America's Pastime

Baseball season started on Monday with the first practice of the summer. Travis LOVES playing catcher.

Winter 2010-11

This winter went by in a blur! It is hard to believe the snow is melting and boating season is just around the bend!

Celebrating spring with a giant bonfire and Alaskan Summer Ale

Travis played Tier III hockey again for the FAHA Phantoms.

 


Presidents Day Tournament Champions

 

We spent New Years at the cabin.




  

Mike ripped his right quadricep tendon off his knee on that trip and was laid up from January through early March.

Post surgery staples

Once he got the go-ahead from the doc and physical therapist we were able to make the most of the last few weekends of decent trail conditions with a trip to George Lake.


At ADF&G public use cabin



sunset sky

 and our cabin.

The kids drove their machines out for the first time

Chef Piper

Spring sunshine

Kids driving around on the river

Sunday morning - overflow in front of cabin - time to head back to town

Piper and I learned how to play the sport of curling and we participated in our first Bon-spiel!

In February we said good-bye to our buddy Angus.

Angus (& Mike) in March, 2009

Day on the DCR - August 22

The kids and I paddled down from the launch while Mike took his Mom, Sis and BIL upriver. The non power team did a bit better....its all about the stealth.

McCarthy/ Kennicott - August 7-9

We headed down to Wrangell St Elias National Park on Saturday (7th), nice drive albeit a bit long.  We had to get there by 7pm since there is a damaged bridge that they aren't letting people across after 7:00. We made it with about an hour to spare. Stayed at Kennicott River Lodge for two nights, we rented a whole cabin for all six of us (my parents were visiting), nice spot.

Sunday we went up to the mine site and hiked around, beautiful location!  Next time we are bringing mountain bikes and we'll definitely plan on spending more than one day up there!!  We did a flight seeing trip at the end of the day, which worked out perfectly because the clouds were pretty low in the morning.

Monday we drove back to Fairbanks and celebrated Mike's birthday with Papa Murphy's pizza.

July 4th Weekend

Headed upriver Saturday morning, had some friends up that evening for a king salmon BBQ. Great food & a good visit. A rain storm chased us inside about midnight.

Sunday morning we woke up to a steady rain, but it cleared off about noon and was a beautiful day. We did some exploring and found a new fishing spot….”Coffee Creek”. The kiddos caught themselves a couple grayling for an afternoon snack. I was thinking about it and I believe these were the first wild grayling they had actually eaten….usually we fish where it is catch & release only or we just don’t have the means to cook them up right away.

We got a bunch of tasks done this weekend too…..finished painting & trimmed the shed, built some shelves & started to organize the inside of the shed, Mike built his shooting bench (for sighting in the rifles) and did some more clearing down the shooting lane, kiddos put a tarp roof on their tree house & made plans for enclosing the bottom and we took apart the wall tent. We’ll be able to reuse pretty much all the 2x4 material and lots of the plywood too. Anything that was too full of twisted nails or was water damaged went into the burn pile.

dismantling old wall tent

wall tent gone!

shed painted & trimmed

The most surprising thing about the weekend was how FEW people there were on the river. I guess maybe the not-so-great weather forecast scared folks off, but it ended up being a beautiful weekend with the only real rain Saturday night/ Sunday morning. Nice to have a river all to ourselves!