Severance Travels: Kenai, AK 6/10

Good afternoon. This session will cover the period of time from Tuesday, 6/10 thru today, Saturday, 6/14.

Judy likes to take pictures that show the local character of places that we visit.

We drove over to the Kenai River where they will be dip-netting for fish a little later this month. Right now it is very quiet.

Tuesday, we decided it was time to dump our tanks on our trailer. In 2011 we would close up the trailer, unhook the water and electric, and drive over to the nearest gas station that had a dump station. However, we stopped by there earlier and their dump is closed – I guess someone put rocks down it and it is going to be expensive to reopen.

We found out that the high school, which is viewing distance from our school has an RV hookup with a dump and no one was parked there. So we drove the trailer over there to dump and decided to just stay there. So, here we are.

Unfortunately, we found that our antenna would not pick up the only TV channel that we were getting at the middle school!! So, our friends came over and we set up our DISH and tried to point it to the satellites in the southern sky, but couldn’t find them. Normally, this far north, you need a DISH that is at least 3 feet plus in diameter (ours is only 25”). So, I called “THE GUY” (a local DISH provider) and he came over the next day. We put our tripod on a pallet and he used our DISH to try to find the satellites, but couldn’t find them either. He had another appointment so he didn’t have time to setup the 3 ft DISH that he had, but said he could come back tomorrow. After he left, I tried to tweak it, and, lo and behold, I got a signal!! Can’t get all the channels, but we do have the locals out of Anchorage and some others, so all is good!!

It's hard to see, but our DISH is on the left side of the building - that little black thing.

Soccer practice on an artificial grass field.

Thursday evening we had a new experience. There is a couple behind us at the Vo-Tec Center doing the same camper thing that we are doing. But they have been doing it for 18 years. Jack was in the Air Force and was stationed up here at the base in Anchorage for several years where he met several others. Anyway, some of them have settled up here. And, when Jack and Karen are here for the summer, the men get together each Thursday night – one week at the VFW and then the next week at the Legion. So we did that last night, and, there were 6 of us men there. A couple guys brought snacks to go along with the beer that we drank – one brought moose sausages which were very tasty. The ladies had their own evening together at one of the ladies’ house where they had hamburgers and grilled slices of white sweet potatoes with onions. (Did you know that there are ‘white’ sweet potatoes)?

We (Jack and I) were dropped off at the VFW, and, as Karen and Judy were driving, they saw this guy (gal) along the ditch:

Friday we went to the Safeway store because it was “$5 Friday.” They advertise a lot of stuff for $5 – we bought a can of coffee (1 lb, 15 oz) for $5!!

Today, Saturday, we went to the Farmers Market just down the road from the school. We hadn’t gone a mile and saw this moose crossing the road.

While we are on the subject of moose, a couple of facts about them:

Only full grown male (or bull) moose have antlers. They can grow at a rate of one inch per day and are shed on a yearly basis to make foraging in winter easier. Each consecutive year the antlers grow thicker and longer and can grow as large as six feet across and as heavy as 90 lbs.

Despite their large size, moose can run 35 miles per hour and easily swim ten miles.

I guess it’s too early for the garden stuff because it was mostly locals selling jewelry, wood carvings, etc. We did buy a small wood carving that says “I (heart) Alaska, and, put it on our Alaska wall in the trailer.

I have probably said this before, but, driving down this road almost every day gives us a spectacular view of Mt. Redoubt across Cook Inlet.

And, here are a couple more views from a park named for Lief Hanson:

And, Lief himself as a young scout:

Somewhat hard to read, but interesting.

Mt. Redoubt looked so good with the blue sky as a background that we had to go back to the Kenai beach and walk the beach and take more pics of the mountain. The tide was coming back in.