Where were we? Let's see, I think I mentioned the long drive north and moving the piano into the second floor and maybe I mentioned two office moves? Not sure anymore. Sorry about that. It's summer in Alaska and it's full throttle all the time. Now that we are down to less than 16 hours of daylight each day the pace has gotten frantic. I'll try to catch you up. The big dog and I went to our first water workshop (following one day of land work) down on the Kenai. We had unprecedented weather.
He had an absolute blast and we both learned a ton. Which is really good because that is his retirement plan. He started land work (for humans that aren't likely to move around anymore) last year and the water work builds on that. Not that he has slowed down much at all.
And since I happened to throw the lake boat on Ite (meteorite....) I got to paddle every night after working all day on the water. It was awesome. Loons and eagles and awesomeness all around.
Not only did the big dog turn 9, but his mom turned 10. We celebrated with new toys and swimming. Percy chased ducks. And almost drowned. My wonderful man swam in and rescued her. She could barely walk when he got her back to land. Turkey.
I have even squeezed in a little hiking. The kind right in my back yard. This is an amazing place. I love it here.
And after an early morning bike ride to 6am yoga on my birthday, I took the dogs swimming. The ducks were a lot bigger and Percy didn't chase them. I was grateful. It was a sunny day and I decided not to take them with me for the rest of my adventure because I was worried they would cook in the sun. It was a good decision.
Because even though the last two times I have hiked Bird Ridge on my birthday it has rained on me, this year it was sunny and very warm. And the view was awesome as always. I rarely repeat anything - I don't read a book twice or watch a movie twice or even hike the same trail. But this trail for my birthday? It speaks to me.
And then I paddled my kayak in Portage Lake. It's at the toe of a glacier. I could bore you with some details here about what all that means, but I will hold it back. There were icebergs. It was cool.
I was happy. Even though my real goal had been to paddle my beautiful wooden kayak on my birthday I was happy to at least have my perfect man in his wooden kayak with me - and my boat is set up in the garage and we work on it regularly. I suspect him of actually working on it without me because he misses the work.
We had blue confetti cupcakes with coconut cream cheese frosting at home. They were awesome. I can see it will be a challenge to keep my place as head baker. And when I returned to work the next day, my ever perfect co-worker had made me a cake from scratch. She also made ice cream. With local currents she picked. I can't even begin to compete with that, so I just bow to her talent and enjoy the fruits of her labor.
We have had an amazing string of sunny days. It's rainy today, which is the only reason I have any energy to finally write this. I can't get anything done inside when it's sunny. I bike and / or paddle. It's awesome and ridiculous. I have been on a mission to check out the new single track and bike every trail in town. Not much running going on, but I'm sure I'll catch up this fall.
Oh yeah, Tonka and I have been busy on several searches as well. And there's a lot of etcetera tasks with the dog group. In short, it's been a busy summer. So far the moose have mostly stayed out of my little garden and I'm eating salad and peas every night.
