Picture: This is part of Mike and Nita's greenhouse in Homer. We are so impressed with it. Can you imagine having an ample amount of apples (several varieties), pears, plums, peaches, grapes, apricots and tomatoes in a region that only has a three month growing season? It is phenomenal!

After Myrna, Chester and Tristan went back to Bethel we had another visitor, Merrie, Ted's former colleague and retired librarian. She lives close by on the Kenai Peninsula and stayed with us on the boat for a night. The same day we ran into S/V Proximity (Rod and Elizabeth) whom we met in Dutch Harbor so we all got together and had a nice dinner on our boat, great company and interesting conversation. Rod and Elizabeth had just sailed from the Marshall Islands to Dutch Harbor, some 40 days or so at sea.

The following morning, Merrie took us to the Kenai Airport to pick up a rental car as there was not one suitable in Seward. We spent two nights enjoying the serenity of Merrie's custom built house, which is an absolute work of art. Last time when we visited her, we saw several moose strolling through her yard. Near the house there is a strong stand of young Sitka spruce and abundance of blueberry and cranberry bushes. I picked some blueberries to have with our breakfast sourdough pancake. It was a change of scenery for us as well as a peaceful vacation.

While we had the rental car, all three of us drove to Homer to visit our good friends, Nita and Mike. I worked with Nita for many years, especially the last three years when we were administrating the Art's Grant with Bev (our supervisor), whom we will visit in Petersburg later in our trip. The three of us traveled numerous times to villages to work with teachers and students on integrating the arts into the curriculum. We also traveled out of district and state to do presentations and to attend art workshops and institutes. Those were some of my most enjoyable working years. Anyway, it was so good to see Nita. We talked non-stop about people we knew and the work that Nita has been doing with native arts. I told Nita that she is the youngest elder I have ever known because of her knowledge of the native culture, beliefs and art. She is definitely one of my favorite Eskimos! While Nita and I visited, Ted and Mike were enjoying their men conversation about sailing and mechanical stuff. Mike and Nita have a plane and a boat so there is plenty of mechanical stuff to talk about. It was an afternoon well spent.

When we rented the car from Kenai, we knew that we had a dilemma because we had no ride back to Seward. Merrie had another engagement on Saturday so she could not take us. The bus only runs three times a week so we were thinking of hitch hiking. Just then we got a call from our good friend, Dr Pat, who was the visiting psychologist for our old school district. He has a big travel trailer in Seward was coming to see us at the same time. He was coming from north of Anchorage, where he lives, so we asked him if he could turn into Kenai and pick us up! What a savior and what a surprise! It was a lot of extra miles for him.

We had a great visit with Dr. Pat; we took him out to lunch and talked a lot on the way back to Seward. We saw his lovely trailer by the bay in Seward, a great vacation home on its own land with a building containing a sauna, bathroom, storage and other things. Dr. Pat is a good friend as well as being our favorite psychologist; he used to visit our school district once a month. We used to invite him over for a lunch counseling session at our house. He helped us solve many problems. On this occasion he visited the boat; had dinner and more good conversation and then he drove back to Anchorage. We felt honored that he visited us and gave us a ride home. What an extraordinary guy!