Woody Island

Today is the birthday of my eldest nephew, but I have been unable to contact him in the Motherland.  If he reads this I hope he knows he is loved and missed.

This weekend we decided that we were going to go camping on Woody Island.  We headed over around 9 and looked for a secluded spot in the woods to pitch our tent. 

Remember we had three good hours of daylight left so 9 was not that late of a start.  The group of us then sat by the fire eating hot dogs, marshmallows, graham crackers and Hershey’s bars.  I’m not the biggest fan of smores in the world; I lean toward solo mallows.  I did however make a discovery that if you take a hotdog and cut it into four pieces you can load a roaster stick up the following way.

Mallow-hotdog-mallow-hotdog-mallow-hotdog-mallow-hotdog-mallow

Of course you have to put the hotdog pieces on perpendicular to the stick to make it all fit.  You end up with perfect marshmallows buffered by hotdog pieces that are hot on the outside and cool on the inside, just like a good rare steak.

Sweet and salty heaven!

After consuming mass quantities of campfire food we bedded down for a long night of sleep.

It was grand.

We awoke and wandered back to the fire with the coals still glowing. Coals are perfect tool for boiling water and preparing breakfast.  However, the rest of the group was huddled around two jet boil devices.

If you are not familiar with the jet boil look it up. It is a self-contained backpacking apparatus that can boil a little more than a cup of water in about five minutes.  I used my camping pot to boil a liter of water (4 cups) in about three minutes and I didn’t even have to use the compressed gas that the jet boils run off of (they are expensive and I am cheap).

Oh well, whatever makes you happy.

We had a delicious breakfast of oatmeal and tea. I brought two kinds of loose-leaf tea and two tea balls, but I could only get Miss A. S. to drink tea with me.  If you are that person, you are awesome and are welcome to my tea stash any time.  This same person woke up with her eye-swelled shut and we never figured out what happened to it. I prayed that she would be healed and several days later she is almost back to normal. 

She didn’t even take a picture of her swollen eye, and it was awesome.

The plan was for the skiff to pick up counselors at around 11 a.m., but it did not show up until around 2 p.m., which irritated a lot of the counselors.  I don’t know why they wanted to get back so fast.  The only thing to do in Kodiak is to sit by a fire and eat or go hiking and we had both of those things to do on Woody.

Again, whatever makes you happy.

As for my wife and me we stayed on the island with some friends who came over on the skiff (not counselors) from Kodiak to feast and hike.  It was a beautiful day full of fellowship and we even celebrated what would have been (the groom passed away a few years ago) a 50^th wedding anniversary with sparking grape juice and home made rhubarb cake. 

I really think the people that did not stay missed out on a lot of fun.