Traveling in Style!

I saw a huge motor home slowing down in front of our house. It was Yev, one of our boating buddies. He and his family flew down to California this summer where they bought the motor home (huge, with 3 slide outs) as well as an Osprey boat. They then drove the RV up and pulled the boat with it. They are enjoying both of them and will sell them mid summer. They did the same last year and made enough money to pay for their whole trip as well as a new engine for their Bayliner 28. We pay a premium for items in Alaska, it is a long way to get them here!

Yev was home alone for the week. His wife, Victoria, was traveling for work and his boys, Alex and Max, are in Russia for the summer. Yev's Dad came for a visit and took the boys back to Russia and in August, Victoria's Dad will bring them back. Alex is in the Russian Immersion program in Anchorage, so has a great learning experience being in Russia for the summer! Yev was laughing that Max doesn't know much Russian; he was picturing a little Russian looking boy in a small Russian town yelling out perfect English. What a great experience for both of them.

Hot Yoga Buddy

My hot yoga buddy, Robin, is leaving Halliburton. Today is her last day, so we had a surprise dessert send off for her. Robin's two kids are exactly the same age as Zach and Sam, so we have enjoyed comparing notes on this and that. Robin is moving to Fort Collins, Colorado with her finance, Ricardo. They are getting married on July 4th in Skagway, Alaska on the drive down to Colorado.

Jane, Klinton, Ryan.

Sandy, Ray, Wayne, Mike, Jerry, Greg, Robert, Lani, Robin & Neal.

Robin, Accounting Manager, and me. I will have to find a new buddy for hot yoga classes!

Funky Hair Day

It is theme week at school. We forgot to have Sam wear his pajamas on Monday or a hat on Tuesday. Now Wednesday he wasn't going to let us forget.....crazy hair day! Bring on the gel and purple spray!

Tony Knowles Trail

It was a beautiful day out. We stayed home and did projects around the house yesterday, so were ready to get out and about today. In all the years we have lived here, we have never done a bike ride from Earth Quake Park to downtown. It is a great trail and was full of bikers, runners & walkers out soaking up the sunshine.

I decided to try my kick bike on today's adventure. I was somewhat concerned that I could be the "weak link" on the trip today. The bike and I did great....and for all the teasing that I got from Doug about being so sore in the morning that I wouldn't be able to walk, I wasn't too bad. I thought my legs might hurt, but it was more the front abs! The bike was fine as we weren't traveling very fast due to lots of people on the trail. The kick bike doesn't go at a sustained speed as fast as a standard bike, so I wouldn't take it on a long ride. It was a fun change of pace.

Zach did great....he is a riding machine!

Watching the remote control sailboats on a lake near downtown.

We had packed a picnic lunch and enjoyed it and playing at a park near downtown before heading back to the truck.

Doug and Sam. Next year Sam will probably be ready to peddle on the tag along attachment behind Doug or I.

A nice view of downtown from Earth Quake Park.

Strawberry

Sam was pretty excited to find this morning that we didn't eat all the chocolate covered strawberries last night! Nothing like a chocolate strawberry with breakfast! Breakfast of champions!

PWS trip part one

I have a strict policy of never leaving Alaska in the summer. I put up with the dark, the cold and the icy roads all winter so summer is for playing! That being said, a trip to Chicago and Denver did sound inviting, but . . . so did a week on the boat with no kids. Therefore I decided to stay in Alaska while the family headed south on their big summer adventure. I had plans of my own and they included solitude in the playground called Prince William Sound!

I was headed out for 9 days on the boat. The trip was broken up into four parts. Act one - Solo for three days sightseeing, shrimping and figuring out how everything works on my boat. Act two - Three day trip to Chenega Bay with my counter part at EPA for a landfill inspection. Act three - One day of "team building" with my solid waste co-workers. And finally Act four - A two day tour of PWS with my buddy Tony and his Father-In-Law Rich.

I had two days of work and then it was off to the Sound. I packed in the evenings and finished up small projects on the boat. One of the neighbors noticed I was working on the boat quite late and correctly guessed that the family must be out of town. Despite the late hours and long list of projects that needed to get done, I finished in time to head out of town Saturday afternoon and was able to catch the 5:30 tunnel to Whittier.

A rainbow popped up while waiting in line for the tunnel to open at 5:30. Certainly a good omen of the trip ahead!

Luckilly the ramp on a Saturday afternoon was pretty quiet. I had no problem getting the boat launched and the truck parked. This was my first solo trip in this boat, so I was at ease with the stress free launch. Destination for the night was 12 miles East of Whittier - Surprise Cove.

A large cruise ship was leaving at the same time I was pulling out of the harbor. I had heard the booming horn on the ship just as I was launching. I missed having an all-you-can-eat buffet waiting for me, but I couldn't have been happier heading off for my 9 day adventure.

I anchored up in Surprise Cove with no issues. There were six other boats in the North side of cove with me. It reminded me in some way of anchoring our sailboat at Red Fish Reef in Texas. Once anchored I popped on a movie, grilled some brats and cracked a beer. Life is good!!

I slept like a baby that night. No screaming kids, no random kicks in the middle of the night and I was on my own schedule for waking up. The day started out absolutely beautiful. Flat calm and sunny. I got up, had some breakfast, opened up the Cruising Guide to Prince William Sound and picked a direction to head off to.

I had never really explored the North end of the Sound, so I decided to drive to Cascade Bay for the first destination of the trip. Cascade Bay has the largest waterfall in the sound.

It started clouding up a bit on the way there, but the seas on the way there was like a lake, absolutely calm. I reached the falls around noon and parked within 300 yards of the giant gusher. Being on my own and not familiar with most of the anchorages, I like to play it safe and not get too close. Part of me wants to be right there in the waterfall of course, but for the time being I settled for staring at the falls through the binoculars. Impressive, most impressive!!

Again utilized the grill. This is one handy device to have aboard. Brats, chips, a great view of a huge water falls and the place to my self. What more could one want?!?

This guy pulled up and did what I really wanted to do. Look at the bottom right of the picture, he got right up to the falls and let the force of the falls push him back to the middle of the channel. After he left I pulled anchor and got a bit closer, but I still couldn't bring myself to get right next to it like he did. Maybe next time I'll get the Zodiac out and pull in close., seems like a good compromise.

After lunch I packed up and headed back to . . . somewhere?? Had no plan really . . . just a map and a general goal of anchoring up before midnight.

From Cascade I headed West, back towards Whittier. I decided to take Ester Passage back and see what was up in that general direction. After I got through the pass I decided to spend the night in Granite Bay. I looked at my watch and saw it was already 7:30 pm. But . . . it was still light and I had plenty of fuel . . . so I decided to take a detour and head up College Fjord. Glacier looks close right?? Plus it looks like there are several other boats up the fjord probably fishing and sightseeing. Cruise ship goes up all the time, can't be too desolate.

Well several things about College Fjord; first - it is a lot further than it looks, I think it is 20 miles or to the glacier. It is a long run and there is only one anchorage up that way and it wasn't that great. Plus it is cold, the ice field is huge and acts like a ginourmous air-conditioner in an area that could use some heat if anything. second - remember those boats I thought I saw . . . well those were ice bergs. Technically the ice I was seeing is called a bergy bit, but they weighed many times more than my boat, and heading near them brought up scenes from the movie titanic in my mind, so for the time being I stuck to ice berg.

They were cool to look at though. To think that ice is millions of years old.

My cooler was running low on ice so I decided to stop and "harvest" some of Alaska's most abundant renewable resource.

Very cool . . . literally!

The weather was starting to turn a bit. The clouds looked a little darker, the seas were coming up and there was no-one around. Seemed kind of bleak so I headed over to Granite Bay where where our family had spent an awesome weekend last August with some friends of ours. I pulled in and the sun peaked it way out again. Things were looking up. As I was pulling in a PWS bow-picker (commercial fishing vessel) sped past me to rendezvous with three other fishing boats in the bay. Not really wanting to be too near those boats, I pulled into a projective anchorage tucked into the rocks between north and south Granite Bay. I anchored, turned off the engines and got the grill out. I don't know what the deal was, but I just wasn't feeling it. The place seemed kind of lonely. I decided to weigh anchor and head back to more familiar grounds - Surprise Cove.

The trip back to Surprise allowed me to check my shrimp pots. Pulling shrimp pots meant pulling shrimp heads. I had never done this before, that job had always been Renee's. If your going to be the Captain you have to know all of the jobs. This meant that I had to man up and pull shrimp heads. I didn't grow up hunting or fishing . . . or boating on the ocean for that matter, and while I have been boating now for 11+ years, Renee and I never really got into fishing. We now own a really nice fishing boat, so I guess I had better step up my game.

I had 5 pots soaking, but really only wanted enough shrimp for dinner, so I pulled the string with only two pots. First pot came up fine, about 25 or so shrimp. Second pot on the string had maybe 5 shrimp left and . . . an octopus. Cool. My friends were always talking about finding octopus in their pots but this was the first time I had ever seen one in mine. While I thought it was really cool, it frankly freaked me out a bit, so I took a few pictures and let it go. It inked on the way down , kind of cool I thought. My buddy gave me a hard time the next day about not keeping it. Maybe someday when I dial in my game with fishing for halibut I'll keep one or two for bait, but for now I am content just letting them go.

Perfect dinner . . . beer and shrimp. It's funny because I don't know what I was all worried about with the shrimp thing. That night I did all of the chores that I wanted to complete on the boat, had a beer and then decided to get busy with the shrimp. It was actually nothing at all. Heading shrimp - check that off the list. Renee will be so impressed. I boiled the shrimp for three minutes and had an awesome dinner. I think this was Monday evening, everyone had left the cove the night before and I had the place to myself.

MMmmmm . . . shrimp!

After dinner I watched a movie on my newly installed flip down 15" monitor. Movie wasn't that great (Raising Helen, Kate Hudson and John Corbett), but it was fun watching it out in the cove.

After that I went to sleep. Here is my sleeping bag in the V-berth for anyone that is interested. Tomorrow would be a busy day. Pick up Ted and a long run to new Chenega Bay. Better get some rest.

Visitors from Florida

I think it was last summer when we heard from Phil and Louise that Cousin Norb & Deb along with friends, Lou and Donna, were taking an Alaskan vacation including a cruise from Seward. We had planned all along to meet up with them for a little while - it isn't very often that we get to see them!

It was hard to believe that the weekend they would be arriving into Anchorage from the train ride from Fairbanks was here. We thought that we would have a good portion of Sunday with them before they headed to their cruise. We had thawed salmon and were ready for a nice brunch at our house when Norb called on Saturday morning to let us know that they had to be on the bus to Seward by noon. Ok, we decided on an early breakfast at our house. Doug would pick them up at the hotel at 8 am. We changed gears and got the makings for a breakfast casserole and still planned to make some of the Alaska salmon.

Norb called at 8:15 pm Saturday to say that they had just arrived into Anchorage and that they had to be on the bus Sunday at 8:15 am! Well, it was tonight or no visit! While Doug went downtown to get them, I put out chocolate covered strawberries, the brownies I had just made for tomorrow's meal, a nut tray and a cheese ball with crackers. In the end, we all had a great time. We ate and had a beer, it was so much fun to see everyone. It had been a really long day for them. At about 11:30 pm, they were starting to fade fast so Doug took them back to their hotel.

Thanks so much for making time to see us!! How fun to have visitors in Alaska!

Sam was all into the chocolate strawberries!

Deb and Donna.

Sam sure did like Lou. At one point, Sam was starting to get really sleepy and I asked him to go get his PJ's on. He climbed up on Lou's lap for a big hug first, then put his head on Lou's shoulder and said "take me with you" (boo, hoo).

Norb and Lou.

Checking out the view from Sam's room.

Listening to a concert in Zach's room!!

How fun to have visitors in Alaska! Lou, Donna, Doug, Norb and Deb. We hope to see you all on our trip to Florida in October.