Slightly larger than a quarter, a limpet shell on kelp, great to eat eventhough one has to gather quite a few to make a meal, (and the whole PSP thing).

And seem to "out-fox" him every time... (can you see the fox curled up near the rocks on the left?)

They are just camouflaged so well...

and that is not from a lack of trying...

(Enjoying the scenery together)

He hasn't caught one yet...

That was the idea...

They used to be about the same size when he first got here...and the fox used to be somewhat scared of him...

This is one of the many "Mr. Fox" around....mention that name and Roo goes nuts looking all over for him. Can you see his ears sticking out above the rocks?

Master forager at work on a purple sea urchin which is his absolute favorite treat. He also munches on chitons or (gumboots for you southerners).

I would like to take this opportunity to tell you a little about our dog...we got him from a guy who got him from a musher in Skagway (since he had a bum left leg since birth he wasn't fit to pull (yet, I think otherwise. And if you met him you would know why)...he had it pretty rough as a pup, I won't go into details, so we adopted him. On our way here, we took him to a vet in Juneau and they said, "yeah, I think we could take that off for him." Needless to say that is the last time I will go there. He gets around just fine and it really doesn't seem to bother him, although he lifts it out of the cold water when he is wading. He has become a master forager and friends with the family of fox under the shop (hard to believe but I have proof) and enjoys meeting his fellow wild comrads.

This dog knows that when we put his "necklace" on that we are going to town. We usually walk him where ever we go in town so he can socialize with other dogs, (Digger, cookie, cessna, copper, and about three others), to get used to being on a leash, (he is suprisingly good for being a husky) and being tied up in different places while being left alone. I usually leave my jacket for him to lay on.

He likes to think that he is helping yet, Josh usually just gets in the way...haha.

Taking a trip to town...must untie the skiff before we send it down the ways...both of our loving families send us amazing care packages which makes going to the post office every now and then feel like Christmas every time.

Alaskan roll minus the avacado and plus tamago. Delicious...

It is windy, usually precipitating, but atleast it is predictable. Winds from the north (Bering Sea) bring the cold, winds from the south (Japan) bring the warmth. The fronts are predictable from month to month. One is able to tell where a front is in relation to the chain by what direction the wind is coming from. You can actually feel and see it passing as you watch the prevailing winds start in the south and work their way west, then north and so on.

He finally figured out where all that white stuff was coming from.

Nice rack!

This is pretty sunset across the pass, I though the island was on fire at first, or maybe a volcano erupted, or possibly the japanese were attacking again and taking Unimak as a strategic base of operations. But no, just a sunset, sure makes yo happy to be here though.

This is Roo and his best friend Mr. Fox. It's crazy, but I swear they are friends the fox hangs around the house and Roo chases them away as fast as he can and then he just comes right back until Roo is to tired to chase him anymore and then they just stare at each other like this. Ah puppy love.

This picture is kind of blurry, but I liked it anyway. It's of a place called the palisades which is just a short walk down the beach.

We may have posted this picture before, I'm not sure because Christen usually does this, but I like it so I'm gonna post it again, because I like it.

Waiting to go get water from the creek below...our domestic water has frozen a few times, so when that happens we go fill up at the creek and pray for warm weather (anthing above freezing will do).

"When the tide is low, the table is set." A blue mussel bed...and a limpet...everything you see here is edible...(chitons and butter clams are plentiful here as well) yet, the risk of PSP (paralytic shellfish poisoning) kind of takes the fun out of it...supposedly in the winter months the red tide and PSP risk is low...not low enough for us to take any risks though...what a shame, i love mussels steamed with a nice white wine sauce.

Below Einer's cabin...the amount of metal strewn about the beaches is amazing...even with the price scrap metal is fetching today...perhaps one day it will get high enough so it will become worth it to haul it away...with all that said, it is interesting to look at and recycle a few things here and there..

Snails in Goose barnacles...low tide at eagle's nest.

I think the homemade wine, the sauna, and what seem like an endless supply care packages from home, are going to be what gets us through the winter.

mmm...king crab legs! Mrs. Hoblet, over at the post office, was telling me how her husband Tom, like many other crabbers, will brave 20'+ swells no more than six hours from the pass to bring these monsters back to shore. These crabs are better than lobster, but I would rather have all those men (and women) safe on land rather than eat these things. But, thank them none the less. I don't know how they do it.

It didn't take us long to bust into our jam reserves that were barely cooled from the canning process...the blueberry has been amazing, especially in the waffles!

"Hey, do you know where Roo went?"

After getting the fire going, filling the buckets full of water and waiting for the sauna to get hot, we found this little guy waiting for us in the 100 degree+ room...sound asleep...I thought huskies were supposed to like COLD weather?!

Note to self: quite stacking the wood so high...

Safety first Josh! Once a week we check the solution level in the batteries. The bucket in the top right corner is filled with rainwater. The tubing makes it really easy to fill the three cells of each battery of the eight battery series to the appropriate level.

Roo loves to chase and pounce the seaweed and grass blowing in the wind. He will crouch down on the beach and wait for things to blow by.

Beach

"erosion/deposition-meter"...one day after a good storm this appeared near the ways. I wonder what else is under all this sand?

Alright, I know it has been a while, so here are some more pictures. And please disregard anything that has been written with the last few posts. Not wanting to make Josh feel like he wasn't a part of this, I told him he could post a few pictures and add his two cents. So again, I appologize. Haha. And please don't feel bad but, he can't really read either. He just looks at the pictures when he "reads" books. So I am sure he will so the same with this blog...ignorance truley is bliss.

This is the window of the guesthouse, I think the window itself came from a boat because it looks like it would have. It's beveled like that so you have a wider range of motion to shut your gun out of, you know so you can defend yourself from bears, Russians, dragons, drunk Aleuts, magpies, rabid foxes or anything else that you might come across.

This is the water after it turns the waterwheel, the dams were full when Christen took this picture so that is all the water we use to make our power.

Most of you can probably tell this is a fishing rod, I'm not sure but I don't really like how the line rubs that metal bar. It's a good picture though but it'd be better if you could see we are using a big clevis for a weight.

This is a jig we use and can you believe it works like a charm, I mean fish seem to fight over the chance to hit it. When we first got here I thought "Yeah right", when I saw it, I mean it's lead weight with a hook, but no joke it works great. In the back there are some hand lines wrapped around little wooden reels, we haven't had a chance to use them yet but I want to sometime.

The view from a window in the shop, I really like the chisel handles.

Just some old stuff hanging on the wall in the shop.

These are just some old bottles on a windowsill of the shop but man, sure is a good picture ain't it?

I am not sure whether these are dinosaur bones or dragon bones, Christen says they're whale bones but I think she is fooling herself. I mean where can you get whale bones?

Here's the house, I don't really know what to say about it, other than it's probably the nicest house I'm ever gonna live in and the view from that top window is amazing.

This is Roo's room, for christmas we got him a poster of Lassie to hang on the wall.

Like the greenhouse, the main house is also birmed. Both the upstairs and downstairs are accessible at ground level.

Eagle's Nest...the sea lions frequently are near this point.

The wolf and bear must have been within a few hours of eachother that day.

Apparently a bear broke into a shed down the beach at another residence last year trying to find a dennning site. This bear walked south on the beach sniffed a little by the greenhouse, and kept going. We forward tracked it for about a mile then called it quits when we got scared by a large rock that looked like a bear. Everybody is brave tracking, until you actually see the animal, or a rock resembling it. It was quite comical.