Sunday, October 12
The forecast for today was rain in the morning, then a window of time in the afternoon with no rain, so we decided to take the morning to laze around and do what we both enjoy doing, which is journaling, playing word games and just chatting. Oh, and also eating breakfast!! I had made a breakfast casserole yesterday morning that Tom and I often enjoy at home. Sausage, eggs, shredded potatoes, red bell pepper and cheese. It is quite delicious, so I enjoyed some of that for breakfast while Kathi enjoyed some yogurt.
After I had played my word games and while Kathi was still working on the Saturday journal, I started looking for hiking trails that looked promising. I found the Wynn Nature Center which is a part of the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies. They have a visitor center in an old homesteader cabin and several trails and it’s not far away! Looked perfect! The website stated “Join us on Sundays at 1:00 pm for our Wynnter Sundays event series, where we provide free activities for families to explore winter ecology.” It was 11:30 when I came across this and Kathi & I decided that we wanted to make this today’s activity. We both showered quickly and were ready to leave by noon. This place sits high up on a ridge, even higher than our little home away from home, and there were spectacular views of Kachemak Bay and the Homer Spit on the drive up. There were two parking areas so we weren’t sure which one was where people met for the Sunday event. We checked one out and it didn’t appear at a quick glance to have any kind of building where people would gather, so we went to the other parking lot. We appeared to be the only people in either lot, but it was still early so we decided to wait until 1 and see if anyone else appeared. However, there was a sign on the door of the Visitor Center that said something along the lines of “thanks for a great season, see you next year”, which led us to believe that it was quite possible that no one was coming. This turned out to be true, so we decided to explore some of the 5 miles of hiking trails on our own. The website mentions moose being quite common in this area so we were really hoping to see at least one while here.
We made our way out on the trailhead by the Daisy Lee Bitter Outdoor Learning Space. The trail starts out on boardwalks, before a few steps down onto a dirt trail. We were quickly in a mostly forested area, with some boggy, marshy areas, too. No wonder the moose like it here! We took one turn onto the Bog Trail where there were more wooden and plastic boardwalks over the soggy areas. Now when you step onto the boardwalks you expect them to stay in place and keep your feet dry and for the most part that proved to be true. HOWEVER, I stepped onto one that SANK down into the muddy water, so I moved on quickly only to find that the next section of the boardwalk did the same thing!! The last section was stable and I stepped off of it onto a dirt trail that went out to an elevated overlook of the bog. Kathi was behind me and when she saw me sink into the water, she stopped. Today, she just wore tennis shoes and not her duck boots and she didn’t want to get her feet wet. Fortunately my hiking boots are water resistant so my feet did not get wet. I told her I would check out the overlook and let her know if it was worth getting her feet wet for. I was hoping for moose, but disappointingly, there were none, so I told Kathi it wasn’t worth her wading through the water. She took a video of me returning on the sinking boardwalk pieces much to her delight!! It was one thing to step on those not knowing that they would sink and quite another to KNOW that I was going to splash into the water! We continued on the trail which went through some dense forest (mostly fir trees) and thoroughly enjoyed our 2 hour hike.
I had noticed an overlook sign on our way up to the Nature Center, so we made the turn off on the way downhill and were very happy that we did. The view of the Bay and the spit was awesome!!
From there we went to Safeway to reload a few items (yogurt, English muffins and water). We saw several cute little black bunnies hopping around in the grass on our way to the store. We also noticed that there are LOTS of boats here! Just about every driveway has at least one boat, if not more!
Once back to the cottage and the groceries unloaded and put away, I actually took a nap (I love naps) while Kathi listened to some music and may have napped a little bit herself.
When I got up, I made dinner (chicken and zucchini in a buttery lemon sauce). After we ate we Zoomed Tom to do the final tossing of the states. He has been such a good sport about this and we have decided that we really like the gigantic box that he uses to shake up the states before the toss. He has dubbed it the “Box of Destiny”. On the first toss, the two remaining state pieces landed face down, so he had to do a second toss. The winner for next year’s trip is: New York!! After chatting with Tom a bit about the day we signed off to watch Season 4 of “The Morning Show” We had started watching this show together a few Girls Weekends ago and both really enjoyed it and saved this season for watching while here. We watched 2 episodes and decided it was time to call it a night. I proofread Kathi’s journal entry for Saturday, then added photos and published on the blog. Then off to bed.
Good night!
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