Boys Trip to Prince William Sound, August 10-13

Mike and Travis took a trip down to Whittier a couple of weeks ago....they had a great time fishing, shrimping and just enjoying "boy" time on the water with our friends Mike & Levi.

Prince William Sound - seine boat

First shrimp catch!

Cleaning shrimp

T with a cod

Dinner!

Cabin Visitors

This was Animal Planet weekend at the cabin. We saw a black bear on the boat ride in. He (she?) was in the woods, just on the edge of the river and he just sat and watched us go by. You could practically see his thought bubble: "There goes the neighborhood...."

Then there was another black bear on the trail camera that we have aimed at the porch. He was funny, you could see that he wanted to get on the porch, but he didn't want to use the stairs. He may have been one of the bears that had bit the full bleach bottle we leave on the stairs while we are gone. I'll have to see if I can upload the video here...

We saw a couple moose too, hopefully they stick around in September!

On Saturday we were just sitting down for lunch when we saw a big lynx come out of the woods onto the gravel bar across from us. He (she?) then walked down the gravel bar, took a drink of water, swam across the river and then disappeared back into the woods....very cool!

August already?

Yikes! Where has the summer gone?

In July I had quite a bit of field work up on the Goodpaster River (grayling population assessment). We were in rafts for the first stint and jet boats the second trip. The weather was mostly cooperative, but the mosquitoes were horrendous.

Goodpaster River from helicopter

There goes our ride!

Brandy & Jesse working up fish

Audra & Loren doing the same

Brandy with a nice grayling

"Survival-Off" at The Cabin

Over the July 4th weekend the kids had their "Survival-Off" they have been talking about for the last few months. They competed in building shelters, making snares, performed first aid on pretend injuries and building fires without paper or lighters. Piper beat Travis, but just barely, it came down to the fire challenge. It was pretty neat to see the ideas they came up with....I guess they HAVE been paying attention after all when we talk about wilderness survival.

Fire building skills

Piper squeaked this one out

This was how Mike cleared the oxbow trail, it isn't often that you see
someone mowing with a rifle & carpenters pencil.  :)

Painting The Shack

It was a rainy weekend in Delta but we did manage to get the siding painted in between squalls, the paint sprayer made the work go MUCH faster! We will be painting the trim bright white, but that will have to wait for a future weekend. As will the deck staining.....

Both evenings were beautiful though....perfect weather for a nice fire and some fishing time.

The rainy weather was quite conducive to fly tying. Mike brought out his mom's old boxes and the kids had a BLAST tying up a bunch of flies...some of them look like they might catch a fish too!  Thanks Gramma!

We finished the outhouse too, this is the best one we have built yet!