School starting

Once again, I'm honestly not even sure where to start with a post. I will try to keep this from being another long one, but as usual, there is so much that has gone on in the past few weeks that it will be tough to cover it all quickly. I'm tired if you can imagine that. Actually, VERY tired! Our "vacation" to Valdez was not really a vacation for me. That's ok. I get breaks throughout the year that Rodney does not get. This was HIS vacation! We did have a blast even though the fishing wasn't great. The pink (humpy) salmon were in and we could have brought home tons of those but we're spoiled by reds (sockeye) and silvers (coho) which are tons yummier than the pinks. We didn't think of smoking the pinks until we were about ready to leave or we'd have kept more of them! Rodney smoked up the pinks we brought home and they turned out VERY well! The silvers were just starting to come in just as we were ready to leave so the silver fishing ought to be awesome by now! Rodney hopes to go back in another week or so and catch a bunch more silvers. We'll have been here a year tomorrow so Rodney can now officially go get all of his resident hunting and fishing licenses.

There are enough moose now that they've lowered the restrictions on the number of brow tines on moose for a couple of weeks so Rodney is looking forward to trying for moose soon. There has also been another bear in camp that has been calling to him, teasing him. There are tons of hunting and fishing options opening up to him as of tomorrow, plus all sorts of vacation time that begs to be taken! Now he just needs to get Nate to let him take some! ;)

Our computer is on the fritz, so I'm currently using Oksana's. It doesn't have Photoshop, so I will probably wait until mine comes back to post the Valdez pictures. I could have picked it up yesterday when I was in town, but I had taken the truck in to pick up Rodney's ATV and the truck decided not to start again once I got to the ATV shop. FRUSTRATING! It eventually did start again (after the ATV repair guy looked at battery connections and fuses and couldn't find anything wrong) with no explanation so we ran the rest of our errands without turning off the truck. It is such a habit to turn off a vehicle when exiting that I almost messed up at EVERY stop! Fortunately Arvin and Kathy Busenitz had arrived in town and they were in Anchorage dropping off some wood and tools that he had brought up from Kansas. They were available to help us get home if the truck had not continued to run. We were glad not to need their help, but it was such a relief to know that they were there if we needed them.

Speaking of Arvin and Kathy, it was such a joy to find them here when we returned from our fishing expedition! They are so much fun to have around! We wish they could be here longer, but we'll have to make due with about a month of them visiting. I'm sure the time will fly! Dennis and Heidi from Tuscon will be leaving soon so we plan to have them out for dinner tonight along with Ed from Vermont and Frizz and Darryl, a few fun summer staff leftovers. The summer certainly is winding down! I'm looking forward to the school routine (aside from getting up early every morning) but will also miss a lot of the people that are here for the summer. Annie will be here for at least a few more weeks until the Sherrers return from their time "outside" but she would like to stay on through the winter or at least part of it. She hasn't quite figured out how to do that yet and her mom would like her home again so we're waiting to see how that all works out. We do now have a vehicle available to pull our trailer to Alaska (a van in Michigan that was donated to the camp) but we don't have a person to drive it any more. The van didn't materialize early enough for the person who was willing before. So now we're looking for a willing driver again! Any takers? :)