Talkeetna & Home

After 2 months away, I got to leave work four days ahead of Dave.  I opted to visit a dear friend in Alaska and meet up with Dave for our long journey home when he got off work.  Our friend Karen is an Ice friend from Marble Point in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica where she used to cook and Dave and I refueled helicopters.  I stayed in her one bedroom one living room cottage next door to her cabin.

Dave and I have both stayed in Karen's cabin (behind us in this photo).  It has a spectacular view of Denali and is always frequented by a wide variety of birds.  We did a little weed picking this day.

Because she's close to the river, and in Alaska in general, there is always a need for a  mosquito tent for outdoor time.  We had dinners in here which was perfect for Covid and quarantine.

I had a blast watching the tree swallows and two woodpeckers flying about and eating all day. Beautiful!

We drove into town and admired the beautiful views along the way.

After a coffee, we went on a fern rich hike.

What a gorgeous place!

A sight for sore eyes after six weeks on a barren island.

Forget-me-nots in Talkeetna. What a soothing and wonderful time with an incredible friend.  I'm thrilled that I went and there's nothing like being with a wise girlfriend in a beautiful setting as the cure for 6 weeks with oilfield guys.  Just the best!

Straight home to summer with Dave.  Breathtaking!

These lavender blossoms were in Boise.  We had a couple sets of appointments there.

These beautiful poppies were in full blossom all over McCall.  I picked some seeds from these for later.

We hiked the fish hatchery/rapid river trail until we saw a snake on the trail that turned us around.

This one is always gorgeous, every month of the year. It's 45 minutes north of us in Riggins.

We also sat by the salmon river in Riggins to enjoy some warm weather and sunshine.

Before the crowds, the summer in McCall was looking picture perfect.

Flowers near the lake.

It is another construction heavy year with a lot of big projects.  They buried the power underground while we were gone on some of the main roads, including in front and behind our condo.  It looks fantastic!  They're also working on repaving the road and putting in sidewalks on both sides with paving stones, beautiful street lamps and even decorative trees!

The lupines in front of our condo were rich this year.  We also saw yellow lupines in town this year!

We had North Beach to ourselves!

We also enjoyed the solitude of Rotary Park Beach.  It has incredible views of the mountains.

Picking weeds on our property: 3 days of 3 hours each and there's still a ton left.  A work in progress.

We hiked the North Fork trail in search of morel mushrooms.  No such luck, but a gorgeous hike with beautiful views of the river along the way.

We also hiked up to Josephine Lake off of Warren Wagon road to try to catch the beargrass in blossom, which normally happens the first week of July.  Spring was late this year so we saw some glacier lilies, a bit of snow and some shooting stars (the pink ones).  These flowers are among the first to blossom after the snow melts.

Shooting stars, and below a patch of snow on the descent.

Our 2.5 weeks at home flew by in a flurry of color.  We heard we missed a particularly wet spring with constant rainfall.  We are so lucky and blessed to be able to see the fruit of all that rain in the richest most colorful blend of wildflowers everywhere we hike and bike.

Winter & Pandemic

I arrived in Boise on March 12th from work greeted by early spring flowers such as this hyacinth.

There were gorgeous clusters of crocus also.  These ones are next to the grocery store in the N. End.

I had picked up some snacks when I arrived on Thursday and all seemed normal.  I got a bizarre text about stocking up on Friday morning, and this was the scene then.  The panic and stockpiling had kicked off in Boise.

Dave has been buying the most beautiful flowers for us! Nice to come home to McCall.

The panic got to McCall that following Monday and although our grocery store restocked most items, they were unable to fill the demand for toilet paper, hand sanitizer, flour and yeast.

A thick blanket of snow greeted us in McCall, so we drove 45 minutes away to Riggins to a lower altitude with much warmer days.

We tried this new to us hike with our friends Colin and Delta.

Dave and I kept walking, false summit after false summit, and reached some spectacular views.

It's always a pleasure to be in the Riggins area.

After our hike, we watched some bighorn sheep for a while then sat and enjoyed the crystalline Salmon River.

We had two days of incredible weather, especially considering this was March 20th!

Another trip to Riggins afforded another private beach and stunning river views.

Back in McCall we tried combination sports, including this bike ride then snowshoe to the Payette River for some more riverside sunshine.

This riverfront is off of Deinhard Lane, which is a nice long bike ride with plenty of uphill.

Although we weren't quite barefoot like in Riggins, it was still a great way to enjoy the scenery and catch up safely with our friends.

We took a drive out to Tamarack to see their construction progress and were impressed.  They've finished a lot of the buildings in the Village and have scaffolding up for the remainder.  They even had a market open when we went.

Back in McCall, the deer this winter took over town.  Most people stayed indoors and there was markedly less car traffic so the deer roamed freely, as did the birds.  

Dave and I found places that we could snowshoe and not get lost or come across people.  We followed the streams which feed into our lake.

It was interesting to not be on trails and see so many scenic sights.

We walked on our town's paved footpath a few times too, until we found it too crowded to stay away from others.  This is the path which leads to the Smokejumper base and Payette River.

It's a scenic walk with all the aspen trees and mountain ash, which have bright orange berries on them well into the late winter.

It's funny how easy it is to get lost once you leave the riverfront.

Another stunning snowshoe along the river off of Lick Creek Road.

It always amazes me how clear the rivers and streams are in our community.

This time we crossed and walked on the far end of the river near the wildlife sanctuary.

We also rode our bikes quite a bit.  This is the rail to trail path from McCall to Lake Fork.

Some rides were along streets next to ranches.

We tried some fun recipes, like homemade calzones, Argentine steak sauce, French onion soup, Australian cowboy bread and even grilled out a lot.  This one was my favorite, though, trying to recreate a hot dog we had in Mexico.  It's a cored out pickle wrapped in bacon with onion and soft cheddar.

I can't describe the fun crunch that the stiff snow made this bright sunny morning.  It made the ride easy.

We even tried the groomed trails at the Activity Barn after a particularly cold night.  Great surface!

And of course, we had beach time on our lake.  This was at Rotary Park and we were the only people!

Cheers to the best view of the lake and mountains from town (Rotary Park Beach).

We met up with our friends a few more times outdoors, socially distanced.  This time was at Deinhard Lane, but we also joined them at Delta & Colin's property near the Finnish Church a couple times. 

The virus and the different policies from our workplace and the State of Alaska meant that instead of 3 weeks off as usual, we had 5 weeks at home plus 2 weeks in Anchorage in quarantine before work. We stayed at my coworker Rhonda's condo next door to her.  We were lucky to get to cook our own meals, have our groceries delivered and didn't feel as cooped up as some others who were stuck in hotels.

We went on 3-4 hour walks everyday to pass the time and then disinfected our gear.  We saw a couple moose rather closeup on one of our walks.

It was grey or rainy most of our two weeks, but sometimes the mountains peeked out.  This was a beautiful home we walked past a lot as the airstrip that it borders was a nice uncrowded place to walk. Most of our walks were on pavement in the city somewhere, but we found nature trails in a park nearby one day; and that was a wonderful treat.

After a fantastic 7 weeks together cooking, baking, snowshoeing, biking, walking and sitting near rivers the time arrived to go to work for a very long 6 week stretch.  With the quarantine in Anchorage, that meant two months away and missing springtime in McCall.  Our companies have since filed plans with the State of Alaska so that we can complete our two week quarantine period at work instead of Anchorage, so we are able to work normal schedules again.  Dave's company and oil field lease was bought by a new company, so unfortunately, at the moment he has to work two week rotations and I am still on threes for the remainder of 2020.  Our next post will have summertime and flowers! Love you!!