Thursday, August 28, 2008

International Bowling Stars Visit Dutch Harbor

Hiking, surfing, eating, e-stim, hanging out, and playing hearts.



It's hard not to be pumped with this guy's smiling face beaming all the time!











NUM NUMS (Blueberries!)




And some nice floral arrangements selected by Elle from amongst Unalaska's natural growing beauties. As it turns out, we have natural poppies here!




Thanks for coming to visit our fair island, Justin and Elle! We had a blast. Boodah is still talking about you. "Justin Elle airplane all gone?" We're looking forward to the next adventure already!

And tomorrow, Grammy and Gramps arrive. Hooray!

Hinchinbrook Island

Warning, this blog entry is going to be heavy on the pictures. Here's another shot of the city airport and some shots to give you the sense of the terrain we flew over in our long 15 airborne minutes flight.




Here we are, safe on arrival after landing on the beach at low tide. Senor was stoked to sit up front. Entranced, actually. It took him a while to work up the nerve to touch the steering wheel.





Our home sweet A-frame for the next few days!

Let the firewood gathering commence!


So, there was a lot of this on the first day.



Here's the scene indoors, actual darkness.




Here's the same scen illuminated by flash. As you can see, even at high noon the inside of the A-Frame cabin was quite dim!





Boodah, ever happy:






Here's the "facility". It was actually quite nice. It had a glass window hatch that looked like it was from a submarine that you could open if the interior aroma got to overwhelming.




Everybody embarked on a fishing mission except Momma and Boodah, who stayed behind and held down the fort. Fortunately, the fishing mission was a success, and tasty salmon and even a trout were brought home and cooked up later that night. As the weather slightly improved, the dudes mustered up their surfing mojo. After Jake failed to talk the other two into hiking two miles to the point break, they hit the beach break right in front of the cabin. Here's Jake, looking at the waves with the binocs, and demonstrating his water friendly wetsuit.



Jake is very manly. He is not afraid of cold water or rain.



Surfer magazine, don't even think about pirating these photos.



And then it happened. Sun, glorious sun! The dismal, trapped at the end of the world feeling gave way to the realization that we were alone on a deserted island paradise. What a difference sunshine makes! Of course, we were too busy reveling in the sunshine to take many pictures. But I promise you, it was beautiful!

Fishing,lure retrieving, playing.




Folks with lots of creativity and skills used flotsam and jetsam to make cool stuff around the cabin. Swings, hammocks, etc.












And then, all to quickly, the plane came back to take us to reality. Doors off to fit the surfboards in! Somehow all of us and all our crap made it back in just two plane loads!





One stop at Team Wilyo's (where Boodah's always inspired to rock!)(and we are ever grateful for the always warm and welcoming hospitality!)



and a couple of long flights later, and we were home sweet home!