Orca Island Cabins
Photos & Story by Susan
Susan, manager of Once in a Blue Moose in Seward, and her husband Dennis own a small island in beautiful Resurrection Bay. Over the past few years, they have been developing guest accommodations, Orca Island Cabins. Susan and Dennis tell us:
We wanted to provide a remote camping experience without all the hardships of tent camping. We take our guests by water taxi (aluminum power boat) out of the Seward harbor and 30 minutes later we arrive at our scenic, private island in Humpy Cove. 
Guests are both surprised and delighted to find that the yurts, which are the cabin structures on the island, have everything you could want for comfort such as queen beds, a double futon which can be used at night for additional sleeping, private bathrooms, complete kitchens, hot and cold running water, 
barbecues on private decks, complimentary fishing tackle, and much more.The shared deck on the tip of the island features a firepit and unparalleled views of Resurrection Bay.
Our guests spend hours exploring the tide pools on the island which fill with new critters after each high tide including starfish, crabs, and small fish. We rent kayaks at the island for those who wish to explore. Wildlife abounds and our guests frequently see harbor seals, sea lions, sea otters, harbor porpoises, river otters, bald eagles and many other birds, schools of salmon just offshore, as well as the never-ending pageant of the surrounding sea and snow-capped mountains.
Our family took the kayaks on a forty-minute paddle to a popular destination, a salmon stream in the south bite of Humpy Cove and observed hundreds of pink salmon there, as well as a beautiful waterfall. During the August spawning season, bald eagles perch nearby as they prepare to dine on the fish carcasses. Occasionally, black bears take a seat at the dinner table as well. For the official website, and for more information, go to this page.
Mount Redoubt Kicks Ash
Photos & Story by Nancy
Nancy with Alaska Wilderness Etchings, one of our vendors from Anchor Point, was kind enough to share her story and pictures about the recent eruption of Mt. Redoubt. And we now have a shirt and mug to commemorate the volcano (see photo at bottom): Mt. Redoubt Kicks Ash.
April 4th about 6:50 am I woke up to a puzzling sound. It sounded like thunder but it was going for too long, besides in AK we don't usually get thunder, especially in winter. I get up to look out the bedroom window and Wow! a big nasty gray cloud is most of the sky but the 2 side edges are a nice clear blue sky day trying to get started. "Holy Mackerel! The volcano blew!" I holler. Then I see orange lighting. Man, this is just too cool!
Go into the living room and see this cloud moving toward Homer. Go back to the bedroom and wait and watch for more lightning and rollling thunder. Listened and watched for more than 5 minutes I'm sure. OK, this is way too cool. Call Dad to let him know the volcano blew again (he called me to inform me of the 1st blow on March 26th @ 5:30am so I could get the truck in the shop). Now I go outside and try to describe this to him and get some pictures. No ash is falling yet.
Don't know how long it was b4 the daylight started getting less, then the visibility started decreasing. The color of daylight changed to a dirty brownish but not the same as with wild fires. The visibility we watched go from 7 miles to 200 yards b4 our eyes. Got a pic of the sun after it started to become visible again thru the living room window.
With the March 26th ash cloud we got, we could see the ash falling - looked like dirty globs of snow falling. This time we couldn't see anything falling just visibility less distance. We were left with very fine dust with this episode, but the accumulated depth was much more than the 1st episode, maybe a total of 1/4 inch. The inital ashfall didn't seem so bad in comparison to the days after with winds constantly blowing the ash out of the trees and continuallly re-covering everything we have cleaned.
Watching the snow melt so fast was awesome thanks to the ash. Places the snow was over 30 inches deep are already bare in just a few days of melting.