Alaska

Grandpa decided that going to Alaska and doing a little fishing was one of the items on his bucket list. So, off we went during the middle of June. Trent and I joined up with Grandpa and Grandma Savage, my sister Janet, her husband Bert and two of their kids, BreAnna and Josh, and my brothers Roy and Blake. The ten of us – off on a fishing and sight seeing adventure.

We flew into Anchorage, AK late one night and headed straight for the hotel. The next day, we picked up the rental cars and did a little sight seeing around Anchorage. I lived in Anchorage for a summer (18 years) ago but I was surprised that I could still remember a few of the streets around town. But it obviously has changed. They have a temple now – which we stopped by to see.

After a few hours in Anchorage, we headed down the Kenai Peninsula towards Homer, AK. On the way, we stopped at Portage Lake to get a glimpse of Portage Glacier. The Glacier has receded way up the mountainside but there are small icebergs floating in the lake.

Here is the remains of an iceberg just before it completely gone.


The road follows Cook Inlet for quite a ways down the road. The view is beautiful.

We stopped at the little (and I mean little) town of Ninilchik. We had a couple of rental "cabins" to stay in for the week. The cabins were small but nice. While in Ninilchik, we went fishing out on Cook Inlet for Halibut three times. We caught our limit (2 per person) each time as well as a few other types of fish (sculpin and cod) that were either used as bait or tossed back. The Sculpin (Irish LordFish) were about the ugliest fish I have personally laid eyes on. It was like an oversized bullfish with fins that stuck way out. I wish I had taken a picture of it. Here are the ten of us with one days catch.


Most of the halibut were in the 25 - 40 pound range but a few were bigger. Trent got lucky and pulled in a 90 lb one. It took him a while to get it in.

Grandma and Grandpa admiring the catch. Grandpa caught the second largest one that day (47 pounds). It looks puny next to Trents.


The view down a halibut's mouth. Not as scenic as other parts of Alaska.

One day we went King salmon fishing on the Kasilof river using a drift boat. It wasn' t as fun as I thought it would be. The fishing was slow and the river was full (and I mean full) of boats. Still we saw plenty of eagles and I was one of the lucky ones. I pulled in a 31 inch (28 lb) King salmon. I really enjoyed the fight. I got him up to the boat several times and he would take off again.

One day we decided to go down to Homer and take a sight seeing tour out on the ocean and across to Seldovia. Seldovia is a small town of about 250 -300 that can only be reach by boat or plane. It was a pretty view getting there. We saw lots of birds and a few sea otters.

Trent decided to read up on Seldovia while we are on the cruise ship.

Overall, it was a great trip and we had a lot of fun.

Yeah, thats what I'm talking about.
Bruce

Blessing in Disguise

All week leading up to the 4th of July we were trying to decide what to do. We usually go to Cache Valley to hang out with cousins and grandparents. Plus they have a better parade. But I was just there the weekend before to return cousins and the kids had sorta worn Grandma out. So we reluctantly decided to stay home this 4th of July and go to the parade here. It was short but we had a good time. As we were leaving I was beginning to wish we had made the drive anyway. I said to Bruce, "Why'd ya let me talk us into staying here this weekend?"
Anyway we got some lunch and went to a park and played tag with the kids. It was the park we used to live by and that's what we used to always do when we'd go there. They weren't about to let us nap, it would break tradition. The day before someone had called and asked us to clean the church. Who asks people to clean the church on the 4th of July?!? Can't we be a little more organized than that? I totally let this guy off the hook by telling him we would since we'd be in town anyways. I was a little grumbly about the whole thing but at 2:00 we headed over to the church to clean for a couple hours. The kids were super excited about the fireworks show we planned to attend that night. Especially Benjamin. He kept asking if it was time for the fireworks yet.
But then these nasty clouds decided to roll into town... Bruce took this picture from our back deck. He thought it was fascinating how all these clouds rolled together as if they were going to form a twister. No, not a twister they just decided to DUMP all their contents over our area in a very short period of time...
We've had a very unusual summer so far. It has not been very hot and we've had record amounts of rainfall. Which, ordinarily I would love it, but we've been trying to landscape and it is going much slower than I'd like and the dirt isn't all in it's permanent place so our window wells have been letting water in with each rain dumpage. Thankfully we only finished a family room in our basement and the problem window wells have been in the unfinished part so we haven't really had any major damage to speak of, we just have to watch them everytime it rains. Each time Bruce has thought he solved the problem. Well on this day I was sooooo grateful we were home as not only did we have one window well that water was pouring in but this time the water really began to rise in our walk out basement area. This had never happened before but because there's no lawn yet nor a berm installed yet at the top, water began eroding quickly down toward the house. This was the 'lake' outside our family room window downstairs...
I used towels to dam the water and keep it from getting to the carpet. There was maybe an inch of water sitting in the unfinished hallway. The kids were bringing all the towels in the entire house down to me and they were getting soaked rather quickly.
The worst part was seeing the water rise outside the basement door. It came up so quickly! The girls heard me panicking and started praying it wouldn't start coming in the door. OK, honestly, I was praying too. It was not fun! After bailing out the window well Bruce jumped in the skidsteer and began moving dirt around to stop the streams coming toward the house. I thought about the damage that could have happened had we not been there to prevent it. Water came to within 4-5 inches of the basement door! I took this pic awhile after the rain stopped and the water had receeded quite a bit.A beautiful rainbow came out and we WERE able to go to our fireworks show. It was chilly but the kids loved it. The next day we learned that all but Sacrament meeting had been canceled for our entire stake so people could get out and help those that had severe damage. MANY basements got flooded. Being at home turned out to be our blessing in disguise. I'll never grumble again about cleaning the church - holiday or not! ;)

Cousin Camp

When both of our husband's were in Alaska on a fishing excursion my SIL, Heather came up for a visit. (The Alaska pictures are posted below). She left a couple of her girls to spend a week with us while she went to girls camp. We had a great time with Hailey and Raquel. The first thing we did was make them part of the family and put them to work!

After that we had fun. We went swimming a lot. On the cool days we went to the indoor pool at the gym and on the one hot day we went to the outdoor pool. They played school, jumped, reenacted High School Musical 3 with all the neighbor girls, made cookies, (surprisingly good ones btw) climbed trees, went on a nearly 5 mile bike ride, got wet and muddy, went roller skating, played cards, played with the neighbors cats, a stray dog and caught bugs. Last but not least they starred in a TaVaci commercial. Whew! TaVaci is a school for the performing arts that Brilee participated in and that Teagan is wanting to do with her in the fall. This week the kids are bored and miss their cousins.