Let's All Come Together

Summer is for family reunions. Well, lots of summers have gone by without a Miller family reunion, like 20 summers since all the Miller boys have been in one place at one time. Houston has 4 brothers, no sisters. That's 5 boys. Yikes! I come from a family of 3 brothers, no sisters and just 2 male cousins. I also have 3 sons, no daughters, so I know about boys. But luckily the Miller clan has produced a number of girls, which outnumber the boys by just one. Not everyone could make it, but we did manage to have 21 of us show up. Four of the boys live on the east coast but Jim and Pam live on the west coast so getting all boys together doesn't happen often enough.


Chip, George, Chuck, Houston and James, frontsides


same order, backsides


all the girls (Audrey, Pam, Glynis, Lea, Shannon, Jenna, Debbie, Diana, Dalis)




the wives (Dalis, Debbie, Diana, Pam)


We rented a fabulous pavilion on Dan's Mountain State Park west of Cumberland. One of those sturdy stone and heavy wood beamed buildings that are so lovely.




There was enough room for another 50 of us in the pavilion, it was so large. It was totally private, set deep into the woods and the day was clear and fortunately the humidity had hightailed in out of there and it was so pleasant.


We played croquet in the clearing in the woods...


and sat around catching up with everyone's lives.


My beautiful niece, Jenna, who lives just two houses down from me. I get to see her often.


She is like my daughter though. My mom and three brothers all have very red hair, so she fits right in to my side of the family.


My son, Garrett. Because we lived so close to Jenna's dad, George, we had "double baby days" where George watched the two kids on Mondays and Tuesdays and I watched them Wednesdays and Thursdays. What a great arrangement! It worked out splendidly and Jenna and Garrett were basically raised as twins. They are still very close.


A large fire pit was nearby so the kids were entertained with fire. Drew kept the fire going for hours.


I brought my many hoops and we hooped it up. Lea took to it immediately.






Glynis was a natural too and wanted to give a choregraphed performance just 15 minuted into it.


We got all the girls into it. Diana showed her cool moves


and Debbie got it going first try.


The day before and the day after the main event, we rode bikes on the C&O Canal and the Allegany Trail. Cumberland is the end of the C&O Canal (which runs 186 miles from Georgetown to Cumberland) and the beginning of the Allegany Highland Trail (150 miles from Cumberland to Pittsburgh) so we sampled a bit of both trails.


We only had Trapper for a week so I wasn't sure how he would do with so many people at once. But he had a blast, running with the kids, digging for smelly stuff in the woods, eating scraps people 'accidentally' dropped, chasing balls, hooping with the girls, but at the end of the night, he laid down exhausted and was out for the entire night.


Yep, a good time was had by all. Thanks Millers!

Trappers and the Skunks

I live on a small farm and besides the fox, I really don't have much wildlife come visit (thankfully) probably because the dogs keep most of the wild critters away. But our home in the city (Cumberland) has a big skunk problem. Last week we saw three babies march right across the front yard and while we were sitting enjoying the summer evening in the back yard, a big, furry skunk walked right out of my garage door (we suddenly got very quiet and gave a communal gasp!), she/he took a look at us and slowly wandered to the gate and exited. Hubba bubba, no trubba. But my neighbors and I soon tired of the skunky smell around our homes and one of my neighbors, Ken, called a trapper.
Butch and his apprentice, Mason, came to our call of distress. They didn't have on capes with a "T" on them but I had imagined that they would.


Mason fell in love with my little Trapper. Trapper meet Trapper.


They did come with three traps though and soon set them between our houses. Mason, the little 5-year trapper in training, was carrying two packages of white sugar coated donuts and grabbed two for his own consumption. Butch, the main trapper said, "Hey Mason, don't eat the bait!" Well, what 5-year old could resist a donut?! The traps were set with little pieces of donuts leading up to the trap with a couple donuts way inside to entice them in for the main meal.
Butch said that this time of year, the babies start the "shuffle", when the young start to roam and look to make their own dens. Sounds like a dance to me... OK, everyone do the "Skunk Shuffle!"


So this morning I get up and look at the traps and we got three for three! Yipee! One was this cute white one, but I'd rather have it gone than being cute in my yard. So Butch and Mason come back and slowly loaded up the full skunk traps (with narry a spray) and will soon bring the traps back for more. The three they caught were babies so we're still hoping for mama to take the bait. Hopefully no more skunks, no more skunk smell and no more trash digging. Bwy bwy skunks!
Update: Five more caught last night! Had no idea our neighborhood was that skunky.

I'm Trapped!

OK. I said we weren't going to get a dog. Houston is on sabbatical this coming year and we may do some traveling so we didn't need a dog to to complicate matters. But while at the local vet with a friend, I noticed a sign for yellow lab puppies. We knew that a yellow lab mix would be our way in the future next dog. I walked right past that sign, yesseriebob. I got in the car, hesitated, then thought whatthehell would it hurt just writing the number down. I waited one entire day before I made that call. When the guy answered I said that I didn't know why I was calling since I didn't want a puppy, I didn't want a pure bred and that eventually I would get a rescue dog. He just laughed and said come on over. They had 13 (!) pups to choose from, from two different litters. I picked up the biggest male (easy!) and nuzzled him and let him lick my face with his cute little 4-week old tongue. Since Houston was on his big bike adventure, somewhere in either Canada or Alaska and did not have a clue what I was up to, and since it was his birthday, I took a pic with my phone with a note, "Happy Birthday!" I said to the owner of the pups that he probably wouldn't get the pic as he was out of cell range, but 30 seconds later he called and exclaimed, "Really!!!!?" So 4 weeks later, we have a pup.


He loves the barn....and what dog wouldn't?! We wanted a name that would remind us of Alaska and Houston wanted Kenai for the Kenai Penninsula where we spent a bit of time. Kenai is a great name for a husky type dog, but I thought it just didn't fit with this little lab. The town near Talkeetna where our friends live is called Trapper Creek, so Trapper it is.


I introduced him to the sheep...


and they didn't know what to think of this little creature. But with foot stomping and giving him the evil eye, the sheep have let Trapper know who is boss.


Then on to the chickens. The chickens are actually bigger than him at the moment which is good.


He didn't quite know what to make of these feathered things that made funny noises. My other dogs were a bit afraid of the chickens so I hope Trapper is too.


He does enjoy watching chicken tv though. We were laughing about how Trapper is sending photos with his doggie cell phone back to the puppy mill, of the chickens, sheep, cats, fields, his new toys saying, "I won, I won, I won!!!! Look at me!"


Cheyenne and Ozzie are another matter though. Cheyenne is the perfect cat to introduce to a dog because he doesn't run and he just hisses and scratches if Trapper gets too rambunctious. Ozzie (our grey tabby) has decided to stay clear of the house for awhile.




He has a friend, Boomer, who we went for a walk with today down Harris Road.


I introduced him to Little Monocacy Creek, where my retrievers would swim and bring back sticks.


I put him in the water, but he didn't seem to like it. I explained that he is a water dog and he has to learn to swim. He sat there looking pensively at the creek.


Nope, not going in.


We'll try again tomorrow.

Adventure #3: Going With the Flow

The second most fun thing I did in Alaska (the first being mountain biking) was to join our friends on a jaunt down to the Kenai River so they could restock their pantry and freezer with salmon. Dip netting is allowed only to Alaska residents so we could only watch.


The Kenai River here is large and opens up to the Cook Inlet. Across the way two volcanoes are visible with the boring names of Redoubt (a Russian word meaning 'fortified place') and Double. The rules and regs of dipnetting are quite strict. Fishing licenses are required of course. No selling for profit and one can only feed your immediate family. The Kenai dip netting was open this year from July 10-31 with the head of household allowed 25 salmon and 10 more for each other member of the family. So the Hamler's could have taken home 55 salmon and 10 flounder.


This is the scene that we came upon when we dragged all our camping gear and the Hamler's fishing gear to the beach along the riverbank. It was relatively uncrowded as this was mid-week. You just have to get over the slaughter aspect of this and go with the flow. Fish heads litter the beach, with the eyes plucked out by sea gulls. Luckily it's cool here or peeee-uuuuuu it would stink! Now remember, this is not sport fishing. It is subsistence fishing, meant for filling the pantry to get one through the long winter.


As an observer, I found it interesting how folks get their gear to the beach. By wheel barrow...


and garden cart wagon with big tires. Most people used kid toboggan type sleds and pulled the coolers on them over the sand.


This is the hoop net. It could also be used for a soccer goal!


Last year nearly 30,000 permits were issued and almost 340,000 sockeye salmon were pulled from the Kenai river. Sonar devices count the fish and in 2009 741, 721 fish passed by in July alone. Here's how it works. The best time to fish is right after the outgoing high tide. The timing was perfect for us as it was at 6:00p.m. and 6:00 a.m. The net is large, but by law, no larger than 5' across, attached to a metal ring with a 12' long pole and a handle on the end. The fisher person (Bruce did the first tide) pushes the net into the river at least half way submerged and waits oh, about a minute, before a big salmon swims up river into the net. Then he slowly walks up to the beach where...

Tami bonks the fish with a 'bonker' (stick, rock or pipe) on the head and stuns/kills it.


Proud bonker


The head is then cut off, the underside sliced open, the guts removed and thrown to the gulls, the top fin cut off. The tail fins have to be cut at an angle to prove that it was caught by dip netting.




Into the cooler of ice they go and when this one is full, the contents of the smaller cooler are moved to the massive cooler waiting up the hill in Big Blue. Bruce netted 18 red salmon in a just few hours. Many weighed about 12 pounds. The hours that one is allowed to fish is from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. but we heard that the authorities opened it up to 24 hours due to high migration.


Big Blue, all ready for the dipnetting adventure.


Saw lots of this action.


Commercial fisheries are located just up river a ways and we saw plenty of boats coming and going with the days' catch.


After a not-too-good-night's-sleep (due to a bad parenting episode in the tent next to us) Tami took the morning tide and caught 10 more salmon and a very large flounder in just 2 hours. They had their personal limit of 30 salmon and one flounder as that was quite enough because they would have to spend the next few days smoking it in Big Chief smokers with alder wood, then canning it. We were served their last jar of smoked salmon just days before so it was definitely time to go fishing.


Since I couldn't help in any way, except for cheering them on, I hooped...


and hooped...


and hooped.




These were our neighbors on the other side (NOT the bad parents!) Five women originally from Cambodia, were excellent dip netters, having been raised by fishermen. They were saving fish heads in a drywall bucket to take back to their 83-year old mother as she made fish head stew. They thought that I wanted to take their picture because they looked like native Alaskans, but I really thought they were remarkable because they were all women, enjoying time camping, dipnetting and carrying on a fishing tradition.


As the sun slowly traveled towards the horizon and a twilight settled on the sand, the dip netters were seen in silhouette and another day was enjoyed on the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska.