Alaska Day 18: Tutka Lake Lodge

 

                                      DB continues to channel her inner Joel

 

Day 18: Tutka Bay Lodge

Weather Report: Lunch on the deck weather

Quote of the Day:  Hey, I’m from the Bay Area also, do you know Vallejo?

It’s a Covid world: New couple arrives from Winterlake Lodge (our next and last stop on this trip). She is clearly 7 or 8 months pregnant. Hmmmm…mystery cleared up: They were booked for last year and of course got postponed.

 

THB and DB are up early and decide to go to the main lodge building and sit upstairs until breakfast. OOOOPS, the 16-year-old Miramonte student has been up there for 3 hours taking an on-line course (or two?  Or three?). So we sit downstairs and listen in on phone calls made by the couple departing this morning. Maybe we should have gone back to our cabin.

Breakfast at a table by ourselves. That’s because last night after dinner we asked to dine the next night by ourselves and that message got through so much that it means we are having all three meals by ourselves today. And it is lovely…a quiet meal with a very interesting person! We always knew the steady group activities of the first two weeks would wear us down.

Mini-blueberry muffins...all hat and no cattle?

 

THB and DB go out at 9am with M for a lovely kayak. The water is very flat, no wind, easy paddling and a close-up view of the otters with babies.

Otter with baby; THB has never seen this in the Elkhorn Slough

Lunch on the deck! Salmon on barley rice and dessert delivered by the pastry chef, Jackie. THB and DB have a nice discussion about her background; she starts off with “do you know Vallejo?” (THB and DB do) and from their quickly discusses how she got to Tutka Lake Lodge. She now seems around 24, not 15, and started cooking right out of high school. Chocolate rice pudding is excellent, eaten too fast to remember to take a pic.

Our afternoon hike with M is a short boat ride away. About a half mile into the ride THB sees something fly by the window heading for the water. A stunning blue bird...what was that, THB asks...as the boat makes a U-turn to see what just happened (who sez THB has bad eyes!)

Who new windex bottles could fly?

Uphill on a trail for about 15 minutes, levelling out and down to Tutka Lake. Return with a brief stop in a marshy meadow, moose heaven (sorry, no close encounters with mooses).

 

The visitor's center at the trailhead

Small smudges of sticky glue on meadow floor turns out to be a carnivorous plant

 

A day lily about to bloom, and here is the result below

mushroom, first of its type seen on the trip

DB goes for her second massage (THB donates his to the cause) and a lovely  dinner outside.

Halibut crudo with gnocchi...THB almost forgot to take a pic

Warm bread and butter

 

lamb with gnocchi, lovely with the pinot noir

Scallops

cornbread, honey dots, honey ice cream, unbelievable

After dinner THB and DB and a few others (20-year-old and the 8 year-old), M leads us over to the Widgen. It has along back-story, basically the folly of a local guy 20 years ago: hauling a boat into a small inlet and converting it to a “residence” of sorts. The owners of Tutka Lake Lodge bought it and an adjacent house and converted the boat to…to…to what? It has no running water (there’s a nearby outhouse), putting in electricity and a 2^nd and 3^rd story, and divvying up the space to contain one large “meeting” space and smaller rooms.

 

So what is this monstrosity now? Pre-Covid it was a cooking school (with water hauled in) Now it is a staff residence with great wifi. The staff uses Lodge facilities to take showers and wash up.

 

It basically left THB speechless. M and the other staff member on the tour (assigned to the 8-year old) seemed really pleased with their accommodations.