A little game

Since I still can't fathom how I'm going to drive myself out of town and over the Baycrest hill, leaving the mountains of Kachemak Bay behind, I've started playing a little game with the kids.  As we think about how it will be to live in California, we are finding some amusing small-town-Alaska details of daily life that we have gotten used to.

We will miss seeing the bald eagles at the dump...but we will not miss loading up our stinky trash in the back of the Pilot to get it there.

We will miss catching up with friends in line at the post office...but we are excited to have mail delivered right to our house.

We will miss our favorite Safeway cashier (Carolyn!)...but we will not miss spending at least $25 every time we walk into the grocery store.

We will miss having the extra income (cost of living allowance!) to buy good quality outdoor gear...but we are so looking forward to not having to wear at least 3 layers every time we leave the house, or packing snow pants or rain pants in the kids' backpacks for school. Where they also need an extra pair of "inside shoes" because their outside shoes are almost always rain or snow boots.

We will miss the Homer Spit trail...but we are looking forward to not having to drive to get to a paved surface for our bikes and runs.

We will miss being able to let the dog ride around everywhere with us in the car...but not the wet dog smell that seems to happen every time he comes along.

We will miss our weekly "surprise" box of fresh produce...but we will not miss having half of it show up unusable from its long journey to get to us.

We will miss our favorite restaurants...but we will not miss being limited to three places to choose from when we go out to dinner.

We will miss the Alaskan wildflowers...but we are looking forward to growing flowers in our own yard nearly year-round.

We will miss going pretty much anywhere in jeans and hoodies...but buying a summer wardrobe for the first time in several years will be fun!

And on the game goes.  We will be fine once our adventurous trip south begins, and probably even by the time we get to Anchorage to ship our second car and pick up the Traveling Nana, but getting over that first hill will be quite a challenge.

Seldovia, Revisited

As we are wrapping up our time in Homer, we are trying to fit in a few more adventures.  Luckily, the weather has been unusually cooperative.  Today we decided to head back to Seldovia, a little village across Kachemak Bay.  Adventure Girl and I visited the first summer we lived here, and we have been wanting to go back with the whole family.  Unfortunately, the Coast Guard has had other ideas lately, so we settled for taking the boys and a friend instead.

We chose Rainbow Tours this time, as the fare on the Seldovia Bay Ferry has gone up quite a bit over the past two years.  Child fares are more reasonable on Rainbow Tours, but if you are traveling with adults only the Seldovia Bay Ferry is still the way to go.  While the trip overall with Rainbow Tours was fine, with friendly crew and a nice boat, it wasn't as promised on their website.  We were sent over on the Discovery rather than the Rainbow Connection, which lacked some amenities (the bar!).  A cold beverage on the ride home would have been welcome on such a warm, sunny day.  The trip over took two and a half hours, so we didn't arrive in Seldovia until 1pm.  The Rainbow Tours website says that they board to return at 4, but we were told we were leaving at 3:30.  And leave we did, as soon as the last passenger (and our traveling buddy, who thought she'd have more time for a drink on the sunny deck of the town's bar) set foot on board.  So, we were only in Seldovia for two and a half hours.

On the other hand, the high speed ferry no longer goes to Gull Island on its way to Seldovia.  Rainbow Tours does.  So we were able to see plenty of sea otters, a tufted puffin, and even a rare sea lion, which are seldom seen in Kachemak Bay.

Gull Island

Sea lion on the rocks

Otters playing with Mt. Iliamna, an active volcano, in the background

Short trip aside, we still hurried and fit in our top two to-dos: hiking the Otterbahn Trail and getting ice cream in town.  We were met at the harbor by a volunteer Seldovia guide--a black lab!  We brought our own dog on the boat, as it was encouraged by Rainbow Tours, and the native dog led us around all afternoon.  He hiked with us to the beach and back, and would only move forward if someone threw him a stick.  Very Alaska!

Midas and his new friend

We are glad we made it across the bay again, but I would splurge on the Seldovia Bay Ferry next time, just to ensure that we get to spend more time there.  Because a beach like this deserves a little extra lounging.

Outside Beach, at the end of the Otterbahn Trail

All in a Homer Summer Saturday

Summer has finally arrived in Homer. So much that I got a surprise sunburn while staying out of the way of the movers last week. The kids even ventured into the sprinkler...and came out shivering, of course, since 58 degrees now feels hot to us. 

The moving truck loaded up and moved on out a day early (Two guys packed and loaded our 2000+sq ft house in two days! Love SourdoughTransfer!), leaving us camped out on air mattresses for three nights while cleaning out the house. This is the first time I have done all of the movers and clean out solo. I hope I never have to do so again! Whew. 

We were technically homeless for about 6 hours today, after leaving the house and waiting to check into the furnished apartment we are staying in. Packing the car this morning was unbelievable. I usually stay out of the way while the man with the muscles does it. I wonder if any neighbors sat inside laughing with their morning coffee while watching me try to hoist bags into the rooftop box on our Honda Pilot. I'm 5'0". I'd like to think that if anyone did see me teetering on my toes on the back bumper that they'd have offered assistance. 

We had several hours to kill, so we started at the Bagel Shop on East End Rd. Michela always knows our order! Sooo delicious. Then it was on to the beach to let the poor dog run off some energy before being stuck in the car for the rest if the day. Don't worry, it was about 45 degrees and overcast today. No doggy danger. 

Next up was an event at the library where the little man got to measure his height against the tires of a grader and a dump truck before taking to the driver's seat of an excavator. 

Then it was on the the garden club's plant sale, where the kids volunteered as cashiers selling plants grown at their school's greenhouse. All by 10:30am!

We stopped by our favorite Saturday place, the farmers market, to help plant starts in the children's garden and eat some kettle corn. Every single place we went, we ran into friends. That's one if the best things about small-town living. 

We headed to Cosmic Kitchen for some real food to balance out our popcorn, and then spent the rest of our wait at the playground. It's hard to believe that it's been open a year now! And we were the only ones there at 1:30 on a Saturday afternoon. Weird. 

What a day! There's so much going on here in the summertime that its hard to do it all. But we will do our best in the less than 3 weeks we have left here. After unloading the entire car, we are settled into our temporary quarters and I am beat. The neighborhood is a little sketchy. We saw a pair of young bull moose fighting on the street corner. Ha! I'm going to miss small-town Alaska "problems".

Getting to the fun part

This is a test post from my phone, since that is usually how I post from the road. Lesson 1 learned: the Blogger app doesn't auto save a post in progress if you switch to another app. Grrr! 

We took a break the other day from prepping for the movers to finalize our upcoming trip. The adventure of getting to and from Alaska always allows us to explore places we have never been. This time, we are driving from Homer to Anchorage, Tok, and Haines, where we will board the ferry with our people, dog, and SUV. We'll cruise for three and a half days to Bellingham, WA. Then we plan to spend time in Seattle, Portland, and the redwoods of Northern California on the way to Alameda. It will take us 12 days. If you have any suggestions of places not to miss along our route, please let us know!

We have spent the last 4 days getting as ready as possible for the moving crew, which arrives Tuesday. They drive a tractor trailer down from Anchorage and load everything into wooden crates. 

When you do a military contracted move, the moving company does all the packing. We aren't actually allowed to pack anything ourselves. If we do, they will re-pack it. But we do have to weed out anything we don't want packed (food, chemicals, trash, etc), and remove everything from our walls. We also have to unhook all electronics. We try to organize everything as much as we can, trying to avoid opening up boxes of random stuff packed together on the other end.  When we moved to CT, it took us 6 months to find our Crock Pot because it was packed with an old computer in a box labeled "books" that sat unpacked in our garage. We have heard horror stories of live cats and full trash cans getting packed in boxes and loaded on the truck. 

Tomorrow it's one last day of prep, and then 3 days of mayhem before cleaning out a gloriously empty house on Friday. I'm really looking forward to this week being done, because then we move into a vacation rental for the rest of our time in Homer and just enjoy being at the end of the road. 

The Nomadic Newells Celebrate a Decade

Homer, AK 

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the Nomadic Newells!  It has been quite a journey.

Yes, that says 18,795 miles covered in Coast Guard moves alone!  Wow!  This week marks not only 10 years that we have been married, but also 10 years that Mike has been on active duty.  And our first child, the furry one, turned 10 last month.

Kodiak, AK 2003

Newport, NC 2005

Atlantic Beach, NC- USCGC Staten Island 2006

Ledyard, CT 2008 

Newport, RI 2010 

Juneau, AK 2012

There's no telling what we have in store for the next 10 years, but we know it will include plenty more adventures!

The countdown is on...

I have this app on my iPhone.  The kids love opening it up to see how many days are left.

I'll admit, seeing that little red notification number on my home screen every day stresses me out.  We have done everything we can think of to prep for the move.  We have sold lots of excess stuff, emptied out the smallest bedroom in our house so we have a safe place to stash things that we don't want to movers to pack, and have three to-do lists going with all of the logistical things that have to get finished before we leave.  The main problem is, we really don't want to go!  

This is the first of all of our moves that we would rather just stay put in the wonderful little community we have settled into.  But, we have no choice, so we are making the best of it as always.  I went down to Alameda last month to scope things out.  It helped all of us wrap our heads around our new environment, which will be pretty much opposite of our current one.  The house we rented is even nicer than it looked in the photos we were emailed.  Two blocks away, this is the view from my new running path:

Yup, that's San Francisco!  Ava is most excited about having one of these in our back yard:

The kids will be able to play outside every single day in our private fenced backyard.  Mike will be able to bike to work.  We can walk the kids to school.  And considering that snow is in the forecast here in Alaska this weekend, making it the longest winter snow season on record, I'm ready for some sunshine and warm temperatures myself!  

After the moving truck drives away with all of our possessions that we can't fit in the Pilot, we will be staying in Homer until June 20 in a furnished apartment.  I'm really looking forward to that part--it will be like a mini vacation before our driving/ferry adventure.  In the meantime, are working on the last few items on our Homer bucket list.  Anyone know an affordable way to get across the bay to hike to the Grewingk Glacier Lake?  That's number one on the list!  

I {heart} AK

I opened my window this morning to the sight of no less than 20 boats shooting across the bay, like it's the Memorial Day weekend tourist influx. Only it's the second half of March and 25 degrees outside with snow clouds rolling in.  People have asked me countless times just what it is that we like so much about living in Alaska.  It's hard to put into words, but I think I have finally figured it out.  Seeing all of those people freezing out on the bay at 8:30 on a late winter Saturday morning, participating in the Winter King Salmon Tournament, perfectly depicts the Alaskan spirit that we have come to love so much.

Alaskans aren't afraid of a little weather.  If they were, they'd be one miserable house-bound lot.  Style here revolves around being protected from the elements.  Instead of DKNY and Coach and Calvin Klein, it's Patagonia and Bogs and Xtra-Tuf.  If Alaskans want to add a little flair to their everyday, they do it with the color of their down jacket or embellished back pockets of their Silver jeans.  No one is afraid of getting a little dirty.  In fact, it's pretty impossible to get in and out of your car without transferring some of the road filth from it to your clothing.  It's the same out on the water.  If there's a fishing season going on, you can bet that there are boats out there working in all but the very, very worst kind of weather.  If you've ever watched Deadliest Catch, you've seen it yourself.  That is probably the most realistic of the Alaskan reality shows out there.

Just another day on the USCGC HICKORY

Alaskans drive in pretty much any weather, too.  Here in Homer, we spent the better part of the winter driving around on sheets of ice.  I felt like I was auditioning for an episode of Ice Road Truckers at times.  Since we can't use chemicals on our roads to melt the ice and snow (for the safety of the wildlife), road maintenance in the winter can be pretty sketchy.  But we still take the 220-mile drive from Homer to Anchorage, keeping in the back of our minds that we can always turn around and head home if it gets too difficult.

The appreciation that Alaskans have for their natural resources is just amazing.  Animals are still hunted more for food than for the trophy to hang on the wall (although a new caribou rack for the den is always a nice bonus).  All kinds of plants are consumed and preserved in the summertime.  Did you know that you can, in fact, make pesto from stinging nettles, when they first they sprout in the spring?  Catching big fish is nice, but filling your freezer with salmon and halibut is more important than how much each one weighs.  The farmers' market parking lot runs out of space in the summer, full of people buying locally-grown produce and handmade items.  Protecting natural resources is also very important here.  With the drilling that Shell is hoping to start in the Arctic, and the presence of a jack-up rig right here on the Homer Spit, Alaskans are very vocal about protecting their shorelines and ocean-dwelling creatures from the potential dangers of oil drilling.

People here aren't afraid of a little hard work, and the fact that you have a job at all far outweighs the prestige of your position.  No one really cares whether you are a coffee barista or deckhand, or bank manager or real estate agent.  Own your own business?  Fantastic.  And thanks for creating jobs for more Alaskans.  Females are viewed for the most part capable of doing any job that men can do.  I know several female fishing boat captains, North Slope workers, and bush pilots.  Alaskan women are tough, and Alaskan men seem to appreciate that.

Perhaps the best thing about Alaskans is their sense of community and helping each other out all the time.  I can't tell you how many times just in the past two years we have lived in Homer that a family has had a house fire or medical emergency, and the community has stepped up to organize fundraisers and household goods drives to help out their neighbors.  There is always an auction or yard sale going on to benefit one local organization or another, and opportunities abound for volunteers looking to help out.  Local businesses consistently support all of these efforts with donations of goods and services.

While I could live here my whole life and never tire of the view of the mountains and the bay, the eagles soaring overhead and moose wandering the neighborhood, it's the Alaskan community that I will miss most when we leave.  And that's what will, hopefully, one day bring us back.