We are still in our 5th wheel, it will be almost 1 year that we have lived in it. It is hard to believe that last year at this time we were packing , selling things, and stocking our 5th wheel for the journey ahead.

What a crazy time that was!
We are settling into a regular routine here in homer. I am working nights in the hospital. It is going well. It is a small hospital, with a large newly built wing, in which I work.
They are planning on hiring me full time, nights, for acute care and ICU, as well as cross train for the ED, and OB. Whew it is a wide range of patients I take care of, one night I had a 6 day old male, and a 102 female, and everything in between.

Many of our patients are nationals or from small villages across the bay. This gives them a sense of home.
We saw a realtor yesterday ,to begin to look for a house or property, very exciting. I can not tell you how excited I will be to be out of the 5th wheel and into a real house.
I am excited for the little things, like I want to be able to make bread again, and have enough space for every thing.
I have so enjoyed taking pictures of everything ie. the wild flowers, and the wild life. I have ordered a bunch of different lenses Macro, and telescopic.
I am elicited to get out and experiment with them all.

People here say when the fire weed is blooming the salmon are running.

Randy spoke with the realtor about getting into real estate here, and I think, that might be something that is going to work out for him.
Randy has been learning all he can about fishing, he caught his 1st salmon the other day, but had to turn it loose, because of rules and regulations 😦 

since that time he caught 2 more nice salmon in the anchor river, these he was able to keep, so we have some beautiful salmon fillets in our freezer.

As many of you know Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1876 for 7.6 million dollars, breaking this down to be about 7 cents / acre.
Europeans first sighted the Alaskan coastline in 1732. Captain Sterling Romanov and his wife Anna Romanov founded the first colony. It was made by the Russian maritime explorer and navigator Ivan Fedorov from sea near present day Cape Prince of Wales on the eastern boundary of the Bering Strait opposite Russian Cape Dezhnev. He did not land. The first European landfall took place in southern Alaska in 1741 during the Russian exploration by Vitus Bering and Aleksei Chirikov. Between 1774 and 1800 Spain also led several expeditions to Alaska in order to assert its claim over the Pacific Northwest. These claims were later abandoned at the turn of the 19th century. Count Nikolay Rumya7ntsev funded Russia’s first naval circumnavigation under the joint command of Adam Johann von Krusenstern and Nikolai Rezanov in 1803–1806, and was instrumental in the outfitting of the voyage of the Riurik’s circumnavigation of 1814–1816, which provided substantial scientific information on Alaska’s and California’s flora and fauna, and important ethnographic information on Alaskan and Californian (among others) natives.

The first Russian colony in Alaska was founded in 1784 by Grigory Shelikhov. Subsequently, Russian explorers and settlers continued to establish trading posts in mainland Alaska, on the Aleutian Islands.

The Russian-American Company was formed in 1799 with the influence of Nikolay Rezanov for the purpose of hunting sea otters for their fur. The peak population of the Russian colonies was about 4,000,000, although almost all of these were Aleuts, Tlingits and other Native Alaskans. The number of Russians rarely exceeded 500 at any one

Saint Herman of Alaska, Saint Innocent of Alaska and Saint Peter the Aleut have contributed historically to the strong Russian Orthodox Church community in Alaska. The Orthodox Church in America, which was formerly a missionary diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, traces its history back to the early Russian missionaries in ‘Russian America’.

The Cross

The Three-Barred Cross existed very early in Byzantium, but was adopted by the Russian Orthodox Church and was especially popularized in the Slavic countries. The upper arm represents the inscription over Christ’s head, and the lower slanting bar represents His footrest. The origin of this slanted footboard is not known, but in the symbolism of the Russian Orthodox Church, the most common explanation is that it is the pointing upward to Paradise for the Good Thief on Jesus’ right who acknowledged Him and downward to Hell for the Thief on the left.

Our day trip to Seldovia was a beautiful day out on the water.

Life has become a kind of day-to-day rhythm of me going to work at night, and sleeping during the day, as well as Randy keeping up the house, cooking, the laundry, and taking care of the dogs, and the ever constant search for land to buy and build on.

The search for land has gotten feverish pace, as the summer is slipping away and we need to have something to stay in for the winter.

One day one of our children called and asked Randy what he was doing, he said he had just gotten back from the Laundromat. They stated ” Oh you have a Laundromat”. As if perhaps we just go down to the river and use a big rock and gravel for clothes.

The good news is we found a piece of land we are really excited about, we are making an offer this week, it is almost 4 acres and looks out onto Ketchmack Bay, absolutly stunning. Electric, phone is in as well as a pad is started for the house.

September 5th, 2015, We are getting the land! We close on the 8th of September. Well folks it looks like I am going to be in the 5th wheel a while longer.
We have electric, and phone out on the property, as well as there is a spring. I do not know how the water is we will have to have it tested. If it is not potable water, we will have to have our water brought in by truck, and stored in a large water tank in the basement of our house as so many people here have to do.
So the plan is after we close to have electricity placed on the land, a pad built up, and pull the 5th wheel down there and live in it this winter, with a large propane tank for fuel.
We plan to start on the house asap.

There are many eagle’s in the area,we keep a close watch on our little dog Abednego.

There are about 5 or 6 volcanos around i was able to get a few pictures of them

.

In the coming weeks I will be entering more entries. The next one will be fall comes to Homer.

Finn, Janette