Valdez Pictures

July 09

July was an exciting month for us! We took mom and dad to Valdez to tour the town. Valdez is beautiful and nestled right in the mountains. Kari, grandma and the boys went on a glacier and wildlife boat tour and Dad and I went on a halibut charter. I found out that I was a prairie boy. After 3 hours in choppy water on the way out to the Gulf of Alaska I was as green as could be. Knowing we were going to be out on the water for another 5-6 hours fishing, I had a hard time thinking about anything but just not throwing up in front of everyone. Haha. I had heard all the stories about fishing in Alaska and filling your freezer with halibut for the winter, so I had an agenda. I was goal oriented and planed on getting my limit of 2 halibut.....and 2 big ones at that. We saw several fish over 100 lbs on the dock and that is what I was going to get! Better yet, father was fishing too and there was no way for him to get his fish back to Canada, so I had dreams of 300-400 lbs of halibut for my freezer.

We dropped lines and I waited for my first Alaskan monster. I didn't wait long. About 20 mins. in I hooked one and fought like a dog ( I thought) to get him to the surface. He pulled so hard I imagined he must be 60-100 lbs! I'd never felt anything like this one my line! Finally he surfaced

and we brought him on board.....all 18 lbs of him. Well, you're only allowed to keep 2, so of course I threw him back......why would I take him when I could snag a 100 pounder?? As luck would have it, that was my only bite all day. All the charters had a strange day and very few fish were brought in by anyone. Dad did manage to catch 2 15-20 pounders, so we kept those and had a few feasts before they headed back to Canada, but the freezer remained bare.

Speaking of bear....we did have a friend who brought us a quarter of bear so that is in our freezer now, but it is a little different and I'm the only one who eats it....although Yanik loves the hunter sticks. Another friend contributed about 10 lbs of moose and that is a favorite. We love it!

Summer Stuff 2009

Well, it's August 1st and we have been doing all kinds of new activities and I haven't stopped to talk about any of them at all!

My daughter Samantha came up for 3 weeks and at the same time we had my parents come and visit, so we had a house full of people. Our house has only about 800 sq. feet of living space upstairs, so it's really more of a cabin than a motel.

While our family was here, we decided to really start exploring Alaska, starting with Fairbanks. We visited Chena Hot Springs first. It was really buggy there, but the water was great and the kids had a ball. How neat is it to be soaking in the springs while a moose keeps watch over you. We promised my mom some moose dring the visit and we got our fill the first day!

Over the next few weeks we frequented Alaskaland, ate at the Chena Pump House Father's day buffet, checked out the Santa Claus house and the Knotty Shoppe, went to the Botanical gardens and Arctic Museum, too. Mom and Dad also got a chance to visit the Eldorado Gold Mine with Dominik where they panned for gold. On their last night here they went down the Chena River on the Riverboat Discovery tour. I would say they had a busy trip. We spent most of the evenings playing cards in our enclosed porch in the natural light until the wee hours of the night.

One of mom's highlights was taking a picture of her three grandkids at 12:15 am in the back yard...and of course no flash was necessary!

21 hours of sunlight!

We have now reached a point where we have sunlight from 3:20 am to 12 :15 am and we're still gaining rapidly, albeit the rate has slowed a touch. We are adding 5 1/2 minutes per day. When you consider dusk and dawn, we no longer have any darkness. At first it was a little strange and I found myself going to bed later and later, but now we have all adjusted and are used to going to bed and then waking in full sunlight.

The boys are loving it here. We have been exploring all the bike trails and enjoy looking for wildlife at Creamer's field. We especially like looking for wood frogs and viewing from the moose platform.

We have made some good friends, so that helps, too, but I still miss the closeness of my Boise friends.

Kari and I have been at our wits end with the expenses we have incurred with our home. We have had an inauspicious start when you consider the sewer problems and the leaky garage roof which will cost between 5 and 10k to fix. Yikes! Kari has even thought about looking for a part-time job in the evenings so we have a little extra spending money.

This weekend I will be flying to Reno to pick up Samantha and then fly her back for a 3 week visit in Fairbanks. We're all anxious to see her and show her around.

Last night Dominik had his first hockey practice in Alaska. It was not as organized as I had hoped it would be, but not bad. I helped out a little and tried not to step on any toes, but I have decided to get involved. The gal who was organizing it wants me to run the mites program in the fall and mentor other coaches so that should be good. That will allow Dominik and I to be on the ice together. Yanik has begun to express an interest in hockey, but I am not going to let him get involved until I know it's for real. It's too expensive to have a kid sitting on the ice doing nothing! Yeah, that's what he did the last two times he wanted to start.

More later.

Spring is finally here!

Migratory Birds

Another sign of spring has arrived. The first Canada geese have arrived at Creamer's field, about .5 miles from our house. Dominik and I have taken nightly walks to see if we could catch the first sighting. Yesterday we saw our first pair of Canada Geese and today we saw 14 geese altogether. Within 5-7 days, I have been assured that counting will be impossible!

It's nice to live so close to the wide variety of wildlife that we find here. Somehow it makes you feel a little more connected to life and it's probably healthy to see a bear or a giant moose and truly feel small. It reminds us how inconsequential we are in the greater scheme of things and how tiny our little problems are.

Life is good in Fairbanks. The sun is now shining from 6:20 am to about 9:30 today...but in another week or so we'll be going from 6:00 am to 10:00. It's great! The sun feels very warm and the snow is on it's way out in a hurry.

I'll get some pictures of Creamer's field when it's more than jsut a handful of birds. We're going to visit frequently. It's dinner at Sarah's and a hockey game for Easter. More later.

Hello family and friends!

It has been a while since I posted, so I figure I'm overdue. Spring is certainly in the air now and the streets are all bare, so there is no more riding the snowmachine. We can't get out of the yard and to the waterways or bike paths....the good news is that it is supposed to snow all weekend. With a little luck we might get a little more winter. I'm hoping that no Alaskans read this or I might get shot for wishing that. They all figure that 7 months of snow is plenty, but we had a late start. 

Temperatures have been up around 40F for the days and drop down to about 10F at night. Dominik and I got the bikes out and went for a little ride yesterday. We're really anxious to cruise all the bike paths all over town. You can get anywhere safely by bike. 

We are adding so much sun every day that it is almost unbelievable. The sun is now coming up at about 6:40 and setting after 9:00. In just a few weeks it will be from 5:00 to 11:00.  I'll be picking up mom and dad at the airport around midnight on June 19th and it will be full sunlight!

Samantha and I have been talking almost every day and she wants to get up here ASAP so we're going to try to get her up this summer. Unfortunately, that depends heavily on how well the business is going. We've been in lockdown mode and on a budget since we arrived here. It's fairly expensive to live here, but business has been better, so we're hopeful!

The moose have been absent for a while. Dominik is hoping to see a bear in the yard but that might be a stretch. Yanik has gone through a total transformation. He has been the laziest little beggar you could ever imagine and wouldn't walk, etc...but now he wants to walk everywhere and even requests to go on walks! Yanik is still not much into the skating yet, but he really likes to fight, so we're looking to sign him up for jiu-jitsu or something like that. We're also going to get the kids into swimming lessons and maybe try some soccer this summer. Our outdoor ice rinks are dying quickly now, so there probably won't be anymore skating outdoors until October. Dominik may join a mite summer league (just games) and then we'll get back into coaching in the fall and join the local program. By then Yanik may be a black belt.