Walking the Dike Trail

This last week we have had glorious weather here in Juneau.  People are walking, jogging, biking everywhere I turn.  With the sun out we have joined the people in enjoying the outdoors.

The Dike Trail is down the street from us and that makes it convenient  to go for walks and run our dog Rosco. That's my son running in the field, not our dog. But you probably figured that out.

 The mountains in the background are on Douglas Island.  When the tide is low you could swear that you could just walk over.  I hear there are some deep mud areas that if you tried you could get your boots swallowed.

Can you believe that this is the mouth to the Gastineau Channel which leads to the ocean.  This tree, which is huge, finally lost hold of it's sandy foundation and toppled over.

Behind the home's (bottom) is the Mendenhall Glacier.  The photograph doesn't give you the feeling of it's immense size.  It is amazing!

This is the view from the beginning of the trail.  One day my son will want to walk further down and we can share the rest of the trail.  But for now he likes to stop here and run in the sand and play on the fallen tree.

Mini Snow Pile Sledding

Yesterday the sun peeked through the typical Juneau haze which made for a great day to play outside.  After Oliver played on his snow pile we took our friend, Little J (16 months) out on his adorable little sled.  It was chilly and so nice to get out in the sun.  This snow pile has been created by shoveling the driveway.  It's a pretty good size pile don't you think!  Talk about a good workout ( :

I Shot an AR 15!

I am not what you might consider a gun person or for that matter an outdoorsy person either.  But where I live it seems like everyone has a gun.  At least the people I know.  And it is highly recommended to have one.

Yesterday, me and my two older sons went with some friends to the outdoor gun range in 35 degree weather to experience the different weapons.  You know, get a feel for them.  I mention the temperature because my finger's were extremely stiff from the cold and it was a little embarrassing when using the rifle. 

Here are the guns I tried out: I started out with the hand guns.  I liken them to Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear because of there size.  I believe it was the Mama Bear size I liked best which was a Glock 22 I think.  The weight was mid range, it was easy to fire and I hit the target.  I kind of hit the target.

Your probably wondering "why would you want a gun?".  For me personally I want to have a gun so that I can go on a hike with out worrying to much about bears.  And I want to learn to be self sufficient.  Meaning that I want to go hunting.  I have many friends who hunt and use the meat all year.  Same with those fisherman out here in Alaska.  That is also something I want to do, fish.

The fun gun that I don't foresee ever needing to use is the automatic riffle.  It was a breeze.  Heavy but not to heavy that I couldn't hold it easily.  Easy to shoot.  I was a little concerned that the bullets would just fly all over the place.  Good news.  They don't. I enjoyed shooting that gun.

The one gun that I really wanted to try was the revolver but we had the wrong bullets.  That is the one I think  I would buy first.  My friend said that I could use it to protect myself and hunt small game.  Good for hikes and if your small plane crash's you have a good survival tool.

Feel free to comment about the weapons.  Which is your favorite for bear hunting?

Dedicated Boy Scouts

Once upon a time there was a dedicated Boy Scout Troop who had some young members that needed to move up in rank.  The soon to be Eagle Scouts decided that they would join these Boy Scouts and work side by side to encourage the younger members of Troop 247.

On this rainy gray July day in Juneau they all met at Rotary Park to run the mile and complete other various physical challenges.

Sit-ups on cold wet asphalt

Running the mile

How many push-ups?

I can't say admire these young men but I sure am proud of them.  How much will they push themselves in the next couple of weeks?  I just hope it's not raining : \

Fun at the Beach!

Juneau,Alaska
Spring  at Auke Village 

This weekend we and a couple families from our homeschool program enjoyed low tide at Auke Village or lovingly know as Auke Rec.


Days with low tides are enjoyed by both kids and parents.  Everyone picks up a bucket, rubber boots, and a shovel. It's great when the kids get there.  they come running down the path with buckets all excited about the morning.  We get a fire started, put the goodies on the picnic table and get dragged down to the water for the hunt.


I just noticed how well my little boy has adjusted to the chilly weather.  He is wearing a t-shirt and it must have been in the 50's with a drizzle.  I wore a jacket.


The beach was covered with muscles and seaweed.  Every time I would take a step I felt like I was destroying a muscles life.  It was unavoidable.

Muscles on the beach.

There were so many interesting creatures to see both on the beach and in the waters.  There were porpoises fishing for something probably a school of fish (duh).  Did you know that hermit crabs are very alien looking?  I had no idea that the end that is in the shell was the way it was.  I'm not even sure how to describe it.  

The "Alien" hermit crab without his shell

See how it resembles a snail shell but it's soft and wormy looking.  Weird.  

It was a great beach day, great company, great fire, and those pesky crows.  That's another posting.
When was the last time you were at the beach?

Metal Festival (is that what they call music?)

Last night was fantastic!  Our young family friend is a dynamic man.  I first met him when he was stage managing Mikado. I remember him making an impression on me because he here was a high school student working with and managing an adult production.

Now here he is producing, probably Juneau's first, Metal Festival. And it rocked!  That says alot for someone who has never, even when I was young(er), liked metal.  There had to have been from 50 to 70 young people there along with several overseeing parents. 

Hopefully in the next few days I'll have photos to post because my son was the videoographer.  We will surly miss our friend when he heads out to my home, California, to go to Camp Pendleton for Marine boot camp.  Serving our country.

Watch out California because here he comes!

Finding a Family Pet in Juneau Alaska

What I thought would be an easy trip to the humane society, became a huge shopping project.  See, I am from a large community, Orange County California, and getting a dog was easy.  The newspaper was full of them, the humane society was full of them. You could even grab a puppy at the front of your local grocery store.  Not so in Juneau Alaska.

As of right now in our local paper there is one dog for sale.  In the Orange County Register there are pages of adorable puppies for sale.   At the Gastineau Humane Society there are two dogs up for adoption and one in the city of Haines.  Which by the way, you can't drive to.  You take the ferry. That's another story.

Your probably wondering why we didn't adopt.  The dogs at the shelter were older and not known for being kid friendly.  We did see one that we adored but he was on his last leg.  Having a pet die wasn't something we wanted the kids to experience yet.  We checked the web site diligently but we couldn't find a dog that would fit our family.  Did I forget to mention we have two cats.  That also played a major part in finding a family dog.

"What did we do?" your wondering.  We did like everyone else in this day of technology.  We shopped on the internet.  Not only was the internet a great way to research the right dog for our family but it made it easy to locate the family dog that we thought would fit our family.  Which of course was in the lower 48, not a ferry ride.

Because I was not the one to locate our new family addition I had to ask how he found our puppy.  He was able to answer me in about 3 seconds.  Here's the poop: He was researching Boxer's and as he scrolled down the page there were ads for dog breeders and he clicked on the ad.  There you go.  How easy was that.

The hard part or should I say, the most expensive part was getting our new puppy here to Juneau, Alaska.  Chance would have it that the breeder had already flown out some puppies to Alaska so she new exactly how to get him here.  Do you want to know how much? It was $450 just for his flight out here. This was a far cry from the $100 or so dollars I was planning to spend.

I'll have to say something that was simple down south was a bit trickier here.  Was it worth it? Absolutely!