study for physics boards again, {pic becky studying} My daughters are helping with preschool and I will be waiting for instructions on todays project: maybe sawing lumber, or maybe, something else.

Chapel was the first order of the day. Not being a real morning person as I have mentioned several times now, I find myself losing track of time and hoping that God doesn’t mind my church time stupor. I do enjoy the religious discussion, but the New Testament topics are a little adult focused. This can lead to many questions about word definitions from my daughters like: deceit, whores and prostitution. Well I guess that least we have open communication in our home and a good command of the English language. Lets all pray for the wisdom on when to use it.

After Chapel my daughters went with my mom, my wife went off to study, and dad and I tried to keep all the work parties busy. We spent some time in the Kodiak harbor helping a guy troubleshoot electrical problems on one of the mission’s small boats. I wandered around and shot a few photos of the boats in the harbor. {pic boats} After that we ran the sawmill and helped a couple of guy siding a new building on the mission property. The two guys on this project were from New York State. {pic work party} I visited with them a little while and finish getting tools and lumber ready for the rest of the days work. What a couple of great guys, super friendly and outgoing. Most construction projects I have been around are 90% debate over how to do it and 10 % work, which only 25% of the crew do. You could tell that they really enjoyed working and this trip to the mission was the prefect vacation for them. I truly hope when I am retired, I am as alive as these two. One of these guys was in his middle seventies and was able to keep up with any worker on the property, including me.

The day pass quickly and soon it was lunchtime. Meals are served in a communal style that is a real blast. {pic meals} The food is soup and sandwiches usually, and the discussion is very lively. After lunch we all took off and explored Chineack on the east side of the island. It was a beautiful ocean side area of Kodiak Island that was used by the military during WWII for observation. {pic coast line} Many of the cement pillboxes and storage areas are still there. {pic pill box} The forty-mile drive to this part of the island took over 2 hours. Once out of the truck we hiked a trail out to the beach. The day was cool but clear. {pic beach} We all explored the tide pools and then moved on to the peak of the trail to one of the bunker used as a military observatory. Everyone went back to the trail but I decided to walk the beach to take a few ocean / landscape photos. {pic beach}

I really do enjoy my time behind the camera. I used my favorite wide-angle lens and tripod for some HDR photos. They are time consuming but its always feels like Christmas when I process them. The new CS5 Photoshop does a pretty good job of combining the 3 or more bracketed photos into a single photo. I know, enough blathering about nerd stuff.

After this hike to the bunkers we headed to Fossil Beach. On the way we drove past a large herd of buffalo. The girls shot a few photos of these huge furry beasts. {pic buffalo} I was glad they weren’t in the road. Fossil Beach was another beautiful beach area, but very windy. The bank along the beach is caving off and the fossil shells are exposed. {pic fossil beach} The girls dug out so shells while I shot photos. We were all getting tired, so after about 45 minutes we were back on the road. We were all exhausted from the day of exploring.