Best Buy here we come!

Well, as a number of you know, one of my hobbies is entering video contest.  I find these contests through a clearing house website and decide which ones look interesting, and then enter the ones I have ideas for.  There is usually a new contest added every couple of days.  The contest is basically an inexpensive way for a company to get a commercial made for their certain product.  I started entering these contest a year ago, and have promoted everything from Lipton Iced tea to Budget Rent-A-Cars, to Mountain Dew and Wachovia Banks.  In all, I have entered or have active on my You Tube site around 10 videos.  And I am just getting started.  I try to enter at least 2 a month, and if you are at all interested in seeing any of these videos, you can go to You-Tube and search for AlaskaDug.  

The cool thing about entering video contests as a hobby is every now and then you win!  I got first prize in a video contest for Tic Tacs.  Renee's brother is in it, and we filmed it on Matanuska Glacier.  The commercial is :30 sec long, and is suppose to reveal one's Tic Tac moment.  Now, I didn't win the grand prize (that was $10,000), but the first prize of $1500 in Best Buy gift certificates was nothing to sneeze at.  They came to me FedEx overnight and came in the form of 15, $100 Best Buy gift cards.  

I had fun playing with the gift cards.  It is not often one has the opportunity to spend free money on "fun" stuff.  The gift cards were great, had they sent me $1500 in cash, I may have been forced to pay bills or do something boring with the winnings.  But with gift cards, I had to spend the money at Best Buy.  He He, lets go shopping.

I must say, I was like a kid in a candy store.  I had originally planned out what I was going to purchase with the winnings.  Some of the stuff I was going to get in the store, but the majority of it I would get online from the Best Buy site.  This of course all went out the window when I got to the store.  I first headed straight for the digital cameras, wanting to replace the one I have had for almost a year.  I got a new shiny Olympus, it shoots 10.1 megapixel and can even take pictures underwater!  Next, I took a long shot and went to the appliance section.  I had seen online that Best Buy carries a Kegerator, but these were not available in the stores.  I thought I would ask a salesperson if they by chance had one in.  Well, I asked and . . . it seems that someone purchased on a few months ago and never picked it up.  Hmmm. . . a sign from above.  "I'll have it ready for you by the door Mr. Huntman", now this is living.  We spent the next hour and a half picking out items from the store on our shopping spree.  Guilt free shopping.  All of the fun, and none of the remorse, because it is all free!

Now, if there was any fly in the ointment, it was the decision to take the Jeep and not the truck.  I'll admit it, I said that we should take the Jeep.  I really didn't think that we were going to do much shopping.  I thought most of my haul would be from the online store.  Well, I paid the price in the end.  The kegerator just barely fit in the back, but that meant the rest of the stuff had to go in the one open seat next to Sam or, on my lap.  It wasn't the most comfortable ride home, but we made it.  

It is funny how quickly one can spend $1500 at an electronics store.  While I got a lot of nice things, I don't think it really looks like $1500 worth of stuff.  I guess I could have just bought a laptop and it would have even looked like less, or I could have bought 150 DVD's and it would have looked like a lot more.  I am happy with the decisions we made with the winnings.  Some stuff for fun, a few things for the house.

The total haul was:

1 kegerator (a mini fridge that holds beer kegs, and has a tap on the top)

1 Olympus 10.1 mega pixel digital camera

2 2 Gig cards for the digital camera

1 ipod compatible clock radio

1 set of wireless headphones (to listen to the TV when Renee goes to sleep)

1 Eureka Vacuum (for all of the vacuuming we do between when the housekeeper comes, ha ha, in reality we are replacing the vacuum we bought 11 years ago for our first apartment)

1 warrenty for the digital camera

and a bag of gummy Life Savers

And with the LifeSavers our total at Best Buy came to $1500 and one dollars.  It was a great day, one I won't soon forget.  And next time any one of you are over, I will have beer on tap, and clean floors.  Cheers! 

Lets try the boat

Well, I decided to have another go at dipnetting. My buddy Karl, who I went dipnetting with last weekend said that we should try dipnetting with his boat "Thumper". We were told by multiple sources that one should be able to catch 10X as many fish dipnetting from a boat, as oppose to the shore. So we got a boat, borrowed an 8hp four stroke motor (no 2 strokes on the Kenai during the month of July), and set off for the Kenai in search of fish!

We decided that the campground from last weekend was an excellent home base, so I made reservations there again. In addition to Karl and myself, my friend Billy and his son Ryan signed up to try dipnetting as well. The more the merrier. We got kind of a late start and got to Kenai around 8pm. Just enough time to check in, set-up Billy's tent, get the boat rigged for the morning and have a few beers and dinner before bed. Everyone set an alarm, the river opens for dipnetting at 6am!

Well, I was kind of surprised, but everyone got up at 5:45 to get an early start. I blame my getting up early on a bladder screaming to be emptied. None the less, we were up. Everyone got dressed in short order. Of course it was raining, but hey, we're fishing! Anybody got any coffee?

Now, Thumper is not a big boat. In fact, there was some concern as to weather the boat would be able to perform for us while dipnetting. We put our fears aside and launched the boat from a parking lot, not necessarily designed to launch boats. First, it was lift the boat off of the snowmachine trailer. Then carry the boat (still need coffee) 50 feet to a barrier designed to keep motor vehicles off of the beach (but not boats, I'm almost positive of that). Next, lift boat (looked a lot lighter on the trailer) over the barrier and down the bank (this bank must be made of an industrial lubricant) to the put in point. Oh, &@#$%, look at my @#$%ing leg! Almost to the put-in point, just seconds after this picture was taken, I stepped into a pit (something must have died in there) up to my mid thigh (the smell is killing me). What a way to start the day! The smell was bad enough, but the feeling of this slippery fish gut soaked mud, caked between my rubber Helly Hansen rain gear and my fleece inner layer was enough to make me wish I hadn't had anything for breakfast. To add insult to injury, as soon as this happened and we got the boat to the water, one of the dipnetters offered his advise that the area we just walked through was called "the Pit", Yeah, thanks buddy. Information of this sort would have been helpful BEFORE we walked through THE PIT. So now, with a sore back, stinky slimy right leg, and a bruised ego, I'm ready to go dipnetting.

Finally, we're in the water.  Billy and Ryan decided to see how the boat did with just two people before they tried fishing from it.  Not that they doubted it's seaworthiness, it's just that they thought the boat could sink.  Well, Karl and I first run turned up nothing.  We fished for about an hour.  We learned a lot that run however.  1) you need the motor on to keep the nose of the boat pointed in the direction you want it to go. 2) Trolling in the middle of the river will get you no fish, one must be 15-20 feet off of the bank.  3) Don't "gun" the motor while in really shallow water.  Rocks are harder than the prop, and a replacement prop for a Honda 5hp motor costs around $80 bucks! (Yes, we learned that lesson the hard way)

Our second run went a little better.  We caught the fish you see in the picture.  Looking at the picture now, I see it is a humpy.  Probably the only humpy caught that day by anyone.  Not that that is a good thing.  We were out to get silver salmon.  The humpy or dog salmon is typically not really eaten, but as the name implies, used to feed dogs.  It is funny now looking back, I wondered why the fillet was much lighter than the other fish.  duh

We started dipnetting at 6:15.  At that time we were the only people on the water.  By about 11:00 there were probably 150 boats.  On one hand, this made it easier to see where to go, and where the people were catching the fish.  On the other hand, all of these boats moving around (all of them bigger than the boat we were currently fishing from) created big waves that threatened to get us wet or worse, sunk.  Neither happened thankfully, we just had to be extra careful manoeuvring around the river.

While we were in the line up in the above photo.  The boat in front of us caught two fish and the boat behind us caught one.  We of course caught nothing.  I am not sure what we were doing wrong, maybe it was our nets, who knows, but whatever it was, the fish were not making it into our nets!  

Here is a fisherman hard at work.  Ryan and I at this point (the third and fourth run of the day) each had a net in the water on opposite sides of the boat.  And although I really wanted to catch a fish or many fish, I really was more concerned about Ryan catching his first fish of the season.  We were both trying very hard to catch a fish, which really just entails having ones net in the water.  You can't win if you don't play philosophy.  So we motored up and down the river, watching people all around us catching fish.  

Fish on!  Ryan finally got a nice silver salmon.  First fish of the season for him.  Good, now we can go home.  Had it been warm and sunny like the previous weekend, we definitely would have stayed til it got dark.  As it was, it was gloomy and rainy.  We had been at it since 6:15 and had 4 fish to show for it.  We motored back slowly ( only a 5hp motor, all of the other boats had at least a 35hp) and made our way back to shore.  Billy decided to stay at the bridge, he judged that Thumper would probably be able to handle 3 people, but 4 would be pushing it.  He helped us get the boat to shore, and up onto the trailer.  Luckily we now all knew about The Pit, and avoided it like the plague.  My leg still stunk from earlier, but now at least the mud was dry.  It felt more like a giant scab that was cracking as I walked, as oppose to the ooze that it had been earlier.  None-the-less, over all we had a great day.  Now it was time to clean some fish and then get some lunch.

Total count, 3 fish.  This doesn't count the one Ryan caught, the total is four if you include that one.  6:15 until around 2:00, three fish.  Well at least we know that we are not great providers of fish for our families.  We should just stick to doing what we do best and that is continue to get our families fish from the grocery store.  I won't be quitting my day job anytime soon.

This was our best catch of the day.  This was a good size silver, and probably weighed in around 8-9 lbs.  This picture is funny, because the darned thing got stiff, or as Dad used to say "hard as a carp".  Karl was able to hold it up by the tail and well, it just kind of balanced there.  

Now, as I stated earlier I am not an outdoors person, I just pretend to be one.  Sticking to this mantra, I kept busy doing "important tasks", as Karl cleaned the fish.  I have never cleaned a fish in my life, and while I am sure my day will come when I have to clean a fish, this was not the day.  

There were several other people cleaning fish as we were at the fish cleaning station.  There were two guys that came in after us and had literally 4 or 5 coolers of fish.  I inquired as to were they got all of that fish, thinking to myself the must have raided several grocery stores to get that mush fish.  No, they were fishing the same place we were.  They even got a late start (they started around 11:00), and they ended an hour before us.  Their total haul, 33 fish.  Well there you have it, 33 fish to our 3, and it only took them 3 hours to do it.  I guess in light of this,  there is a bright side. Had we caught 33 fish, I would have had to man up, get dirty and clean some fish.  I guess I had better think twice before I agree to go hunting with these guys.  Oh, well, we'll be back next year, even though the way we are going our fish came in around $40 a lb.  (camping $52, gas $120, replacement prop for outboard $80, dipnetting on the Kenai, priceless).  Next year though, I'm using a bigger net.

A better way to save fish!

Well, I didn't catch a ton of fish, but it was enough to justify buying a vacuum sealer. A vacuum sealer is just one of those necessary things Alaskan's buy.

We got the FoodSaver brand vacuum sealer. Fred Meyer had this brand for sale at a reasonable price. We didn't get the smallest one available, just the middle of the road one. It was easy to set-up and came with a roll of bags. I think that there was a coupon for two more rolls of bags when you presented it with check out. Anyway, we have three rolls of bags. More than enough for three fish.

Now, I am not really an outdoorsman, I just play one on this blog. This being the case, I really had no idea what to do with the fillets of fish sitting on my counter in Ziploc bags. So I started with my typical line of questioning: "Renee, Honey?" Response: "Those aren't my fish" "Zach?" Response: "Spiderman, I'm hungry,eeewwww" "Sam?" Response: "sound of diaper being freshly loaded", I think that I had better stick to the fish and figure it out myself.

Alright, step one, take slimy, gooey fish out of the bag. Ok, done! Step two, pick up said fish and rinse in the sink. "Renee!" Response: "Not my fish", ok, I'm really on my own, put on gloves and rinse fish. Three fish is actually quite a bit of fish when you see it all in your sink. Ok done! Now, how does this vacuum thing-a-ma-jig work. Call Dustin; "Ring ring, You've reached the voicemail box of . . . " Dang, I guess I have to read the directions.

The directions were actually pretty simple, kind of. Put the bag roll in the machine, pull out a bit of the bag, close the lid, hit the seal button and bingo, you have the first end of your bag. Now open the lid and pull the "bag" far enough to cover your fish. Use the handy cutter thing for the bag and bam, you now have a bag. Ok, the hard part, go get a fillet of fish, cut it in sections small enough to fit into you bag. Be careful to watch out for those little tiny bones that tend to want to poke into your bag and make a hole and let in the air. Put your fish in the bag, put the open end of the bag in the handy sealing area and close the lid. Now the fun part, push the button that says seal and suck (or something like that), and watch the magic begin. "BBBBBBBBBBBBBbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" "the sound of plastic melting", "light goes off", open lid "slight sound of air rushing in to fill a vacuum", ok, not bad, only 20 more to go. I had better do this with a beverage. Another outdoors person thing, beer and fish.

Last one!, My little helper "supervised" the operation and also helped by not helping too much. We got through the fish in about an hour. We took a break for popcorn and I think we had to draw something (I think it was a fish) at one point. But, when we got done, the fillets looked store bought and ready for the freezer. We will get some out in the next week or so, salmon is just awesome when it is fresh. For now though, everything is processed and ready for the next time we get some fish. That fishing license is good til the end of the year and there is room in the freezer so I had better get busy. See you on the river!

Kenai Dip netting Part 2

The next morning we woke up to Blue skies. I heard that it was raining in Anchorage, but not in Kenai! Glad that we were hear to take advantage of what little summer we have had.

A funny picture of Zach eating a pudding cup.

Renee and baby Sam took in a few rays of sunshine on the sandy beach. The temperature was pretty nice, a slight breeze off the ocean however, made it necessary to keep a jacket on. All in all, it was a very nice day.

Now I don't know how the thermostat in little kids work, but the water in the above picture is cold! Zach started out just stepping in the water with his boots on. Then he took his boots and socks off. Then it was wading up to his knees. Before you know it he is up to his chest in the cold ocean water. He'd still be out there if I would have let him. He just doesn't seem to get cold. His lips may be quivering, but he still, if given the chance would go back out in the water. He sure had a good time, and I eventually got him out of the water with out to much drama. We'll be back next year I'm sure, but then I'll bring a wet suit for him.

Here is another shot of the dipnetters getting the fish. I tried again throughout the day to catch some fish. One gets caught up in the stories of people catching 85 fish in an hour. These stories are always followed by the phrase, "if only you were here on Tuesday!" There were some people catching fish. It just wasn't me catching the fish. I don't know if it was the fact that they had bigger nets, they may have been trying harder, or maybe they smelled better, who knows. The end of the day fish total for me was 0, better luck next time. But, honestly it really didn't make a whole lot of difference to me. It was a beautiful day, we were down on the beach with friends and I had a cold beer in my hand. What more can you really ask for in life?

Sammy was having a good time too. The breeze was constant all day, so we made sure he was insulated against the coolness in the air. His little pod thing worked out well on the beach. It kept him out of the sun, and out of the sand.

After a hard day of "fishing", we went back to the campground, had some dinner and turned in relatively early. The next morning we were treated to blue skies for a second day! We decided that the group had had enough fishing and we would do something else, away from the crowds. We then ate a leisurely breakfast with Laurie and Karl, then packed up and headed out of town. I think that the above picture is really cute. Both Sam and Zach's facial expression is too funny. Of the 10 pictures I took of them sitting on the sleeping bags, this was by far the best one.

Here is our campsite. It worked out really well. There were no services at the site, but we really didn't need any. The campground is called "Diamond M" and it offers free restrooms and showers, a fish cleaning station, coffee shop and a porch with a nice view of the Kenai. We could have stayed on the beach for free, but it was nice having a place to park the camper and not have to worry about getting stuck in the sand, or being surrounded by 2000 of our closest friends. The quietness of the campground at night was great, especially after a long day of fishing.

On the road, back to town. We decided to take advantage of the day, and go halfway back to Anchorage and then stop at Granite Creek campground. Great idea. Unfortunately, the closer we got to Anchorage, the worse the weather looked. By the time we stopped it was drizzling a little. It was not too bad, but far from the sunny skies we had experienced the day before.

Zach didn't really care one way or the other, what the weather was doing. He found a stream, and some rocks and started throwing.

Just a cute picture of Zach standing on a stump. I need get more pictures of Sam on this blog. It will be a little easier once he can stand on his own. He would have had a hard time balancing on the log.

Kenai Dipnetting Part 1

Dipnetting on the Kenai. How would one describe this to someone who has never experienced this particular activity. Think, Woodstock and fishing, that gives the outsider at least a glimpse into what it is like dipnetting on the Kenai.

This admittedly was my first experience dipnetting. Now, I am not a big outdoors person, I enjoy outdoor activities (camping, kayaking, snowboarding, hiking), but I have never been good at fishing, hunting and/or other food gathering activities. The one exception to this rule was the time Renee and I went clamming down in Ninilchik last year. We had so much fun, caught our limit of clams in two hours and the cleaning of the clams was something we could master relatively quickly. Clamming certainly opened up the possibility of the two of us catching food in an easy manner, not for sport, but for subsistence. So, when we were invited to go dipnetting (I will describe the process in a minute), I thought great! Lots of fish in little or no time. I had just recently heard tales of people catching 30, 40 even 85 fish in as little as 2 hours. Now, that's what I'm talkin' about!

OK, so what is dipnetting. In the above photo you can see the types of nets that are used in the dipnetting activity. The "net" portion must be made of gill net. This differs from the typical landing net in that the net is thinner and larger holes. The larger holes are designed to catch the fish by the gills, there-by trapping it. The gill net is attached to a long pole with a hoop. The maximum size the hoop can be is 5 ft in diameter. There are of course variations on this theme, this is Alaska after all, some are square, some are round and there were even octagon shaped nets. The handles were all different lengths as well. I saw 8 footers to 20 footers and everything in between. Some schools of thought was that the further out you get, the closer you will be to the fish, other people took the approach that the fish were close to shore (I did feel them bumping my legs through the waders). The main problem with the long pole is that when you take out on the shore, you have this nearly unmanageable pole you are trying to maneuver on a very crowded beach.

Here is my fish cleaning station that I built for this trip. I used an old piece of scrap plywood and some aluminum strapping I had laying around. The cutting surface is a piece of plexi-glass. I put a place mat with storm cloud identification under the Plexiglas, so one can learn about cloud formations as they clean their fish. The cleaning station worked really well. At first I thought it may be too small, it wasn't, the slightly smaller size actually helped to keep the fish in while cleaning it.

Here I am getting suited up. Our friend Karl let me borrow this pair of chest waders. You have to have chest waders for dipnetting as you'll see in a minute. The water is very cold and it is salty coming in from the ocean. I forgot my fleecy pants so I wore jeans underneath the waders. This would normally be fine, but unfortunately these waders had a couple of pinhole leaks in them. I noticed this fact fairly early on as I was getting into the water. I survived, it wasn't that cold.

So once you are chest deep in the water and your net is out, you are ready to catch a fish. Now there seem to be two schools of though on the best method of dipnetting for fish. I was expecting everyone to just stand in the water and let the fish swim up stream and into the net. There were plenty of people doing this, and I even did it for a while. I found however, that when the tide was going in or out (which is quit often) and not at slack tide, it is very hard to hold the net against the current. The current must have been running around 4 kts. Now, that doesn't sound like a lot, but the net had a lot of resistance and I had not eaten my Wheaties that morning. So, I chose option two, which initially looked like a lot more work than standing, but actually turned out to be (in my opinion) much more interactive. The second method of dipnetting is (for lack of a better term) the walking method. The basic premise here is that you walk in the water, with your net, in the direction the current is flowing. When it is coming in, you walk upstream, when it is going out, you walk downstream, when it is slack, you follow what everyone else is doing. I found that it was much easier to hold the net perpendicular to the shore when you are walking with the current. You really only need one hand to hold the very end of the net handle. Most people had empty water jugs tied on the far end of their nets. The net would just sort of float with the current. There are two more reasons I like the walking method. 1). it is a change in scenery, and more importantly 2). when your drysuit leaks, the walking can help to warm you up. I felt like a soggy bottom boy, but at least I wasn't freezing.

Now, the walking method certainly takes a fair amount of coordination. Think of a large conveyor right in the river. You have dipnetters in the water walking up/down stream, while on the shore, 15 feet away, you have the fisherman with their nets, just out of the water, walking the opposite direction down the beach, getting ready to get back in the river. I would say that all of this happens in 200 yards. The length of the "fishing" zone is determined by how many dipnetters are "standing" above and below this "walking zone". Now to throw a wrench in the equations, is when you catch a fish, you immediately turn your net up, to trap the fish, then you head for shore. You don't pass go or collect $200, just get to shore, keep your net low and hope you don't lose your fish. It is kind of confusing as people are in and out of the water. Catching fish and deciding to fish a particular part of the "loop" by cutting in and out. It sounds like it would be hard to fish this way, but after two loops, I was one of the regulars.

Well, for all of this work, I was able to meet my goal of catching a fish. I in fact caught 3 fish. The limit is 45 for the head of the household with everyone else in the family eligible for 10 each, putting the total for our family at 75 fish. Well, I missed that goal, but honestly, I wouldn't know what to do with that many fish anyway. Three is just fine. They will probably last us till next fishing season. If not, I know that the Safeway has all of the fish I need.

The fish I keep referring to are Red Salmon or Sockeye Salmon. These fish probably weighed around 6 to 8 lbs. The species has been preferred for canning due to the rich orange-red color of the flesh. More than half of the sockeye salmon caught today are sold frozen. Sockeye also tends to fetch a higher price than other salmon when sold fresh, as they are considered the most flavorful and flexible of the family. When smoked, Sockeye has a stronger flavour and firmer texture than Coho salmon. Sockeye salmon is a popular sportfish for fly fishermen. It can be caught on a fly-rod when it returns to freshwater to spawn and is an acrobatic and powerful fighter. The end of day 1 netted 3 fish for our family. We'll try our luck tomorrow, we have all day. I'm hoping for good weather.

Kenai Lake Camping Trip, Part 3

Well, they can't all be beautiful days. Sunday was rainy, a good day to sleep in. We decided not to try our luck with the boats and kids in the rain.

The new awning worked well on the camper. It kept the stuff we wanted to keep dry, dry, and even helped keep us out of the rain as we loaded the camper.

Not everyone wanted to stay out of the rain. Zach and Nora preferred to be in the rain. This is one of the main reasons quality rainware is essential in Alaska. Boots are important too. Notice Zach and Nora sporting their new ExtraTuffs. With their fancy rain outfits, they are ready for anything.

Well, lets see . . . cold breakfast on a wet picnic table with two wet kids . . . or hot breakfast at the Sunrise Inn in a dry dining room? Hmmmm . . . Sunrise, here we come.

Everyone had a great big breakfast. It was well worth the money to sit and eat a warm breakfast out of the rain. This summer has been one of the wettest and coldest on record. Right now the so-called summer of '08 is on pace to produce the fewest days ever recorded in which the temperature in Anchorage managed to reach 65 degrees. That unhappy record was set in 1970, when we only made it to the 65-degree mark, which many Alaskans consider a nice temperature, 16 days out of 365. This year, however -- with the summer more than half over -- there have been only seven 65-degree days so far. And that's with just a month of potential "balmy" days remaining and the forecast looking gloomy.

Here is one bright spot in Alaska. The flowers on the deck of the Sunrise were really cool. The kids pauses for a minute to have their pictures taken with them. Then they were off again, running around and having fun.

All good things must come to an end. It was a fun long weekend. We will be sure to put Quartz Creek Campground on our list for next year. Alright, just 4 more work days until the next adventure.

Kenai Lake Camping Trip, Part 2

I had no sooner called it a day and put my head down on my pillow, when I hear the unmistakable sound of a diesel Ford pull up to our site. It's Karl & Laurie! We had talked to them earlier in the day, and Laurie had told me they were trying to get out of town, and that they would at the campground that night. Well, not to be pessimistic, but I saw how hard it was for us to get out of town. Karl and Laurie were bringing their a camper down on it's "maiden voyage", and bringing Laurie's parents down camping. Karl was doing some major repairs to the camper, the last I had seen it, the entire back siding was pealed back for repairs. Anyway, Kudos to Karl and Laurie, we certainly could not have pulled that off.

The next day was kind of overcast in the morning, but quickly turned for the better. The best part of any Saturday is not waking up early. Sam is the only unknown variable in the equation. On this day however, fortune was with us and we got to sleep until 8:30. I always sleep well in the camper. It gives one a very cozy feeling. The camper may be small, but there is more than enough room for me to spread out. I'll include some inside pictures on a future post.

Here is Karl & Laurie's "new" camper. It had been sitting over at Karl's sisters place, unused for a number of years. I was skeptical at first on how it might work out, but by the time it made its way into the campground, it was good to go. It is nice having someone else in our circle of friends with a camper, that can just pick up and "go" on the weekends. I think that the camper will work out for them just fine.

Both Zach and Nora are starting to get into riding bicycles. The campground was the first place Zach had ridden his bike outside of our driveway. He likes to go fast! I had trouble catching him at one point. He was ahead of me going like a cannon ball out of a cannon, when he started to lose it. He had a helmet on, but I was picturing the worst. He recovered and kept going, oblivious to the pain of falling at that speed. This was also the first time that Zach had ridden with someone else. It was fun to see the two kids ride together. They are at about the same riding level, so neither one got board riding with the other. Every time Zach rides he gets a little better. Not too much longer and those training wheels will be gone for good. Or at least until Sam is ready for them.

Laurie's parents were good sports. Zach and Nora definitely have a lot of energy, and when they get together it is multiplied! "Grandpa" got a workout when his walker went from medical device, to kid hauling cart. They must have walked for half an hour. It was very cute.

The day kept getting nicer and nicer. Bye the time we got to the lake there was no wind, the temps were in the upper 50s' and the clouds were beginning to dissipate. We had two kayak's, and my Zodiac to play with. I didn't bring my outboard motor due to restrictions on the lake. I knew this ahead of time and asked Karl to bring his electric trolling motor. It worked great. Actually, for our situation, it worked better than the outboard. The electric motor was silent with no smell. This coincided well with the sea kayaks. The trolling motor didn't get the Zodiac going too fast, but going fast was not what the day was all about anyway.

It was actually starting to get warm sitting in the middle of the lake, looking at the mirror like reflection of the mountains. This has to be one of the best pictures I have taken in a long time. It was just a really pretty day. We were able to explore a small portion of the lake. The lake is huge though. It is 28 miles long, but probably only a mile wide at its widest point. There were several rafts with outboards that were getting on the lake the same time we did. They disappeared very quickly after launching. We didn't see them for about an hour and a half. They must have caught some fish a few miles out and then motored on back. The large size of the lake is great for not seeing any other boats around. But, this also affects the size of the waves during a storm. I have heard that this lake gets nasty when it is blowing out.

A rare moment indeed. It is unusual to get the 4 of us together for a photo, let alone a photo while we are camping. Everyone has their eyes open too. The stars must be in alignment!

We were able to have a nice fire. The bugs were not to bothersome, so we were able to eat all of our meals outside. The sun sure made it nice as well. I heard that is rained most of the time in Anchorage, so it is nice to be where it is dry. So far we have been lucking out on the weekends. The camping trips up to this point have been dry. It always seems to be raining during the week, but I really don't mind that. It makes it easier to be at work!

Who's the Baby! I get a little "Daddy Time", with baby Sam. He really does very well on our camping adventures. He hardly fusses, sleeps most of the night, and doesn't ask for seconds with the s-mores. He keeps eyeing his older brother. I think that he is picking up hints of how to get in trouble when he gets older. But for now, he is just a joy to be around.

Very happy baby. In many ways he is a carbon copy of Zach. Such a good kid. I guess we'll keep him.