There hasn't been a whole lot happening here at the lodge in November. The weather pattern that gave the lower 48 such a winter blast has given us our warmest, mildest fall we can remember. We did have a short week of freezing temperatures and cold, clear skies but so far no snow, very few gales, and even the rain has moderated.
Below are some random photos from November.
Toni, our resident great blue heron standing guard over a flock of Barrow's Goldeneye (with one token surf scoter bringing up the rear).
Toni has several favorite perches--this one is at the top of an old snag at the water's edge.
Morning Yoga
Here's another shot of October's bear messing with some bones on the beach. We saw him or signs of him every day for about a week, then he moved on.
We did get a good supply of firewood laid in. We (editorial "we") get logs off the beach and tow them back to the lodge. At high tide, we can pull them up pretty close to our wood shed.
The fun part is cutting the logs into rounds, splitting and stacking.
A peavey is pretty helpful when it comes to manipulating a big heavy log!
The end result. It's hard to get the whole woodshed into a single frame--there is probably 1/3 of the covered woodshed in the photo. We then stack wood on pallets alongside the woodshed and cover it with tarps.
Jen flew out for a short trip to Seattle. Harris Air picked her up in the floatplane, and she was excited to sit in the front, playing co-pilot with her wild and crazy hair.
Approaching Sitka's runway in a DeHavilland Beaver with amphibious floats. This allowed Rob to pick Jen up at our dock on the water in Warm Springs Bay and land on the runway at the airport.
Landing in Sitka--sort of like a carrier landing!
From rainy Sitka Jen took the jet down to sunny Seattle, where she went to the Husky/UCLA game with Beverli, her childhood friend from L.A, and her husband Steve.
We won't talk about the results of the game, but it was a nice evening for football at Husky Stadium. Looks like the visiting team fans get seats that Bob Uecker would kill for!
This is the Beaver that Harris Air flies, and you can see Mt. Edgecumbe peeking out behind.
Jen flew back to the lodge on one of our rare beautiful sunny days!
Feral loves having her own private wilderness to explore.
All of the grass on the beach has been properly subdued. Almost.
Practicing her Jack Nicholson "Shining" expression.
Feral giving her menu approval (although this lettuce got a paw down).
We did take advantage of the dry stretch of weather we had to get a head start on putting our lights up. So far we've got 20 boxes of regular lights and 16 boxes of icicle lights up.
The joys of putting lights up on a metal roof with a really steep pitch! (That's why we did it when it was dry--the snow and rain make it much harder!)
Did I mention that the pitch is really steep?
