Justin

I got up the other morning and here was Justin asleep on the floor, a dog on each side for company. If anyone sits or lays on the floor they are right there to be with you. They love when we sit down there with them. Funny dogs.

Rolling up the tape measure after measuring out our beach space for the boat launch.

I got some good pictures of Justin this week, and thought I'd share them. Plus we got some good pictures of this cool ice thing that happens to Justin's truck. We've had it happen before, but we never have the camera with us. But lately we've been taking the camera with us all the time because of the volcano and wanting to take pictures of it. So we took some pictures of the ice thing. The ice builds up on days that its warm enough for water to thaw, but cold enough in the wind that it freezes again. We went to Soldotna and his truck ended up covered in these little ice things. They cover the whole truck, and they point towards the front of the truck, and they get an inch long at least usually. They're frozen hard in big sheets. Its pretty neat. the other thing, is an ice wheel thing that develops on the center spindle of the wheel. And makes a spinning ice amoeba thing. Very cool.

Random volcano pictures

The picture above is Augustine volcano, taken from the beach in Anchor Point.

Wanted to share some pictures that I've been taking over the last week or so. I've gotten some cool ones! Mostly the volcano just chugging and steaming away.

Redoubt Rocket

Hey you can see Justin walking in this picture on the right there.

You can really see the contrast between where the sky is already light (or what the sky should have looked like) and the ash cloud.

Here's the view to our right, on the other side of the ash cloud from the picture I took above. You can totally see that the sun was up, and how light it was before the ash.

Straight at the ash cloud.

More ash cloud

This is as the ash was falling, taken out mom and dad's bedroom window. You can see the contrast of lights, and the dimness of the ash falling, and locking out the light.

Those upper pics are all of the ash falling out mom and dad's window.

This one is out the kitchen window at the sun. You can see the computer screen reflected on the kitchen window.

More out the kitchen window.

This picture above is out my kitchen window downstairs. It was SO bizarre, I looked out the window and it looked like a sepia toned world. The whole world was brown, just like an old fashioned sepia tone photograph.

You can see the white of the window frame, and the contrast of the brown outdoors. That's really what color it was outside.

I think you can see in this picture how dirty the snow is outside the window. It just looks dingy - that's the ash.

Out the front door downstairs towards the end of the ashfall.

Poor car! Bill's car has just gotten hammered by ash the last couple weeks.

Its hard to photograph the ash, and make it look like its not just dirt or dust. So I took pictures of things that you can compare it with. The above picture is our neighbors house - see how white the roof is? Their roof is brown in "real" life, like their house.

Some ash holes in the driveway

The neighbors house above has another "white" roof. Their "real" roof is dark purple.

Just the driveway.

This above picture is ash accumulated in some footsteps up at the tubing hill.

Dad and I walked out today and took pictures of the mountain puffing away. Today the steam cloud is going towards Kenai/Soldotna. Its just steam, and a little gas, maybe a tiny bit of ash today.

Its pretty cool! Usually this mountain is snowy white, year round. But not now!

I have to say HA! I knew it was going to erupt. For a day or two the volcano seismometers had these little earthquakes, 3-4 per minute which they said was it building a new dome. Just rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat for a couple of days. then they stopped friday night, and I said the dome is done its going to blow up big really soon. And mom said, yeah maybe. But I said, it will. Mark my words it will. The Volcano observatory lowered the code to orange from red, friday night, but I said its not done, and HA it wasn't. Ok, I feel better now. Had to do an I-told-you-so, even though there really was no one to say I told you so too. hehe.

This has been so fun! I always hoped that at least one of the volcanos across the inlet from us would erupt while we were living here. I hoped it would be Illiamna which is directly across from us, but its been Redoubt instead, which is still pretty cool. I think yesterdays explosion/eruption thing was the coolest. About 6:15 or 6:30 the dogs started barking, which they don't usually do in the early morning. They are usually pretty soundly asleep by then. But they kept barking and running up and down the stairs. I could hear this rumbling sound, that sounded like someone walking on fresh snow, or on the stairs, and I thought well I better get up and see what it is. So i open the curtain in our bedroom, and there's nothing there, and its pretty light out because the sun is getting ready to come up. And I look but there isn't any one out there, but I know I heard something, so worrying that there was still someone out there, I opened the window to hear better, and I hear this long rumble rumble rumble. As I'm starting to wake up a little more I realize that I'm looking at a long black cloud coming over the house, directly over the house, coming from Redoubt and maybe there's something fishy going on.

At first I thought it was the volcano erupting, but then I realize that I'm hearing thunder coming out of the ash cloud. So I wake Justin up, and go start the computer to see what the volcano observatory says is going on, and then I go upstairs to see Dad who got up because of the dogs, and we look out and we can hear more thunder, so I went and woke mom up. She was funny, she said " is it worth getting up for?" and I said well yeah I think so, but its up to you. Eventually everyone got up, and it was SO COOL! Dad went out and got the paper. We asked him if he saw the lightning, because we'd seen some right over the neighbors house. He said he had, he said the whole thing was "eery, eery as hell". I think the lightning lasted for about 15 minutes, and then as soon as it stopped Justin and I went out to move his truck under cover. We wore our cowboy hats to keep the ash out of our hair and stuff, and we could hear it hitting the felt. It was much bigger pieces than when it happened last week. So about, I'd say 15 minutes after we get the truck moved and everything, the ash starts to fall, and it fell in sheets, like a blizzard of snow, only it was just ash. It was really heavy, we could hardly see the road, and all the big trucks going by slowed way way down as they went past the house. It also got completely dark here in the house, and it had been daylight, the sun was up, it was dark as could be. I hope you can see in the pictures what it looked like.

After general conference, Justin and I went north to Kenai/Soldotna to do a little grocery shopping, and to go to Home Depot to do a little scouting for our office/kitchen/bed buildings for the boat launch business. The ash stopped about 5 miles north of the house, and it was clear all the way up. After we went up there, we came home, and went south to check out the tubing hill, and the ash was pretty thick between here and town. It was very interesting. It was kind of hard on the lungs after a while, so I wore my mask on the way home. I kind of felt silly, but it stopped the burning so whatever works.