Day 175: No Casualties

 Well it's "pick up" day for Scouts and the reports are that they survived the night and are back home already, exhausted, dirty, and full of stories. 

Calen reported that his shelter was very well insulated and although he didn't sleep as well as usual, he was quite warm through the night in his little shelter, and only had an encounter with a "maggot" (probably just a white grub). 

Camden's shelter halfway collapsed through the night, and he forgot his headlamp, so he was cold, exposed, and in the dark, and ended up in Brad's shelter overnight. 

Oh well, live and learn. 

The boys came home and immediately sheltered and BEGGED to go to bed at 7pm. They were done and probably more excited to see their real beds than any boy should be. 

No collapsing or grub visits tonight. 

Day 174: Into The Woods

 It's the last full day of Boy Scout camp, and it's a doozy! 

First, the Scouts were escorted on a WWII history hike through Abercrombie State park, led by one of their own senior scouts who works at the WWII museum there. Kodiak, if you didn't know, was a keystone defense position for the Allies in World War 2, defending against potential (but never happened) attacks against Japan and/or Russia. 

Brad sent them out into the woods at Termination Point with only their daypacks (and, hopefully, their ten essentials). Then, they had to each build their own survival shelter using ONLY what they can find in the wilderness, and what's in their day packs. And they better do a good job, because they're spending the night in these shelters!

Let's hope they paid attention to Wilderness Survival training. 

Cam's shelter

Calen's shelter. 

The idea of this exercise is that yes, you will be uncomfortable, cold, and not get much sleep. But, if you were in an uncontrolled, real survival situation, you could say, "hey, I've done this before, and it was awful, but I know how to do it." to prevent panic and confusion. 

Better them than me, I'll be enjoying my night in my dry, heat-controlled, bug-free house with a mattress and a quilt, thank you. 

Day 173: I Think It's Dead

 The photos sent by Brad today were curious...to say the least. 

First Aid training was apparently today, or at least that's what I'm gathering by the photos of the dead body on the floor of the Scout lodge. 

By closer examination, the poor victim died of Nerf gunshot wounds. 

CPR might not save this one, fellas. 

Also, I can only imagine how ten teenage boys could handle a naked dummy.

Day 172: Building a Bridge...Tunnel...Bed.

 It was another successful day at summer camp, by the sounds of it! The Scouts did a lot more shooting and canoeing, first aid training and wilderness survival. 

Featured in today's Wilderness Survival training was some bush craft skills taught by some local Coast Guard rescue swimmers. With their guidance, the Scouts built a bridge out of branches, moss and paracord. 

The bridge turned into a tunnel, which turned into a bed. 

A multipurpose bushcraft bridge? I'd consider that lesson well taught. 

Day 171: Shooting and Swimming

 It's Day 2 of summer camp, and I'm very proud of Brad, as he's done a great job of sending photo updates of camp!

Today's theme was shooting and swimming. Not really, but that's what I call it. 

Highlights include kayaking/canoeing merit badges, in which the boys had to flip their canoes or kayaks and then get themselves out of trouble. 

They also spent a good portion at the island's indoor shooting range, learning Rifle Shooting. 

Calen far left, Cam second from right

Turns out, Camden is quite the crackshot at shooting. 

Then back to camp for some first aid and wilderness survival training. It sounds like camp is going well so far!

Day 170: Happy Campers

 It's the big day today for all three of the Scouts in my house. After weeks and weeks of preparation, Boy Scout summer camp is officially underway. 

The first day of camp was basically just getting themselves set up in their tents and settled in for the week. They did start their woodcarving project for the week, and roasted dinner over the fire. 

They also had their first First Aid training of the week, thanks to a special guest from the hospital. 

It's going to be a good week!

Day 169: Laundry Day

 The boys are about to leave for summer camp and I decided it was a good time to clean their bedding. Camden's bed (the top bunk) was first. 

Can someone explain to me how he sleeps with this many stuffed animals on the bed??

My gosh. 

Day 168: The Alaska Wiffleball Association

 I feel like Alaskans are full of entrepreneurs. Even young ones. 

Why? Because we don't have anything readily available unless we build it. You want Boy Scouts, you run the program yourself. You want fish for dinner? You need to go fishing for it. You want to play wiffle ball? You create your own official Wiffleball league. 

And that's exactly what Calen's good friend and baseball teammate Hunter did. He created his own Alaska Wiffleball Association a couple of years ago, and this weekend the league officially moved to Kodiak.

Shameless plug: The Alaska Wiffle Ball League™ - YouTube

Calen's buddy set up an entire wiffleball invitational tournament today, with six teams, three games at a time, with a playoff bracket and a championship. His family even brought a grill and supplied hot dogs for everyone. 

This was a spectacular, six hour wiffleball extravaganza. About 3/4 of the players were Calen (and Hunter)'s spring baseball teammates, and even his assistant coach. It consisted of two-man teams. Naturally, Calen and Hunter were on a team together, called the Crusaders. Even Camden played!

In the end the sun came out, it became a beautiful day, and Sox, Hunter and the Crusaders won the championship!

What a great way to spend a Saturday. 

Working on the playoff brackets

Day 167: Oscar and the Drive Thru

 It was a pretty uneventful day today. 

I mean, I had to spend all day doing a moveout clean, which I guess is pretty uneventful, but no one in their right mind wants to either a) write about or b) read about a detailed account of scrubbing ovens and vacuuming stairs. 

I was home for like, a minute. Just long enough to get the boys to write down their menu plans for the upcoming Boy Scout summer camp. Not that it's that important to discuss here either, but this will be fun to look back at in years to come. 

The past few days the neighborhood Facebook page has been exploding over this new resident bear that has decided to use our dumpsters as his own personal All You Can Eat buffet. 

Bear locks be damned. 

This is definitely the same bear the family and I saw on the way back from Marin Ridge the other day. He's young, probably his first summer on his own without mom, and like most adolescent boys, he has no idea how to boil water or go grocery shopping on his own. So this dumpster is like his own personal McDonald's, and he's going through the drive thru every night. 

I have named him Oscar, as in Oscar the Grouch, the monster that lives in the garbage can. 

Oscar heading through the drive-thru window

The problem is, Oscar is a terrible customer. He comes past closing hours, breaks in the locked doors anyways, and leaves a big, giant mess. 

I'll take the #2 with extra fries and a side of...whatever this is...please. 

Hopefully he learns to clean up after himself coming up here. 

Day 166: Sushi Hot Dogs

 Everyone knows I'm up for adventure. (Almost) any adventure. 

Including food adventures. 

Brad and I were watching an MLB baseball game and it mentioned this one Texas Rangers' AA affiliate that serves a sushi hot dog at their ballpark. 

A what now?

Basically, it's like masubi (sushi rice, teriyaki glazed Spam, wrapped in seaweed), but a hot dog instead of Spam. 

Well shoot, I could do that. And, I have all the ingredients. 

I took a pack of cheap hot dogs and marinated them in teriyaki sauce for a couple of hours. Then, at dinner time, fried them in a pan and laid them in the middle of a prepared sheet of seaweed with sushi rice. 

Well that's the weirdest thing I've ever done. 

And because I was feeling a little extra, I made a quick Ramen-style package of instant chow-mein that I acquired on a moveout clean last week, added some cabbage and clapped it on top. 

Like relish on a hot dog, right?


 

Then, roll that baby up and you have a sushi dog! Bonus points for making homemade boba (from a kit at the store) to go with it, that was absolutely disgusting but it counts. 

The sushi dogs, on the other hand, were freaking delicious and may be a new staple in the house. 

And, to complete our American-Asian fusion night, we watched Big Hero 6. 

I wish San Fransokyo was a real city. 

Day 165: You Know Why It's Called Old Woman?

 The weather was very snotty today. It couldn't decide whether it was sunny or rainy, or blowing in clouds of biochemical warfare (aka pollen) into the house.

This morning, it rained. Which was fine by me, because I had to run to "work" and finish up two housing inspections. The mountains outside this one house's window looked like islands floating through the sky, the way the clouds were sitting. 

Pyramid Mountain has suddenly become an island in the sky. 

 
But then, the sky broke free this afternoon and the sun started shining. In a fit of desperation, I decided to launch myself up Old Woman mountain for my afternoon workout. I mean the sun is out, I'd much rather climb a mountain than hide inside on the stupid exercise bike. 

You know why they call it Old Woman? Because it makes you feel like an old woman climbing up. Gosh. 

Spring has sprung! Little baby lupins in front of Barometer. Please note that the sun is shining and the mountain is out, for future reference. 

After catching my breath from speed hiking up the mountain and taking pictures of the pretty flowers, I climbed past the summit through the back trails to the "high lake", which is my favorite part of the hike (mostly because it's not UPHILL). As I'm taking in the views, I look across the bay towards Chiniak. 

There it is, the clouds and obvious rain bands, coming my way. 

Can you see it? The rain bands on the top left? It's coming. 

No matter, I thought. That's a ways away and I'm almost at the lake. I have time. 

I kept tabs on that system, which was approaching a lot faster than anticipated. Pretty soon the bay was invisible behind the clouds, and the mountains disappearing. 

Well, crap. 

I hit the lake and promptly turned around and RAN back the way I came, hoping at least to get off the plateau and into the treeline before it started to rain. 

Mission failed. 

Welp. It caught me! Note the wet hair and sunglasses, and the mountain that was once shining bright disappearing behind the clouds. 

It caught me! But it was just a little summer shower, and since it was still (surprisingly) warm out I wasn't too bothered, but that didn't stop me from bounding down the mountain as fast as I could, my knees complaining the entire time. 

Old. Woman. 


Back in the warmth and dryness of my house, that adventure was over and we started a new one in the kitchen. The boys made dinner tonight! The theme of this month's cooking box is Mexi-Cali, and I found that the two main recipes complimented each other so well we did them at the same time. 

Calen made grilled pepper stuffed quesadillas, adding his own flair to it (refried beans). 

Camden made a grilled bbq chicken and black bean salad that was bomb diggity. 

Yes I just said bomb diggity like it's 1996. 

We gathered our trays of delicious food and watched Cars 2, per kids request. A good ending to a full day. 

Day 164: Adventure Is Out There: Marin Ridge

 We're having some sort of sunshine streak here, and you know what that means. 

1. It means it'll probably end up snowing tomorrow or something. 

2. It's adventure time! 

We had actually planned on a lazy day today, but our friends (who are moving next week) texted and said that they were leaving an hour to go on a hike up Marin Ridge, and if we wanted to go?

Uh, heck yes, I'll never say no to an adventure!

We packed up as fast as we could and took off across the island towards Chiniak to the Marin Ridge trailhead. 

This hike is what I'd call "hot and fast". It's 2.5 miles roundtrip (where we turned around anyways), but the first 3/4 mile is just straight up and HOT and humid from the underbrush. 

But once you get up the steep incline to the ridge, I mean the view, WOW. 

We got up to the first real high point of the ridge and stopped to have lunch, declaring it our "summit". Apparently this trail goes for miles and miles and miles, all the way to Chiniak, and we were not prepared for a 20 mile all day hike. 

Friends!

I'm just saying, if I could have like, two, all I'm asking for is two good sunny days a week, then I will accept this stupid cold rainy summer.