Salmon berries, fireweed, and a canoe project

Hello! Soon I hope to be starting a project that may take a while. A few weeks ago I was thinking it would be a lot of fun to do a big project, something like building a canoe. Well, I bought a book on Amazon (sold by the Idaho Youth Ranch) and it turns out building a canoe is exactly what I want to do.

Currently, I'm in a quandary finding the best place to build a 16 foot canoe. In a dormitory building close by me, there is a spacious room that is rarely used, save for me to play the grand piano which it contains. The room has ample space to build, but getting the canoe out may be a problem.

Other than that, I've been getting ready to build by tracing out the forms onto plywood and buying some of the tools the task will require. Hopefully, this project will be underway soon!

In the meantime, enjoy some pictures of some salmon berries and fireweed. The fireweed is a good indicator of how much summer is left. As the blooming makes its way up the stalk, the summer approaches its end. (That could probably be better worded.)

Also, there is a picture of a totem pole depicting a man from Japan that took many photos of Sitka and took the story and photos back to his people in Japan. You can pick him out on the bottom of the pole with a camera lens in the middle. There are also two flags carved into either side of the pole: Alaska's flag and Japan's.

The house is underway

The new shed: (I found out if I move my pictures it breaks the link. I usually retype them, but I've been waiting on photos to upload. Anyway, read up! :)

This is the spot I was taking pictures from, but now I realize it's not going to suffice. I need to have a better angle on the front of the house. I'll have newer pictures to show soon.

The past few weeks have been pretty good out on the job site. We got a very late start on the house this year and we are wondering if we will be able to finish in time. We are going on it now, though, as best we can. After the excavation was finished, we put the forms around the perimeter of the house to make the footing for the foundation. We had to use the transit level to make sure it was even in all spots. We had quite a bit of adjusting to do, which means lots of shoveling. We cut all the rebar and tied it inside the forms. By last Thursday we were all ready to pour and this morning we finally poured the concrete for the footing.

We also started on building a new storage shed. We are almost all done with the shed. I was pretty sick this weekend and so on Saturday I drew the shed. I drew it in the same fashion that we built it, as opposed to just drawing the exterior, i.e. it is very detailed. I went by the job site on Sunday to take measurements of the shed and make sure I did everything accurately. I did pretty well! I had to change my roof from a 6:12 pitch to a 4:12 and that was about it. There's this new thing SketchUp allows you to do now which is linking to a 3d view of an object; I've wanted to post something in this blog again to try it out.

Here is the shed without any plywood or roofing:

Here is the shed with the exterior shell:

Camping on Kruzof Island

Sitka has many islands with the main one being Baranof Island. The City and Borough of Sitka includes many of the surrounding islands and nearly all of Baranof Island. I camped on Kruzof Island last weekend. Kruzof Island is about 20 miles long and 8 miles wide. We boated to the island and then rode 4-wheelers to the other side. I took a lot of close up pictures. I love taking the pictures of the sea life along the beach.

I know it's been a long time since I've updated my blog! Thank you for being patient. I have some pictures to show the progress of the house but the uploading is taking a while right now.