Bye Brent!

It was great having Brent for a visit, I sure appreciated his help this week in Prudhoe Bay with my pre-audit.  A few last minute photos.....Doug said I looked too "short" in the pictures so we had to do a photo where I was LARGE!

Fishing with Brent

It is nice having the boat for times when friends come up and visit.  PWS is a great place to relax and catch up.  I have been trying to get my good friend Brent to come to AK for a visit for several years.  I guess I finally bugged him enough, or the stars were in alingment, because he was able to schedule an audit with Renee (Brent also works for Halliburton), and schedule a few days prior to the audit for fishing.

Brent scored on the weather.  We have been having a stellar run of sunny days, and this makes fishing on the Sound all the more fun.  Brent is an avid fisherman, and he and I used to "fish" quite a lot in Houston.  I say "fish" because he was always more serious about catching something than I was.  I would get bored or too hot after a few hours and jump in the water and swim.  This would always stop fishing for the day, and we would pretty much just drink beer and swim for the rest of the time.  I miss those wonderful lazy "fishing" days.  When telling people about these "fishing" weekends with Brent, I refer to these trips as "redneck fishing weekends".

Now back in the day, Brent was the one with the fishing boat.  Seven years later the tables have turned, and now I have the fishing boat.  I have always wanted to repay the favor for all of those time out on Brents boat, so now, having a boat, I am able to do that.  I am a bit more serious about fishing now, well, ok, not too serious about fishing, but at least the water is too cold to just jump into and spoil the day. 

We headed out of Whittier for an overnight fishing trip.  The weather was stellar and the seas calm.  Renee helped out a ton with provisioning the boat.  Zach had elected to come along, and the boys headed out around 9:30.  Fun times ahead.

First stop was the Goose Bay cabin.  We had been here for the 4th under much different weather conditions.  What a difference a week or so makes.  Goose Bay was about half way to our fishing destination, so it made a good lunch stop.  The pin that secures the anchor somehow got bent, and I wasn't able to deploy it for our stop.  The seas were calm so I decided to motor to shore and beach the boat for our stop.  Just had to watch the water under the boat as the tide was going out.

Great cabin and fairly new, but it was damaged two winters ago and the park service is taking its sweet time fixing the cabin.  Kind of a bummer because it is preventing people from renting it. 

Zach had a nice time exploring around the cabin while we ate lunch.  After we finished we headed down to Crafton Island for some fishing.  We fished for about two hours with no real luck.  It was only day one so we headed in around 6:30 and decided to stop over at the Eshamy Bay Lodge and say "Hi" before we anchored in the lagoon for the night.  I needed to bang out the pin on the anchor anyway, so I figured Mark the owner would have the means to do that.

Well we pulled into the bay and there was our friend Pete tied to the docks.  I pretty much had the feeling from there that we would just be spending the night at the lodge rafted up to those guys.  It was fun catching up, and showing Brent the lodge.  Mark had a large vice that I could use to straighten the pin.  Pete's dog Porter showed a keen interest in a fish the boys had caught in a bucket.  You can see the fish's tail hanging out of Porters mouth.  funny 

Pete's brother and his family was staying at the lodge for the weekend.  The lodge has a bunch of kayaks and the kids, and Pete, took advantage of paddling around the lagoon.  Perfect evening.  Mark and Pamela from the lodge offered to let us stay rafted to the dock for the night.  The lodge is always very generous to our family, made us feel at homw and has made for a fun stop throughout the summers.  I am sure we have at least a couple of more trips out there this summer.  I would recommend it to anyone looking for a fun, relaxing summer adventure out on the Sound. 

Next morning after our coffee we headed out to look for fish.  For a while there we got into the Rock fish.  Brent was pulling them up pretty consistenly.  Nothing real big, but still fun to catch.

Brent was able to land 8 or 9 rockfish into the boat in a couple of hours.  He was having fun.

It was Zach who was the big winner.  He was able to land a red salmon onto the boat.  Those fish usually don't bit at lures.  Well done Zach!!

Brent's big fish of the day, a flounder.  We didn't score any big fish, but we had a great time. Good friends, great weather . . .  

. . . and I was able to get Brent back to Anchorage in time to make the flight to the North Slope of the audit with Renee.  Fun time had by all.  Looking forward to the next big fishing adventure.  I'll have to start getting serious and be ready for when Brent comes up again!

Jacob, Young Enough to be my Son!

It has been a busy summer with both Doug and I traveling.  We have been alternating weeks for most of the summer.  On a recent trip to landfill inspections Doug met up with a larger group of consultants and had a good meeting with them on some upcoming projects.  Doug's department has a college student named Jacob working as an intern and he came along on this trip.

During the course of conversation, somehow it came up that Doug and I have been together since 1992.  Jacob commented "how come you didn't start your family sooner, then I could have had a friend!"  Ouch, that hurts...yes, we are old enough to be this 20 year old's parents!

Doug found a drinking fountain from a recent demolition project (see last picture below) in the landfill and managed to box it and bring it home.  Current plans are to install it in the laundry room where there is plumbing for a wash tub.  Yes, we are a little eccentric!

Inner Tube Fun!

It is weekends like this that make it worth getting through the cold, long, dark winters!  We headed off to Three Fingers Cove with Pete, Tori, Kinsey and Tristan and then didn't move the boats all weekend.  The beach there was fabulous, the sun was out, it was hot and Doug had packed the inner tube that Zach received for his birthday last year from Billy and Aimee.  We hadn't used it yet and this was the perfect weekend to do so!  What a great time!  We all didn't want the weekend to end and stayed way too late on Sunday.  It was an early morning for Doug on Monday as we got to bed after cleaning up the boat around midnight and then he had to be up at 4 am to catch his flight to Bethel.  Oh well, weekends like this are rare!