Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

Here's a shot or two of our garden out back. Obviously this was taken during one of the long stretch of sunny days that we had. The dry, sunny, warm spring really helped out the plants this year. Last year it rained so much that I had standing water in the lower parts of the garden and I couldn't even effectively do any weeding. The weather was so poor it just took away the desire to work in the yard, something I normally enjoy as a way to unwind from fishing. The purple iris on the left were actually wild at one point. I dug them up years ago from an area in Juneau that has since become developed and currently has a Wal-Mart on it. I wish now that I had grabbed more of them. For some reason most of the local plants seem to favor the color purple. The iris, lupine, columbine and even the chives all have shades of violet to lavender. The red plants in the pot are petunias, which of course are an annual. We wanted to get a little color variation going. We have some sedum gro...

Here's a shot of one of the tour boats that anchor out by the cannery. This is looking through the tunnel on the way out to Icy Strait Point. Everyone here has always called it Cannery Point, but once tourism took hold I guess the powers that be felt like it had to have a classier name or some such thing. Most of the locals still just call it Cannery Point though. That's not all that's changed with the coming of tourism to Hoonah. On the days when the ships are in there is a steady stream of busses and large vans up and down the roads, as well as hundreds of people walking up and down the roads. The town has roughly 850 people, so when you throw in another 500- to 1,000, it makes an impact. Then to have six or eight large city busses running through a town that doesn't even have a stop light, it starts feeling kind of crowded. I'm not overly enamored with the whole tourism thing. My biggest complaint is that so many seemed to have left common courtesy and common ...

Holy Smokes! I thought I would never get out fishing. I finally made it though last Wednsday. I had a little problem with the port side gurdies not wanting to turn around on Tuesday. I was all set to go fishing and when I turned on the gurdies at the dock to check that they would work, the port side didn't budge. I was fortunate enough to be able to engage the sevices of Dave Austin at Tideland Tackle. He manages the store there and also does all the hydraulic work, so he was good enough to come down and look at the situation and determined that the love joy coupling was frozen and rubbing against the mounting bracket. It took me all day to fix the problem and replace the coupling, but I got it. Love joy coupling. I love the name of that. I'll have to get a picture of one so anyone who isn't familiar with them will know what I'm talking about. It sounds almost sensual...

This is a picture of the new travel lift that will be used to haul large boats out. I found out that it can haul a 220 ton boat. That's pretty good sized. The work I have been doing at the site has been to prepare the area for this travel lift. There has been a lot of work done to prepare for this. Hopefully it will be a money making venture for the city. I had to haul my boat out last week using the existing trailer at the harbor. It works fine, but I would like to give this thing a try next time. Off to the left of the picture is a porta-potty. As you can see, the wheels of the travel lift are as high as the potty. Wouldn't that be the pits to be inside when this thing went rolling by? If you were stoved up before, you probably wouldn't be afterwards.