South Fork Eagle River Hike up to Rendezvous Ridge

It was another beautiful weekend in Anchorage - at least some of it!  A rainy Saturday at the start, but cleared in afternoon, and we were running around anyway - another house project not quite finished when we moved in - the extra full bath, which needs a bathtub replacement, new flooring, tiling, etc.  Brian to the rescue!  Picked out our bathtub and fixtures, and now all that he had to do is get it ready and put it all together!  Just kidding Brian - lots of work there for him, but he always comes through with such a nice job -- and we've decided to get a gas insert for our old fireplace, so that will come next - or at the same time!  So nice having a husband who's a contractor!

Saturday night was a "house concert" that we always appreciate being invited to at the home of Tom Begich and Sarah Sledge -- always nice to have good music and great company with about 40 other people packed in to hear the people that Tom invites up - usually folk singers, broadly defined, and always impressive and enjoyable!  Then, since we hadn't been outside other than to run errands, we went for a walk downtown and ended at Crush, one of our favorite places, usually for a glass of wine, this time for a wonderful warm apple cake and great coffee!  A beautiful night for a walk.

Sunday morning is almost always a planning time for "Where should we hike today?"

So first I have to share my favorite picture from our hike today!

 After a great omelet, if I do say so myself, with onion, mushroom, celery and swiss chard with feta cheese (I should have taken a picture!), we took off for the South Fork Eagle River trail.  I've always wanted to do the ridge trail from Rendezvous Peak out of the Arctic Valley, and it seemed from the guide book that it was a 10 mile trail necessitating dropping a car off at one location and driving to the end.  We had never gotten quite organized for it, and I was intimidated by wondering if we were in shape for it.  We discovered that you could access the ridge trail from several places, so today, we started from the South Fork Eagle River trail.

Almost 2 miles from the trailhead, a narrow path starts up with signage for the Rendezvous Ridge trail.  It is a gradual climb up that intensifies considerably along the way, initially through some pretty tall grass on both sides.  We know there are berries still out for picking, so Brian stopped and got out his whistle and confirmed the bear spray was "at the ready!"  If I was a bear, I'd hang out here - it's beautiful!

We went from sunny and fairly warm hiking - it was about 59 degrees and very sunny - to extremely windy and cold closer to the top - this was a notch that we came to before having to continue on, where we met a photographer who had been in Brian's class when he took black and white photography a year or so ago.  The hiking got much steeper towards the top, necessitating much stopping and recovering of breath by me!

Once at the top, you can continue along the ridge for several miles!  The reward!  The views are incredible, and we liked doing the hike in this direction.

There were SO many cars in the parking lot, and we saw hardly anyone on the hike.  We met two guys and their dog on the last peak before we started down, and this picture is looking south over the ridge that we had hiked.  There was definitely weather moving in, and we weren't sure if we were going to get rained or snowed upon at the higher elevation before we started down!

The hike down, though highly anticipated, is almost as difficult as the hike up - easier on the heart & lungs, as Brian said, but murder on the thighs and hip flexors from bracing and uneven descent.  We stopped at one point for a rest, as we were pushing across the ridge, unsure of how quickly the grey-black clouds were moving in.  As you're returning, the town of Eagle River is spread out for viewing along the valley - so pretty!

Ah. . . you can see why we love living in Alaska!!

An Anniversary Hike!

It's been a beautiful weekend in Anchorage!  Today was definitely a hiking day, and we went back to Baldy Mountain in Eagle River, where we did a partial hike in late winter/early spring, but no summit.  Today we took the same longer, more gradual route up, with beautiful views of Cook Inlet and Denali way off in the distance!

It was so much nicer hiking up than with spikes in early March and slogging through snowfields.  That was a beautiful sunny day too though, and we've enjoyed this hike.  Today we went all of the way up to the ridge that runs over to Baldy - or you can take a left turn to Blacktail Rocks, which we'll do the next time.

There was a beautiful view looking down through a valley, which exposes another ridge hike that I've wanted to do ever since I moved here - it is 10 miles and a hike for two cars, leaving one at the beginning and one at the end - it may have to wait til next year while we get in better shape again.  This is an "easy" hike in the guidebook, and it seems like enough for an anniversary Sunday!

The high point of Baldy is 3038 feet with an elevation gain of 1300 ft.  Most people go up the face of it and make the loop down with the more gradual descent, but we did it in reverse.  I think in the future we'll do both with the more gradual elevation, as it has better views!  Next time, Blacktail Rocks,, elevation 4446 ft., named after "the dark lichen eking out an existence on the mountain's southern cliffs"  (50 Hikes in Alaska Chugach State Park).  Looking forward to it - maybe next weekend?

Baldy is described in the same guidebook as a "bare, rounded knob" above Eagle River.  It looked like "take your daughter to hike day" today with several little girls climbing with their parents.  We took a short rest stop on top of the "knob" before starting down the steep way - a little muddy and slick and probably won't go that way again.

And honest, I did take a picture of Brian, which apparently didn't turn out, but he had the camera in HIS hand today!  Now for a halibut dinner and a nice glass of wine!  

Halibut Fishing in Ninilchik - The Freezer is Loaded!

Brian has been salmon fishing for silvers since he's been back in Alaska and came home with 4 silvers - and this weekend we went halibut fishing on a charter that I had bought a groupon for last year and we never got to use - they had agreed to hold it over to this year, and we went out on the last weekend for the season.  It was a beautiful day, though, and we couldn't have asked for anything nicer.  All 6 of us out on the charter fished our limit - we could only take 1 over 29 " and one under for a total of 2 fish each.  We came home with 4 total, 27 pounds of filets, nicely stacked in the freezer now - that is a LOT of halibut, which is my very favorite thing to eat!  Ninilchik is about 3 1/2 hours away and just about to Homer.

Don't know if you can see from the picture, but they launch off the beach by having a big tractor push the boat off a trailer.  It's an easy day on a charter in most ways, because they have so much of the work done for you -- we were out for 5 hours in the sun and on the water, though, and just reeling in and jigging the line is work enough for me!  What a gorgeous view though, and fun to come back with so much.

Today, the last day of Labor Day weekend, we restained our deck, took a long bike ride on the Coastal Trail and came back to a halibut dinner - Lance came over and had dinner with us, our former landlord - and our first fire in the fireplace!

Tomorrow it's back to work!

New House Pictures and Colleen & Ivana's Visit in June!

After much work and quick work, we moved in just in time for Colleen's visit - we were only living here for about 2 days before they came and Brian especially did an unbelievable amount of work taking out carpeting, putting in laminate floors, new appliances, tile backsplash, and we both painted.

We've been very happy here (though we haven't been here much), and we had a great visit with Colleen and Ivana.  We did a hike up Rendevous Peak, on a glorious day, did a float trip down the upper Kenai, and spent a night on Prince William Sound in Surprise Cove - also did a little kayaking.

Long Time No Blog!!

It's been a long, dry spell here as we've been traveling to the East Coast to visit -- 3 weeks of visiting, one week of sailing, then 5 days in Toronto at a conference before returning to Anchorage!  I got to see two sisters who I don't see very often, and then I found out that it had been 17 years since all 6 of us as brothers and sisters had been together in the same place at the same time - that was worth going home for, for sure!  I have to come back and post pictures when someone sends me one, as I only had my phone and didn't get any of us together.

One of the things that we like the best is seeing old friends . . . and there are SO MANY people we want to see, we never get to see them all.  We spent a nice moonlit night, though, with John Cappelli and his friend Dawn and Jim Hayes . . . the 3 guys have a lot of history together, and we both enjoy spending time with them when we're "home!"

Boilermaker Sunday was right after we got to Utica, and we got together with Brian's family for a picnic at the Sauquoit Town Park - something of a tradition now!

Sailing was so nice once we got there, as usual, and we had great weather for it.  We sail out of Henderson Harbor now on Lake Ontario on Petrel, a 1978 32' Allied Seawind, originally made in Catskill, NY!  A week on a boat is like being away, away for a month - even with some engine trouble that changed some of our plans!  The boat gets picked up and set in the water in a pretty interesting process.

The next morning we set out to sail in Henderson Bay, intending to return to the dock, but the winds were blowing just right, and we sailed to Cape Vincent, about a 5 hour sail.  We ended up spending more time there than we had intended because of inclement weather and then a little engine trouble when we were ready to leave.   It was all worth it for sailing!

Taking a Break-Halibut Fishing & Climbing Flattop!

Brian went fishing for a few days, and I, left to my own devices, decided it's been TOO LONG since I've been hiking.  I'm a little bear afraid, so I drove up to Flattop after all of my "chores" were done today, nearly 6:00 by the time I started.  I figured, correctly, that I'd have enough company on THIS hike that I wouldn't worry about hiking by myself.

Brian is out on Prince William Sound and caught a 35 inch halibut today - about 19 pounds, he thought. No pictures yet - have to get him a smart phone!  Here are some pictures from the hike to Flattop though -- a nice summer evening with a shower all of the way down - ended up cool and kind of wet!  Probably close to a hundred people on the hike in various places though - maybe not quite that but a lot!

On the way up - I forgot I had to go "over there" from what looked like it could be a summit! 

From the top - looking further into the mountains! 

From the top - looking out over Cook Inlet and the city of Anchorage!

Okay, tired enough from hiking, fed now and ready to go to bed.  I saw everyone in every imaginable shape, size, age climbing Flattop - it's one of the things that I love about Anchorage - families climbing with small children, people obviously out of shape (even more than me!) taking their time and making their way up the mountain, people with babies in backpacks - and I'm thinking it's way enough for me!  I need to toughen up!  It was fun though, and I look forward to some more hiking as Brian's daughter, Colleen and her partner arrive on Tuesday for 9 days.  One more day of work on Monday, and then I'm pretty much off til August 15th!  Later than usual this year, because we're going east and I'm going to a conference in Toronto on the way back.  

Moving from Downtown -- are we SURE we wanted to do this?

Okay, we finally took the plunge.  We bought a house - well, a townhome.  In Eastridge.  We closed in early June, a little later than we had hoped to, and we've been working, working, working, since mid-May on packing, getting ready to move, and then getting the house ready to move into! between finishing the semester and going to two conferences, one in San Francisco and one in LA, it's been an intense period of time!

Brian has done an incredible job of ripping out carpet, replacing all of the molding, laying down laminate floors throughout the entire house, tiling the kitchen backsplash, and everything else!  The movers came on Tuesday, and we spent our first night here that night.  We had already moved everything but the furniture.  Then a couple of days cleaning the apt. and we're finally officially out of our apt. (which we loved, loved, loved) and in our new place.  We took a final walk from out old house up to Crush and walked around downtown - a little meal at Crush and a glass of wine for yet another celebration- yay, through cleaning the apt.!  Not hard to find little celebrations!  Pictures of the renovation:

Deck, Master Bedroom, Living Room from the stairway, and kitchen with that outstanding backsplash tiled by Brian!  He also opened up that entrance to the kitchen and rewired the outlets, since it originally was just a doorway with a pocket door - so much nicer!  We're still putting up pictures, waiting for the rugs to come in, but the floors he installed are just great!