An Alaskan Odyssey: a great day in Sitka, Alaska!

This is the first Labor Day I've celebrated in a few years, as this is the first public school I've worked for in a few years. I've got to admit that this has been a better holiday than most!

This morning, JoElle and I did our best to sleep in, but we still have children. It was a slow morning nevertheless, but we got out of the house before noon. Once out, we took the kids, our dog, my Utilikilt and our FiveFingers to the Starrigavan Recreation Area. We walked the boardwalk through the estuary and had a good time watching some songbirds in the grass and the last of the salmon spawning run (humpies mostly, better known as pink salmon to people who don't fish up here, also regarded as the worst-tasting of the salmon species). After walking the boardwalk, we crossed the road to try to walk along the bay on the Mosquito Cove loop, but the trail was closed due to bear activity recently. We drove around Starrigavan briefly, then drove to another spot where we could watch the waves crashing on the shore. Seren and I got out to throw rocks in the ocean and we all were amused by seeing surfers working as hard as they could to catch some 5-footers. When we were done walking around, we dropped the dog off at home and I changed into some more casual attire.

Before leaving the house, we found our driveway blocked by an unfamiliar vehicle. As I turned around to see who it was, I found Bill Hutton at the window of our car! Bill is the former Superintendent at MEHS and was the man who headed up the search that hired me. I met him in person for the first time about a week ago and we had a really good talk at that time, and he was standing in our driveway just now with a grin on his face and a bag of fresh halibut in his hands. He wished us a happy Labor Day, passed off the fish, and checked to make sure that the apartment was fine for us (he'd checked it out for us when we still lived 3000 miles away). After I ran the fish in to the fridge, we got back out on the road.

We headed into town and hit up the Agave Restaurant because Seren had been expressing a desire for fish (I thought about cooking what we'd just received, but JoElle was enjoying a day out in the sun). We got the kids fish and chips, JoElle picked up a halibut fish taco, and I got a prawn and rice platter. We were all very happy with the food and worked it off by walking around on Lincoln Street downtown. We were very pleased to find out that FiveFingers shoes will be arriving in town this spring, so we may work on saving up to get the models we've both had our eyes on. We wrapped up our roaming by stopping for a shake and a chocolate root beer float at Harry Race Pharmacy, then let Seren play around a bit on the grass at Totem Square. With Porter wiped out, we finally came home. All in all, a very good day.

PICTURES!!