St. James Bay Cabin

We've had an eventful couple of days lately.  So for those of you who have been patiently awaiting my return to blog-landia, thank you--yes, all three of you, thank you!  I hadn't planned to take a leave of absence for a week, but that should tell you how busy and crazy things have been.  But I'm happy to report that it's been the good kind of busy and crazy!  And I'm equally happy to say that all this busy-ness means I've got LOTS of content for future blog posts.  So if you're a frequent reader, stay tuned for more soon.

This afternoon we returned from a one night camping trip to the St. James Bay cabin.  Not too far from Juneau but only accessible by boat or float plane.  Since we don't have a float plane handy we took our boat.  :)  And fortunately the weather was even better than forecasted.  But unfortunately, I wasn't feeling all that fabulous.  Mostly just feeling tired from being 8 1/2 months pregnant.  But fortunately my brother-in-law joined us, so he did all the extra boat details with Shawn and I was able to take it easy.  Unfortunately, my sister-in-law had to work and couldn't join us.  Next time we'll have to plan it better.  Of course, there probably won't be a next time when I'll be boat/cabin camping at 8 1/2 months pregnant with baby #3.

The other unfortunate part about not feeling well and going along for camping anyway was that I didn't take hardly any pictures.  So that meant the boys took most of the pictures.  And now that we're back, I'm wishing we had taken more.  I guess it goes to show you how quickly things were moving along on our trip that we didn't even have extra moments to grab the camera. 

For example, this is our best family photo.  The little missy is in there too, just on the other side of me.  Why we didn't attempt at taking a great family photo at the cabin is a mystery to me.  But this is us ferrying over to the cabin from our boat.

I wish I could say that I took a stunning photo of the cabin in all it's natural majesty, but instead we have a decent photo of...the outhouse.  Taken from inside the cabin.  

(Boys, boys, boys...apparently there's a story behind this one.  I was just puzzled when I found it on the CF card.)

But I was able to capture a photo of our delicious dinner and our grill master.  We had Blackjack moose steaks (a new marinade recipe I tried), corn on the cob, and my new favorite salad, Cherry Tomato Salad.

Then some pics of our dining view

To the right...

straight ahead...

and to the left...such a gorgeous place!

In the morning, Shawn was the first one up and saw a friendly humpback whale come into the bay.  We also saw about 4 on our boat ride back to Juneau.

A nice little iconic Alaskan photo taken by my husband.

And my brother-in-law, catching what turned into being his breakfast.  It's true, he went with a dolly varden fish instead of chocolate chip pancakes and farm fresh eggs!  Silly, I know.

We all had a great time and are glad we went.  The kids had a blast and kept saying, "This is the best camping trip ever." or "I wish we could stay for 5 days!"  We'll definitely try to make this a yearly trip.  And I will definitely try to take some more pictures the next time!