I know I skipped my usual posting last week, so one would think that we've been busy, but mostly just lazy. This new job has lied to me. The 30-hour supposed weeks have turned into 37 hour weeks with 10 hour days. The weird thing is that the office is only open for 30 hours each week, but the Dr. likes to overbook himself and then run slow and I'm stuck there until the last patient leaves. Not what I signed up for. Sadly I haven't been able to do the things I had hoped while working this job, like look for new jobs and write my blog. I hate this job. There are only me and him on a daily basis who work there and when he keeps me there an hour later than I'm supposed to be there it would be nice if he could at least turn off the bulk of the lights while he rushes out the door just to help me out a little, but no. It is so slow and so boring there that I now look at it as getting paid to read my book and become a master at Solitaire. I have 9 days left and I cannot wait to be done.
On the bright side I am meeting some new people and making some new friends. I'm getting my design background publicized and getting some great tips on things to do here - clubs to join, trails to hike, art studios and classes to sign up for, etc. And you can't beat the commute, a 7-10 minute highway ride with no traffic ever! I even met a guy from Juneau who went to Columbia College in Chicago for film and lived in Logan Square! :)
In other news, we were finally able to find our crab source two Saturdays ago. But the mistake we made was fall for the deal - we came home that day with 7, yes 7, crabs - probably about 20 lbs. I had wanted 4, but the deal saved us a few bucks and I thought, 'What the hell I'll find recipes for all this meat!' Part of the reason too was because crab season (and maybe just Dungeness crab season) ends August 15th. So we thought if we could freeze some it would last a little longer. Afterwards we tried going to some of the grocery stores looking for a larger steamer pot so that we wouldn't just have to cook one at a time. No luck. So we headed home and started cooking. From cooking, to cleaning, to cracking, I think it took us a solid 5-6 hours. It was exhausting! You can see below the bowl on my left is just filled with crab meat, to the right the plate with the crab that still needed cracking and there was still a full crab in the sink.
Eric is officially a master of cooking these now and I got pretty good at the cracking. We filled, to the rim, an entire 1.5 quart bowl of crab meat or, roughly, a 2 liter. So let the recipe experiments and week of crab begin!- Saturday night we just had fresh crab.
- Sunday lunch was a crab and artichoke dip. Sunday dinner was a red pepper and tomato pasta sauce (also known as Fancy Pasta) with fresh spinach and crab tossed over pasta.
- Monday lunch was the crab artichoke dip again. Monday dinner was crab cakes. My second attempt at those, with a new recipe. These were better but still lacking something. I will continue to perfect.
- Tuesday dinner was crab and artichoke pizza. This was my favorite. It was so flavorful and delicious!
- Wednesday, we froze the rest of the crab. lol. We were officially sick of it and needed a break.
Over the weekend we also finally bought hiking boots! They have become our trusty trail companions and I wonder how we did without before. Maybe we just turned around at the sight of mud before? :) Now we just tromp through it! So in order to break in our new shoes we decided to do the airport trail, which was not even 2 miles (one way) and mostly flat. Below is one of the views - a new mountain view we hadn't seen before. There were sea lions swimming in the water here.
Below if you look closely, you can see the airport runway with the glacier behind it. What a cool airport, don't you think? This was one of my favorite views on the trail. I just found it entertaining and awesome.
The trail wasn't much but it's a nice walk and it was the perfect length because my shoes started bothering me. We got high shoes for their ankle support and I can't remember the last time I wore gym shoes with ankle support - so I just wasn't used to it and my ankles wanted to breath. Although, this trail did remind me a little of Savannah because it was marshy with little waterways going through it.During the week, we got invited by Eric's boss to join her and her dog, Cooper, on a trail on North Douglas. Douglas is the island across the channel from Juneau. We had yet to go anywhere on North Douglas and so we happily accepted. This has become my new favorite place. The trails in this area are just beautiful and the views you find are just stunning.
You can hear waves crashing, which is always relaxing, along with eagles singing and the views are completely uninhabited - no houses, no bridges, just beauty. There's not even hardly any people there either, making this the perfect peaceful place.This past Friday evening we decided to head out to Mendenhall Glacier because the newspaper had printed a photograph of a Sow (Mama bear) and her 3 cubs walking across the road to get to the glacier. The article also said that because the Sockeye salmon are spawning in creeks off the glacier, that bear activity in the area has increased. So we went out to see what we could see! Once we got there we hiked the most common tourist trail, but also the one that follows the creek, with no luck. However, we did see something we never have before...
Can you tell what it is? It's a porcupine! In a tree! Who knew they could climb trees? Because I sure as heck would've never looked for them there. Another man on the trail pointed it out to us. I need to research this more. Do they fall out of trees? Because if so, we're going to have to start looking up..We ran into a student that was working in Eric's Pharmacy who told us we missed a bear and a glacier calving (when parts of the ice break off of it) by about 40 minutes. Argh! So close! But apparently, it was one or the other - they both happened around the same time. We would've probably been in bear territory, but I would've rather seen the calving. The glacier was a beautiful deep blue when we got to it, where the ice broke off.
This past weekend was supposed to be nice weather and Eric was trying to drag me to the top of Mt. Roberts. Now, it was going to be a cheater hike, because we were going to take the Tram half-way up. But what remains was 2-3 miles with a 2000 ft. elevation gain. I can feel my lungs tightening in my chest just thinking about it! Luckily for me, the weather was cloudy and rainy. Since we had hyped ourselves up for a hike, we decided to do the Lemon Creek trail because it is covered with high evergreens and so can be used as protection from the rain. This is where our hiking boots came in handy! The trail was filled with mud, muck and muddy puddles. We had hiked a bit of this trail before, but hiked a lot further that day. It looked like a rain forest in there. Okay, so Juneau is a rain forest. But when I think rain forest I think of the Amazon. This trail made me feel like I was in the Amazon with all it's plants, trees, streams, falls, and puddles. It eventually started raining harder and our makeshift tree umbrellas were no longer being useful, so we headed back home.
Sunday was cleaning day. Another bad weather day but we had a lot to do around the house. Eric's parents are coming 2 weeks from today and our spare bed still has stuff on it that we need to find a place for. Plus with me working and us hiking in mud, we needed to clean. Later in the afternoon the rain stopped, so we decided to go out to North Douglas, where we heard there was good fishing, and continued to attempt this new skill.
As you can see, Eric caught one! But with our limited knowledge as to what fish is edible or not, we put him back. You see we have a little book that has the most commonly caught fish - mostly salmon - and this guy wasn't in there. While walking out to our fishing spot we met some other fishers and asked if they were having any luck. They told us they only caught a few 'double-uglies'. Well... this guy is pretty ugly.. so we assumed that's what it was. This spot was a good location, Eric got a nibble just about every other cast. He then got a fighter on the line and that fighter ate Eric's lure. We lost that one. While Eric was putting a new lure on, I realized that the tide had come in a lot - almost to the point where we were going to lose our only path back to our car. He tried a few more casts with no more luck (bad lure?) and then we headed home.After another great day in Juneau we decided after dinner to head back out to Mendenhall Glacier in search of the Sow and 3 cubs. Most of the activity was happening around 8pm at the Glacier so we got there at 7:45 just to make sure we wouldn't miss anything. The activity was almost non-existent when we got there. We saw another porcupine up in a tree and heard that the cubs were in that same tree Sunday night. (Almost!) So we walked around that same creek trail, amid way too many tourists, and finally got our bear. Not just a sighting, but a 30 minute show of this little guy eating his dinner!!
Then going to get a drink of water...
I love this picture, he's just so cute! We were hoping when he went to the water that he was going to catch another salmon (even though he had 2 large ones already), but he was just thirsty.
What a show! And we were only about 6 ft. away from him, behind a fence at least, but had he wanted to attack the fence would not have even slowed him down. He was not at all phased by everyone watching him, nor their constant camera clicking and flash. He was just happily eating away. I have about 60 photos from this 30 min. dinner - it's almost like a still-motion film. Eric and I both had fun taking pictures. What a show! What a place! We found it interesting that he didn't even eat the meat we eat on a salmon. He mostly ate the skin and the fins, the fattiest areas on a fish.
It's just amazing how close you can get to the wildlife here. We watched until he headed into the woods and then headed back home on cloud nine.And this is the reason I'm really starting to love this place. :)
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