The Traditional Archery Journey Continues

I have been attempting to get a rabbit this winter with my traditional bow and recently...I succeeded! The Homer area has experienced a rabbit boom this year so they are plentiful. I have been going on walks around the neighborhood getting attuned to the habits of the rabbits. I have certainly had some failed attempts and flung arrows that did not meet their mark over the past few weeks but fewer than I would have thought. This particular rabbit did not make it easy. I had to perch in a tree to get elevated enough to have a shot over a hump and initially only the rear 3/4's of the rabbit presented a shot. I ended up shooting wide and spooked the rabbit. Lucky for me he only moved five feet or so and presented a similar shot but this time it was its head 3/4's that was exposed. I shot my second arrow and it found its mark. Rabbit stew for dinner! This is the first animal that I have taken with my traditional bow and it was very satisfying. I kept the skin so that I can try to tan it and maybe make some slippers. The fur has tons of soft down in it seeing how it is winter time.

Happy trails to everyone.

Winery new building

Here are just a few pictures of the new production building for Bear Creek Winery. It is a beautiful timber frame shop, just up the road from the original building. The tasting room isn't moving, just the production side of the business. There isn't enough room to make and store all the wine they need to meet demand at the original site. So far, they have only moved in cases of wine that were made in the original building, but in the very near future they will start making wine almost exclusively in this new building.
As you can see the building gets lots of natural light. Our days are now about 11 hours long, equinox is just a week away. They have a forklift to move around pallets of wine, which is a lot better than moving them by hand.
The wall behind the forklift in this photo opens to the space that will have a walk in freezer for all the berries. Right now there are many pallets of wine being stored back there.

The forklift has been jazzed up with this spiffy Bear Creek Winery decal.
Here is a picture of most of the Bear Creek Winery crew, missing are two of the winter employees and my Grandma who makes lunches for everyone. They are standing in front of even more cases of wine along the opposite wall of the shop from the last pic. The building has a lofted office space too. It is going to be a different summer with the new building up and running. Between people coming in the door for tastings and the distributors orders they keep busy around here. It is awesome to go into Fred Meyers and see Bear Creek Winery bottles on the top shelf of their liquor store!

Out my window

This photo was literally taken out the window by my desk 5 min ago.

Life in Homer has been moving right along. Lou is busy working in the winery and just this morning I taught my first lecture of the semester. After lecture I got in a ski under blue bird sky's. It has been so sunny around here my face is starting to tan. Back at my desk for the afternoon and life keeps making me smile. Two young bull moose are helping themselves to the frozen grass on the lawn. They are mostly getting along, but I have seen them push each other, just a little, with their antlers to get a better angle at the grass.
Before these bulls showed up we've seen two sets of cow and calf every day.
I went outside to get a few nicer shots. The moose in the front isn't just closer to me, he really is bigger than the other guy. FYI Jake - neither of them are legal....yet.

North to Alaska

After a year of playing around in various parts of the world we have settled in Homer, AK. We arrived here on Dec. 2nd after driving the Alcan/Cassiar highway. As it turns out it is hard to drive that highway without experiencing some adventure. Here is how it broke down.
Day 1: Mostly uneventful. Highlight = unreal scenery on the Sea to Summit Hwy.
Day 2: Roads covered in snow and ice all day. Highlight = glare ice corner that put the car in the ditch
Day 3: 18" snow storm, chains, and slow going. The next morning Lou had to shovel us out of the hotel room. Then we had to uncover the car and shovel a path to the gas pump. Day 4: Temperatures bottoming out at -30 F. The car started in the morning, wahoo! It was a battle to keep the windows clear of ice, even with the heater on high. We found an abandoned set of golf clubs on the road. Seemed a perfect time to hit a few. Notice the long shadows, this was about three in the afternoon near the town of Tok, AK. The sun isn't getting very high here this time of year.
Day 5: Arrive in Homer! Our new home.

For the time being we are living the Jasmine's parents. True to form Lou enjoys the short commute to work each morning. We will be getting our own place eventually and everyone has an open invitation to come and visit. It would be great to see you. The first week home was a good kind of busy. Lou is making wine and learning all aspects of the business. Jasmine got certified as a xc-ski coach and is practicing with the Women's Nordic team as well as prepping for classes.
It is shaping up to be another wonderful winter.
It is unlikely that we'll get around to posting about our trip on the Grand Canyon, but check out Josh's Blog (Dec. 2 post) for great photos and narrative on that trip.

Wild Turkey Dinner

Lou went out turkey hunting between our summer of hiking and rafting the Grand Canyon. This year he decided not to use his bow since he didn't have any time to practice with it. Day two hunting in Southern Oregon with Jake he got one, a nice sized hen. Woohoo, wild turkey for Thanksgiving! When the boys returned to Jake's house we gathered round to weigh it, 6 pounds. It is impressive how much of their size is just their feathers.Putting the bird into the oven. Joan also got a Foster Farm turkey breast to be sure we had enough meat for the feast. The two birds were very different in their relative proportions and taste. Looking at the raised bird it was difficult to image how it was able to move with its over-sized breast muscles.
Lou's wild bird was oh so yummy! All in attendance decided they preferred the wild turkey over the Foster Farm turkey. After the day of feasting we packed up the car, again, for our last adventure in a year of adventuring.
For those of you that noticed Lou's very full beard he has been growing since June, about three weeks into our hike. It is so long I can grab two full hands of beard. It is his longest beard to date.

Colorado

First steps on the CDT. We started at Crazy Cook, the border is just a few feet behind us. We were so excited to get started the heat didn't bother us too much the first day. This was a 15 mile day..
Lou hiking through a "forest" of blooming desert plants one of the first days on the trail. There really wasn't a trail, just a combination of CDT blazes, cairns, and large posts to mark the way.


We have seen a great many horny toads on this trek, and they are just as cute now as this first one we saw in southern NM.

Although we were in the desert, hot, dry and without shade for many days there were still a lot of flowers to look at. The southern desert of NM was actually more enjoyable and interesting than the middle of the state. In part because of the blooming cactus in the south and in part because we weren't walking on roads in the south. Road walking is no fun at all!YEAH, a functioning windmill! Windmills have taken on a whole new meaning for us, they mean water and in most of NM water is a very valuable resource. Our whole hiking day was based on where water was, how many miles to the next water, and how much water we could carry.The temperatures would reach over 90 degrees during our first two weeks on the trail. To stay healthy and sane we took long afternoon breaks in the best shade we could find between 1 and 5pm. The photo above is of one of the not so shady spots we stopped at. Jaz is hiding from the sun under our silk sleeping bag liner.This is one of several types of snakes we have seen hiking through NM. We got pretty familiar with the reptilian daily cycle. We didn't see any in the morning when we started but by 11am they were charged up and moving around. By 1pm the reptiles were all super charged and racing to and fro across the trail/roads.Our first break from the desert was Gila National Forest. We had been told about homemade ice cream at this little store along the trail by Rawlings and Mickey (incredibly kind & fun folks we stayed with in Silver City). The last 10 trail miles coming getting to the store were filled with much talk of ice cream and imagining what flavors there might be. To our very big disappointment we arrived at the store 30 minutes after it closed. No ice cream! our hearts sank. Lou looked longingly in the window and to our surprise a man came to the door. He asked what we wanted and Lou told him ice cream. He responded with a stern "We are closed". Bummer. Two minutes later he opened the door again "Has to be cash" he said, we nodded "OK, what flavor?" We picked three, all very yummy. We reached the Gila river two hours before the sun set. Here Lou is crossing the Gila for the first time. By the time we left the Gila River we had crossed it nearly 100 times.

The Gila is in a deep canyon with beautiful rocky spires on both sides. It was a wonderful place to hike.

Lots of cool pilars along the Gila.

Sometimes getting back and forth across the river was a little less than straight forward. Here Lou is scaling some low rocks between river crossings.

For this trip Lou made our tarp tent, and Joan sewed the bug net (THANKS JOAN!) Here it is set up at one of our camp sites along the Gila. It is very versatile, and spacious AND it only weighs two pounds. We really love this new shelter.

Found some very large tadpoles in the slow moving side streams and eddies all along the Gila.

Jaz is making a face here because the river water is not so warm at 8 in the morning. In the afternoons crossing the river was a wonderful relief from the heat.

This is a banded lizard we saw during our walk across the Malpais on the Zuni-Acoma trail. The trail we walked on was used by natives hundreds of years ago. Some of the cairns that mark the trail are the same ones they used way back when.

In New Mexico we often had to scatter cattle along the trail or when we arrived at a water source. This time they were really pushy and gathered around as we turned on the water to fill up our bottles.
There are many many more stories and photos to share from New Mexico. I wasn't able to get up any photos of all the wonderful people we stayed with along the trail, and they were a large part of our New Mexico memories, so those will come another time.
We are almost 1,000 miles into this trek of ours and still having a wonderful time. It was really exciting to walk across the border of New Mexico into Colorado. At that point we felt like we had completed the beginning of the adventure, we are really doing this thing.
We love Colorado so far, and we have had visitors too. Alison and Trinity spent 4th of July weekend with us. They showered us with incredible trail gifts, a watermelon and wine! Marie and Christopher left us today after 6 days on in the San Juan over the 4th of July as well. It was great to share our summer home with all of them, photos later. I know I keep saying that, but I really mean it. Keith met up with us yesterday and will spend the weekend on the trail. Emily joined us 6 days ago as well and has another three weeks with us. Colorado is full of trail guests so there will be a lot more stories to share as we trek north from here. I hope to be able to share some of them on the blog in the near future.