Today it’s overcast and sort of rainy, which means high contrast!

First, some sort of bee on a fireweed flower. Fuzzy!

I have no idea what this is, but it's bright and pretty!

Time to invade the flower's personal space. There are so many details that get missed on first glance.

Details like finding out this plant's sexual organs have bugs crawling all over them.

Another flower for a plant I don't know. I'm a font of useful information!

A fireweed leaf. Soon, this will be vibrant red. And then the snows arrive.

A fully bloomed fireweed flower reflected in a water drop on a fireweed flower bud. Foreshadowing!

January, 2008: Skippy accepts a job working for Libby Riddles as a sled dog handler. We start planning our move to Alaska.

March, 2008: Skippy and Ashlee dog fly to Alaska and start working with sled dogs. I stay behind to finish up my degree work and find my replacement at the School of Journalism.

May, 2008: Skippy’s mom visits her in Alaska. The following week, I fly up and see our future home for the first time.

June, 2008: Skippy gets a job in town to supplement her sled dog income so she can eat more than once a day.

July, 2008: Skippy gets fired by one boss (apparently everyone does with this one), unfired by another, and then quits.

Kim, Mary and Jamie visit Skippy.

August, 2008: In three days I: graduate, pick up Skippy at the Indy airport, sell/give away everything we don’t want to take, eat our way around Bloomington and Indianapolis with our friends and family, pack up the car and Macgee dog and drive north. And west. Mostly west at first. 12 days later, we arrive in Alaska. (Move=1)

September, 2008: Skippy burns out on being a handler and gets a job in town. I take over handling duties while founding Bigwoofs Technology.

I attend a meeting of the local Mac User Group.

November, 2008: Liam visits!

We enjoy our first Thanksgiving away from home at Gregg and Sarah’s glorious banquet of smoked turkey and other delicious foods. We form the Foodie Family with Gregg, Sarah, and Jules.

Winter, 2008: Snow, wind, manual labor. Repeat.

February, 2009: I burn out on being a handler, and we make preparations to move.

I start selling photos to the Homer Tribune.

April, 2009: We move into a vacant house owned by a former coworker of Skippy’s while trying to find a more permanent place (Move=2). It seems all the rental houses don’t like pets. We have 2 cats and 2 dogs. Some of the property managers laugh at us when they find out.

I start working at the Homer Tribune, doing layout, web design and computer work.

May, 2009: Faced with a very limited rental market, we opt to buy a house. Also, a wildfire starts a short distance (fire-wise, at least) from the sled dog yard and other friends out that way.

We find and attempt to buy a house, with plans to rent it for one month before closing. 3 days before moving in, the house fails its inspection (rotting foundation) and we lose financing.

I’m elected to an officer position in the Mac User Group.

June, 2009: Somehow we find and rent a pet friendly house in 3 days. (Move=3)

July, 2009: We take our first trip across Kachemak Bay to do a 3-day hike up and down a mountain. It is awesome, but destroys my knee.

August, 2009: I interview Jewel.

September, 2009: Ashlee dog gets a faceful of porcupine quills.

Skippy accepts a job caretaking a dog-sitting business for the winter. It includes housing, so we prepare to move again.

October, 2009: I get hired by the Homer Public Library to teach monthly “Computer Basics” courses, which are offered for free to the public.

November, 2009: We move up to the dog-sitting house on Skyline Drive (Move=4) and restart our life of being outnumbered by dogs.

January, 2010: Bigwoofs Technology takes off big-time, and I reduce my hours at the Tribune to one day a week. It’s so busy, I neglect to make a single post to the blog for several months.

March, 2010: Skippy takes a job at Era Aviation in Homer, facilitating an early exit from the dog-sitting job. We start looking for another place to buy.

I rent office space for Bigwoofs Technology, next to the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies.

After planning a much-needed vacation to Puerto Rico, along comes a blizzard the very weekend we’re supposed to leave, stranding us not only in Alaska, but in our house for 3 days. We made to the airport for the last flight out, but it was canceled due to snow and wind.

After finding another house we want to buy, we are denied financing because of my crappy wage while working as a sled dog handler ($250/month plus a place to live) and unimpressive salary while at the Tribune. We scramble to find another rental.

April, 2010: While searching, we move into the temporary staff housing that Coastal Studies maintains above my office space. (Move=5)

I’m appointed to seat on the South Peninsula Hospital Service Area Board

I fully separate from the Tribune, as there is more than enough work with Bigwoofs.

Eventually, we find the only viable rental, a 3 bedroom house in town. (Move=6)

With the extra space, we decide to rent out part of it for the summer. Through Craigslist, we find a couple from St. Louis who have jobs up here for the summer.

May, 2010: We go halibut fishing for the first time. Also, the summer roommates arrive.

I obtain financing for expanding Bigwoofs Technology, and begin creating a technology training facility in my office space.

June, 2010: Tyra visits!

July, 2010: After planning a trip to Indiana for Skippy’s high school reunion and to visit family and friends, all flights out of Anchorage overbook and we’re stranded in Alaska again.

I’m hired to do another monthly technology class at the library. I also complete my training space and open registration for the first set of classes.

August, 2010: We are here.

…Did I call that a “little” time-line?

As we talked with Deb, we saw a number of people come over specifically to scratch Olive’s big fuzzy head. And really, who could resist?

Everything here in Homer is based on the tides. Cook Inlet and Kachemak Bay have the second highest tides in the world, next to the Bay of Fundy in Canada. Depending on where the moon is, low and high tide can differ by 28′! The best low tides are in the negatives, where the ocean recedes further than it usually does. We get a -4′ or -5′ tide every month or so, and everyone goes clam-digging since so much land is exposed.

All of that just to say: our low tide for this particular excursion sucked. It was, at its lowest, a +3.5′. So we took a hike in the forest with our naturalist guide, Dan. I learned an incredible amount on the hike, like the 4 different types of fern (Fox, Lady, Oak, Wood), elderberry leaves stink a lot and why the spruce beetle killing off huge swaths of trees isn’t a bad thing.

Fiddleheads unravelling to become ferns

I've been hoping to see this carnivorous plant since I learned they grow here, but I've never been able to find it. Dan had us get down on our hands and knees and search the sphagnum moss to find them. They're tiny! Smaller than a dime!

Fungus, ferns and wood

Some sort of seed case that was hanging from a small tree

Some sort of flower (obviously I didn't retain as much as I was hoping)

Some...other sort of flower. I think I need a review, Dan.

A lichen has taken over this dead tree.

All the standing dead spruce had these huge fungi all over them

Tyra was really excited about them

I didn't know fungus could sweat

This lichen, apparently somewhat rare, is called Fairy Barf by some lichen enthusiasts

We learned that a tree's second line of defence, after its bark, is to ooze sap everywhere. This one was putting up a good fight.

This spruce grouse let us follow it down the trail to take pictures