6/24 - 6/25

So this weekend Amanda had a lot of office work to do and somehow she even found time to clean the whole house...as we all know she is a keeper.  We both got to catch up with folks this weekend and had the pleasure to hear all sorts of great news. (little baby Allred due 12/18, close friends wedding 5/19 and another close friend giving a ring to a special lady).  Jay got some combat fishing in at Ship Creek in downtown Anchorage.  there were close to 1000 people shoulder to shoulder, my 8 foot pole could touch 2 people on either side of me, I have never fished like this before, having to time a cast with the folks next to you and the folks on the other side of the river.  The muddly silt lining this river is thigh deep in spots  and it is tricky, however the salmon were there.  I had 4 hook ups and landed 2.  Both were big in my book (15 lbs) but I tossed them back (can only keep one King Salmon a day) to try to land the 40-60lbs fish that were in the river.  like they say "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"  I ended the weekend without anything to bring home.  However, since I was landing fish, folks were asking me for info on how to fish (Ha!)  Had a blast finally catching fish.  Sunday evening I found an inflatable canoe on craigslist which we can't wait to use.

 Amanda making a pass on the Park Highway.

 This is Ship Creek outside our office.  This section is off limits to fishing.  Sure is tempting when there are 30 salmon stacked up in the pool  (notice the shadows in the center of the pic, toward the bottom where the water gets deep)

Most of the river running up here is done with white water rafts or Aluminum Jet Boats.  So despite our love for traditional canoes or hard body kayaks, this is going to be the perfect vessel for us.

Funny River. No really, that's what it's called :-)

But the funniest thing about it was how Jay and I were dressed all weekend.  We headed back down to the Kenai Pennisula to do some camping and fishing. Since it rained during Memorial Day weekend when we were down there we thought we'd give it another try. Weather guy said sunny skies all weekend...but the rain found us...all weekend. But we still made the most of it. Jay got some tarps so we are official Valley rednecks now. We had a whole campground to ourselves and a whole river...and we still didn't catch a damn thing. Jay got close though! He said he had a bite, but it got away...same old story ;-)

 pretty blue glacial runoff

 This is fishing in Alaska. We were too intimidated to join this group and we were a little concerned that the local clinic had a sign out front that said "Special on hook removal" !!

 We got it all up just in time for the rain to start..

 Rain.

 Not gonna lie, kinda like ths pic. Might submit it to the Sportsman's Warehouse circular LOL

 Way out there. Jay's an old pro at the river wading...

 Although I look like a cheerful lunatic, I fell in the river a minute ago. Hip waders are very heavy when they are full of water.

 Ok, I fell in the river twice. But it was pouring out so we were soaked anyway LOL.

Hanging out under the tarp, throwin back some drinkies. This is about 1:00am. This was the weekend of the summer solstice, but we missed the midnight sun. You might have read that I mentioned it rained quite a bit this weekend...WTF.

Prudhoe Bay

 Last week Amanda flew to the top of the world (70 degrees N' Lat) to Prudhoe Bay.  This is where all the oil reserves are on the Arctic Ocean (which was still frozen).  Not much to see but a work site and flat inhospitable landscape.

 Derrick

ManCamp - these are the accommodations.  Which are just trailers (conex) stacked next to each other.  however the food is free and all you can eat.

Kodiak Island

 Jay headed to Kodiak Island for 2 days to work for the U.S. Coast Guard.  There was a 5.2 earthquake in Anchorage that Amanda experienced and the week of rain has finally come to an end.  Enjoy the pics

 This pic is from a flight a few weeks ago.

 All rescue operations for the Bearing Sea are based out of Coast Guard Station - Kodiak

This is an old machine gun turret from WWII overlooking the town.

Lookin' Like Locals

We had a giant hike today (see Jay's Blog below!) but we had a pretty silly Saturday evening that I figured I'd share. Our backyard "lawn" is comin' in nice...I don't think we planted grass though, check it out LOL. The left over stumps from the previous renter's finally P'd us off so we did what any reasonable and educated members of Redneck Society would do and cracked some beers and got out the ax.

 Watch out now...

Like legit, check this "lawn"out. I'm starting to think we spread bush seed all over the place.

 This is what grass should look like. Jay used a mechanical hand mower on this the other day. Looks awesome...soo much work.

 Oh gee, looks like some empty spaces at the table for some visitors!!! And look Indiana Jones stopped by!

 We decided to contribute to the neighborhood fires (they're all burning trash though) and burned our freshly axed stumps.Having a fire at 10pm round here doesn't have quite the same campfire feel as back East LOL. Still pretty light out :-)

 Yay vegetables in the greenhouse! And yea, we planted half of it with seeds and the other half with sprouts. Can you guess which side is which? And can you tell where I planted seeds?...my green thumb is crap.

Worshipping the smores Gods. My favorite place in the whole world no matter where in the world I am. Beer, fire, smores.

Lazy Mountain

Lazy Mountain might be the name of this hike, however it is anything but.  It was not a long hike but the first 1.5 miles was straight up on our tiptoes then it leveled out to just "going up".  The views of the valley were great and we have both vowed not to hike this mountain again (it was just one of those times we got kicked).  enjoy the pics.

Toksook Bay, Ak

So Jay had to fly to Bethel, AK and then charter a plane to Toksook Bay for work.  This was an easy job, the logistics of shipping Hazardous Waste from a remote Yupik village of 300 people was not so easy.

This is our plane.  While in Bethel I was approached by a producer for the TV show "Flying Wild Alaska"  they wanted to film our day, we could not get any answers from our clients boss or mine so the answer was no.  I did let the camera man ride with us to film the flight.  Hey, might have been my last moments...might as well document it.

I have only flown in small planes a handful of times.  This is really flying, you are tossed around, you feel every bump, and we landed in a crosswind on a gravel runway on the Bearing Sea.  I was also to hold to hold my breakfast down too.

 Toksook Bay, AK

 The small clean up job for the National Guard

 My helper

 Riding on top of HazMat on the back of a 4-wheeler.  No Cops, Troopers or DOT round these parts.

 Lets fill this death trap of a plane with Flammable Liquids.

Back in Bethel, all the "plumbing" is above ground because of the permafrost.  However it just leads to an open air pit out in the tundra.  I left Anchorage at 7am and was back in Anchorage at 10pm., sure was a strange day.  Seeing these remote places is really humbling that "American" citizens live like this.  I'm not sure if I'll ever get used to the little planes but it really was not a bad flight.  Back to the office...can't wait to work remote again.