Mostly repetative nature pictures...

I outsmarted the internet to upload pictures...okay, okay, I just shrunk the pictures down to a reasonable size so I could actually upload them.  Here's a bunch of pictures from the last month!

Ugadaga Bay

Bald Eagles (obviously)...Have I mentioned that they're everywhere here?

OTTER!!!

Part of town from a walk I took.

 

My house (It's a bit nicer on the inside than it looks from the outside)

My "charges" when I was house sitting.  Blue is the beagle and Sadie is the lab.  They were great cuddle buddies!

The trail head to Ugadaga bay.

The cabin at the bay

The other half of the cabin...

Ugadaga Bay trail hike

More of Ugadaga Bay trail hike

View from the cabin

Ship wreck, a crab boat that a drunken sailor crashed.

ummm the TIME BANDIT!! (There ya go Dad)

My view from the house I was house-sitting (and the boat that we took out for crab fishing)

My kitchen....

 

My living room...

Morse Cove

Bucket of yummy yummy snow crab

I’ve been trying to make the most of my last few days in Dutch…even if the weather hasn’t been entirely agreeable.  However, I woke up today to a perfectly clear day with no wind and a strangely warm temp for the time of year…about 50 degrees.  Then, I went to work and saw that we had about 5 patients on the schedule for the day…soooo I decided to take the day off (we were told at the beginning of our rotation that we were “fully expected to take a day off when the weather is nice” so we could enjoy the weather here.)

My roommate and I went on quite the hike (for me at least…still out of shape!!) to Ugadaga bay.  Once again, I’m trying to upload pictures while I type, but my guess is I’ll still only get one or two.  Once I get home I’ll add more! 

To get to the trail head of the Ugadaga bay trail, you have to drive up Overland Pass, which we have driven over before.  It’s a road that weaves nicely up the mountains and out into Summer’s Bay, another very pretty little area.  The first part of the hike was pretty easy (it was about 2 ½ miles total to get to Ugadaga bay), and since it was fairly early, there was still a lot of fog in the mountains along the trail.  I felt like I was in the Lord of the Rings there for awhile…which was pretty sweet.  The trail weaved through a lot of the little streams that flow everywhere through the mountains here.  Most of them are pretty small but a few require jumping over (or finding a good spot to walk over the rocks).  On the one big stream we had to cross, I had to take off my boots and walk across.  Nate always jumps them, but in my opinion I’d rather walk across and get cold feet then jump across and slip and soak my whole self.

After about an hour, we finally made it down to the bay.  It was gorgeous!  Since it was such a calm day, the water was completely flat… and the water is soooo clean here.  You can seriously see about 20 feet deep, if not further.  It reminds me of Hermit lake in Colorado only a lot deeper!!  Once we got to the beach, we had about another half a mile to go to get to the “secret spot” a nurse at the clinic had told us about on our way out earlier.  Someone built a little cabin out there in 2006 and has it stocked with a wood stove, some pots and pans, mats to sleep on, flash lights, various other camping things and…drum roll….KAYAKS!  He built it out there simply for people to be able to camp out there, have a little shelter, and to use the kayaks.  Pretty freaking sweet.  And, had we not talked to the nurse on the way out, we would have totally missed out on it.  Since it was such a nice calm day I was thrilled to get to take a kayak out on the ocean.  It was by far one of my favorite experiences so far.  It was sooo beautiful, and with the water being so clear, it was a bit of a once in a lifetime experience.  I could have stayed out there kayaking around all day, but unfortunately, we had told the people at the clinic we would be back by four (since it is sooo remote out there and no cell service once you’re out of the main area of town, it’s good to have someone know where you’re going and when you’re going to be back in case something would happen).  I wish we had given ourselves more time, but I’m sure my arms will thank me tomorrow that I didn’t do more kayaking...they are already a little sore.

Now…the hike back was a little bit of hell.  Since we had hiked DOWN the whole way to the bay, we had a LOT of uphill on the way back.  About half way back I was starting to question the whole hike as I struggled up yet another steep hill (even though it was totally, totally, worth it).  If I could go at my pace it’d be a bit easier but I try to keep up with Nate without whining or sounding like I’m dying too much.  We took a break at a beautiful waterfall about halfway back up.  After we made it to our car, we finished driving Overland pass and made our way back home.  My legs are killing me, but it was a great adventure!!

So I remember, things I need to write about yet are crab enchiladas, getting attacked by a crab and our hike to a shipwreck... and pictures once I have internet that actually lets me do things on it!  (Edit: pictures added.  I'm an idiot...all my pictures were HUGE files...once I went and sized a coule down they loaded in about 1/3 of the time...more later!)

 

Little spiral rainbow

The stream I "jumped"

Kayaking!!!

The little cabin from the kayak.

View from the cabin.

Break time at the waterfall/cliff

 
 

Crab Fishing: My version of the Deadliest Catch

I’m a terrible blogger.  Oh well.  J  I tried uploading one yesterday with lots of pictures, but the internet is very, very slow here (just like there isn’t cell phone service unless you go with an Alaskan provider, the internet isn’t top of the line either!).  But, while I type this I’m going to try to upload a few so maybe this will have some…

Our first weekend here Laura, one of the providers at the clinic, and her husband, too Nate (my roommate) and I out to check their crab pots.  The first day we went out was just absolutely gorgeous- this place is truly breathtaking when the weather is nice!  It was cool enough just to be out on a boat.  I’ve been on a boat out in the sea/ocean before, but never on a small fishing boat, so it was a pretty cool experience.  Their boat isn’t large enough to go out of the bay, but it was great none the less.  The boat is very “bare bones” and doesn’t have any seats- just the motor, a crank for the crab pots, and a bucket to put the crabs (and of course other boat safety features and stuff).  

When we got to the first pot, Laura showed us how to get it up.  First you hook the float they use as a marker for where it’s at (he also marks them on his GPS) and pull it into the boat and hook the rope on the crank wheel (I guarantee you I’m not using the right words!) and then help guide the rope up.  It pulls it at 1 foot a second if I remember right.  The pots have a large range of how deep they put them but the deepest one we pulled was 130 ft (they have four out).   They play with how deep they are depending what they get up.  The females are usually at a different depth than the males (you can only keep males) so if they find females they know they need to change the depth…but that they’re in the right place.

                So…back to the first pot, they had set this one out deeper to get the snow crab.  They wanted to get some for us in case they didn’t find the king crab while we were here.  When you pull it the boat you have to check to see whether they are male or female then measure them.   The measurement of a “keeper” goes by their body and they have gauge that you just hold up to the body to see if they are bigger than it.  Then…they go in the bucket and you drop the pot back!

                We took turns pulling up the other three pots.  They were all in shallower in the bay (around 60-80ft deep) to find the King crab.  The first 2 were empty except for a couple snow crab, but the third one had 2 kings in it.  Unfortunately, one was female and the other one was too small: but at least they knew that they were getting closer to finding the kings!!

                After we pulled all the pots we went back and took the boat out and headed back to Laura and Duane’s house to cook them.  Hopefully the picture loads and you can see the pot.  They get the water boiling and put the crab in the pot and let them cook for about 15 minutes, and then you pull them out and dunk them in salt water for about 20 seconds to “quench” them, so that the shell comes off easily.  Laura and Duane have been here about a year and half so they have been learning how to do all this stuff and perfect their system.  Duane seems to have pulled it off pretty well though, because after we quench them, we hung out outside drinking some coffee and enjoying a few crab legs.  Pretty much nothing tastes better than that!!

                Oh wait…I almost forgot about the worst part…getting them ready to cook.  You have to take the crab and hit it against the bucket in the middle and pull the legs off…and then do that again on the other side to get the rest of the legs off.  It’s a little brutal but I guess the best way to do it…  Then, you have to take a knife and clean off the gills.  Yuck.  When you’re doing all that, it really, really makes you wonder what in the world possessed us to ever eat this creepy, gross creature…but hey, they are delicious!!

                We went out again with Duane last week before they left on their trip and found a couple kings!  Unfortunately, we did not find too many, but we did get two big keepers.  Soooooo tasty!!  I hoping that when Duane gets back on Thursday we’ll get to go out with them again…and that we find more Kings! 

Love y’all and miss you!!

Here's the pot of crabs and the pot they boil them in!  And boat in the background :)

Here's the view from my front porch: with a mini rainbow

 

And due to my impatience, that's all I got for pictures right now!