Winter has come to Homer. The days slowly begin to get shorter and shorter. Until after the winter solstice, on December 21st. The Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year. The sun comes up here about 10:30 a.m. and sets again at about 3:30 p.m.

After the winter solstice we begin to gain a few seconds of daylight each day. At first you do not notice it, but slowly it creeps up on you and you begin to notice it is staying light a little longer in the evenings, and getting light a little earlier in the mornings.

You do not notice the effect the short days have on you until the days begin to get longer.  It is as though layers of a curtain are being pulled away, and you soak in the sunshine realizing you have actually missed it.
Randy and I had a lot of apprehension as to how we would deal with the increased darkness, emotionally.
We purchased a daylight lamp and increased our intake of vitamin D, in preparation for our hibernation.
However we seemed to have tolerated it fine, even enjoyed it. I myself found it a kind of a relief after the long days of sunlight in the summer. (The sun not setting till about 1 a.m. and rising again at 3 or 4 a.m.)

With that amount of sunshine I seemed to loose track of time, and you work at a frenzied pace, knowing that the season’s short, as well as you have no conception of how late it is, because of the sunlight. We found if we simply embraced the change of seasons, i.e. the increased darkness, with candle light, good books, movies, candles etc. we did fine, actually enjoying it.

During the Winter months the sun slowly makes its way across the southern horizon in low arch. This creates beautiful light in the early mornings, and  evenings,  with magnificent sun rises and sun sets.

Sun rise one winter morning, the sun shining through the Port Lock Glacier, directly across the bay from our trailer.

 

Sunrise with the sun reflecting off of the Port Lock Glacier {God’s glory reflected off of the mountain.}

Early evening sunlight on a tree in our driveway.

 

God manifesting His Glory in the beautiful sunset, reflecting off of the clouds below.

One of Randy’s and my favorite places to go is to the Cook Inlet outside of a little town named Anchor Point.  It is so named because supposedly Captain  Cook lost an anchor off of the shore, running along side of the small town.

The Anchor River, runs along the town and spills into the Cook Inlet. This winter, it froze when we had a cold spell, then in December the river had a breakup and many of the roads and houses in the area were flooded. It was very impressive to see the power of ice and fast running water.

Breakup on the Anchor River. That is a road and a rest area where the brown sign is in the back of the picture.

From the shore of the Cook Inlet you can see most of the volcanoes on a clear day. There are many, many nesting eagles in the spring and in the summer and fall you can see the juvenile and adult eagles feeding, as well as many shore birds feeding.

It is always fun to see what might have washed up on the beach as well as it is a favorite place for the dogs to run.

Coast along the Cook Inlet one early evening in the beautiful winter light.

The coast line of the Cook Inlet, lined with tree roots, from trees that have washed away long ago.

 

Randy and I have been going to a church in Homer, called Homer Church on the Rock. We attend a home fellowship on Sunday nights, at a couple of great people we have come to enjoy greatly, Nelson and Sue Seaman. They are from Pennsylvania. They do the opposite of most people – they come here in the winter and go home in the spring.

 

Sue always makes a beautiful table of snacks

 

Here we are having fresh baked Salmon, caught by the man in the dark grey shirt, Tim.  He is a commercial fisherman. He and his wife Peggy  (the lady in the red shirt) go out seasonally to fish with a crew, out into the Bering Sea. He has many fascinating stories to tell.  Although you do need to pry information out of him, as I do not think he thinks it is very out of the ordinary.  Part of his life story is in a book named Dead Reckoning  by Dave Atcheson.  It is about navigating tragedy on the high seas.  The fish that night was absolutely wonderful, freshly caught red and white Salmon.

Randy decided to get a snow machine. The first night he brought it home, he was riding it down a trail past our trailer and turned on what he though was the trail, but instead it was a snow drift covering a deep ravine. about 6 feet.

I had been sleeping all day as I had worked the previous 3 nights. When I got up he was gone I had assumed he had went to home fellowship.

He came into the trailer at about 10:30 p.m. cold, sweaty, and very fatigued. He had been trying to dig himself out.

After he warmed up and changed into some dry clothes, we took our 4 wheeler down the trail. It was about 1 a.m., we used the winch on the front of it to pull the machine to safety.

 

Needs no explanation.

I decided I would try to learn to drive the snow machine, for Randy, as he said, “If you like it I will get you one and we can ride together.” He made a small course around our property, and I started out. The gas is on one handle bar and the brake on the other.  I was doing pretty good until I started  heading for some Alder bushes, and was unable to turn sharp enough.  I became confused and instead of braking I gave it full throttle.  I flew off and the machine turned on its side.  Thankfully I had a helmet on.

I was so dizzy,  and  began throwing up, pretty sure I received a small concussion out of the whole ordeal. However we nurses are the worst patients, of course I did not go to the ER.

I stayed awake about 5 hours, then before I went to sleep, I told Randy wake me up in an hour and make sure I wake up. He stated, “Well that scares me!”  So about every hour or so he would wake me up peering into my eyes checking my pupils. That got old quick.

The snow machine after Randy had cut away some of the alder bushes. A neighbor came by and  helped him turn it right side up. I am pretty sure I will not be riding it any more after the scare I gave Randy.

We have had trouble getting cellular phone reception here. Mostly because we are in a deeper valley.

We have tried 2 different antennas on a booster. I think this 2nd one is going to work.
Randy is my MacGyver, he seems to be able to problem solve many situations.

To mount the antenna he cut down a 25 foot spruce tree, attached 2 additional lengths of pipe from our old satellite antenna, and then added the directional antenna, (this was the 2nd antenna, we attached the 1st one did not work well, so it meant taking the whole contraption down!)

We secured  it to the trailer’s ladder, as well as the body of the trailer. Further supporting the weight of it with 3 other bracing poles . It was quite a site to see us hoisting that thing up and down with ropes.

I guess that’s the Alaskan way of ingenuity.

The masterpiece. The 1st antenna did not work well, so it required taking it all down to attach the new directional  antenna.

As I have mentioned in a Facebook posting, we had a large earthquake here in early January. It measured 7.1 on the scale. Its origination was from a volcano named Mt. Illiumna, about 68 miles west of Homer across the Cook Inlet.

It was terrifying for me.  The shaking went on for about 90 seconds. I was at work that night.  The walls of the hospital were waving. All the drawers in the unit flew open, pictures fell from the walls, molding popped off of corners, and it created cracks in the walls. However, no structural damage was found.

Thankfully the earthquake was 68 miles deep, so there was no risk of a tsunami.

As I left for work the night before the earthquake Randy had just added another rope to our antenna pole to reduce the stress to only one end of the trailer. So thankful he did that, he said the little trailer did rock and roll but nothing was damaged.

When we camped here little did we know we were camping directly on a moose trail. They come through here on their way to the state park below us.

This drives the dogs crazy.  I can always tell when Elsa has seen a moose,  she will be hiding behind a building facing where the moose is, barking uncontrollably. A cow and her calf are the 2 that generally come through here.

Learn to check your surroundings when you leave the trailer because you never know where they may be.

The cow and her calf a few feet from the trailer.

It is March now and the cows, have kicked there calves out in preparation for new offspring in a couple of months.

So now the calf is on his/her own. I think he may be curious about the dogs, because sometimes he stands at a distance just watching them. Other times he tears through the area like he is scared to death. Probably a little of both.

Here he is running way from us on the other side of the ravine from our trailer. You can see the hair raised on his back indicating he is scared.

With the dark days and driving to and from work in the evenings, moose are a constant worry. They start coming down to the roadsides when it snows, to eat the salt on the roadways and the tender new shoots of grass that might be found in the ditches.

It is unbelievable how something this big could be hard to see on the road but they are. They are so big, that nothing reflects off of them when your lights shine on them and you see them but yet you do not.

They are so well camouflaged  into their environment that at times you can not distinguish between a bush, tree, or moose.

Going to work is not bad, I have very little traffic, but coming home I can meet up to 140+ cars on this particular road. Their lights are bright and it causes you to be unable to see in your lane of traffic. Believe me I have prayed for moose eyes, and God has blessed me more then once.

The ice has been another challenge for me here.  It will snow and then melt, or rain , and then freeze over, leaving black ice.  We live quite a ways out of town (i.e. about 14 miles), and the roads are very hilly and steep as you are climbing about 100 feet per mile.

We have studded tires, and our big 4 wheel drive truck so I have felt pretty safe most of the time, however I have had some tense drives home.

 

My ice cleats. They slip on over my boots or shoes. Essential for safely walking out side.

We have had only 2 large snows this winter. One was the end of December or 1st part of January, the 2nd was the last part of February.

In January it snowed about 24 inches in about 12-15 hrs. In February it snowed a whopping 30 inches or more in about 18 hrs. It was a beautiful, calm (i.e. no wind), wet, and gentle snow.

Other then these two large snows, we just get flurries leaving about 8 to 12 inches of continuous ground cover, (at our elevation, Homer has remained free of snow most of the year.)  Much to their sorrow.

The picnic table was our last snow gauge. This is how it looked after the last snow.

Our little homestead during the snow.  Randy had to get on top of the trailer and shovel the snow off because of all the weight.

Our temporary shelter is half way buried in snow.

 

I like to call this picture the “Embrace.” It is a broken birch tree wrapped in the limbs of a  spruce tree heavy with new snow, on the south east side of our trailer.

 

Natures Lace Work, the new snow was gentle, heavy, and laid beautifully on the most delicate of branches of this Alder bush.

Randy captured this beautiful picture in the morning. The sun was not up yet but the glow from the light on our barn cast a beautiful glow on the snow laden trees creating a postcard image.

The snow and frost on a tree in our driveway during the evening light.

All in all we are doing well and enjoying life here. God has truly blessed us.

Nothing says joy like this little face!  This is Elsa after playing in the snow, she is a combination of watch dog and snow plow.

 

  Finn , for now. Janette