2011

It is now well in to January of 2011 and it has been a long time since I have been anywhere in the neighborhood of this blog. In no way will I make a serious attempt to catch up with the things that have occurred over the past year.

One reason I have not been on here much is my annoyance with blogs and things like facebook, they have become cumbersome. I really have started to hate facebook. There are times I enjoy viewing what others are doing in their lives, but I am sick of constantly reading the same few peoples pissing and moaning. It is the 30% of my so called friends that are only friends because they are friends of friends or friends of relatives and in truth some of them are even relatives that are constantly posting the most ridiculous updates that I find myself wanting to vomit. I am not anti-facebook, but it has become a pain in the ass more than its worth.

Basically it has been a year almost exactly since the last time I did anything with this dadgum blog. My ranting above is simply some of the frustration that I've felt towards different technological tools that sometimes just a nuisance or distraction, besides no one really has ever read this blog and even more so that its been extinct for so long.

Anyway, I do hope to post and update a lot more in the near future for the sole reason of having something to look back on with my boys and remember what fun things we did.

Here's to a great year!



Of course this little dude is the greatest event of 2010.

KADE

Arch Angel Valley

Arch Angel Valley seems as though I should be in Utah hiking around the canyon lands or something. Instead I am high above the tree line in Hatcher's Pass Canyon. One great thing is that this type of terrain and beauty is only five minutes from home.
Blog entrees here have been overlapping the photos and stories that my wife is posting on our family blog, but being away from home five days a week means that any adventures that I find myself on are activities that both my family and I can do. Things change a lot when so much time is spent elsewhere, when I would rather be home with my family every night. Every minute of my time on the weekends is spent trying to catch up with and enjoy my two crazy boys and wonderful wife. This weekend in fact we are headed out fishing in Prince William Sound with good ol Chuck, it should be another great trip hopefully catching some silvers.

This is my buddy Ryan and Dane hanging out a bit near the top.

The water along the hike is the same glacial silt water that is in most streams here in Alaska, it does give the river a definite Alaska look. The scenery along this hike was spectacular!

Prince William Sound

Fishing in Prince William Sound is one of the greatest things I have ever done. Really,... being out on the water in a a spectacular boat and such an incredibly beautiful place has got to be one of the most epic things that I have done as far as my adventures go. It is simply amazing all of the different sites and adventures that there are out in the Sound. We saw almost everything on our recent trip. We saw whales, dolphins, and did a lot of great fishing. It is such a fantastic day when you can fish for halibut and other species until you get your limit and then take off to a different location and catch your limit in Salmon or Shrimp. A lifetime could be spent discovering new places in Prince William Sound and you would never see it all. It is an experience that is so different from anything that I was able to do in Utah growing up. I have come to really love the ocean and greatly look forward to getting out again.

Camping on Weiner Lake

This Memorial Day weekend we did get a little camping in. What started as a horrible decision to camp in a State camp site that would have cost $20 and been surrounded with other bonehead campers not fifteen feet away on all sides actually turned out to be an awesome camp trip. Rather than pitch our tents amidst the neighbors, we called a friend that has some property north of Palmer about 40 miles. It is actually the site of his home way out in the woods that burned down this last year or so. I believe that it caught fire due to his cooking a turkey in one of those deep fryers. That would suck!

Anyway, we ended up having about 70 acres all to ourselves with some sweet fire pits, and a beautiful lake with fish, beavers, and swans. We pitched out tents down by this lake and had great tinfoil dinners that Amy had made for us, hung out by the fire and chilled with our friends, Bryce and Tara.

The night was kind of crazy! Sometime in the middle of the night Tara had to get up with their little girl and go home. I think it may have been too cold for the little one. Dane and Ty handled it okay, we had been sure to put both of them in the 5 Degree bags and Amy and I took some less than stellar bags for ourselves. I have never had to endure such a cold night in such a crappy sleeping bag. At one point I was cold enough to get out of the bag and put as much clothing on as I could find and shoot back into my bag as fast as I could. Amy got cold enough that she woke Ty up and put him in her bag to help warm her up. So we need to get some sleeping bags that are made for Alaska. They may have worked fine for Utah, but they are not going to cut it here.

One cool thing about being awake, freezing to death is that I could hear a pack of wolves howling all night. They sounded to be fairly close to where we were camping and kind of scared me at first, I have never been camping in a tent when I can listen to the wolves at night. The closest thing to that would be sleeping in a hammock in Island Park Idaho and hearing the coyote's around camp, but that is not as cool as the wolves.

We headed home that morning fairly early, because our friends had pretty much left in the cover of darkness and we were just chillin now. The boys had fun though and we came home and got to go flying in Grandpa Chucks airplane, which the boys loved. They crammed in the back seat together and had a lot of fun. There are a few perks about living in Alaska and having a Father in Law with a lot of great toys.





































































This ugly thing was hanging in the tree where we had our dinner, sadly we did not notice it until after we had started eating. Pretty Gnarly!

I'm Scared

I am scared, because this is my kid. It amazes me how goofy and weird both Dane and Ty can get. This picture just cracks me up so much that I had to post it on here for others to see. Dane is obsessed with making funny faces and goofing off for the camera, but I don't think he could do this face again if he tried.

They are weird, but I sure like hanging out with them as much as I can.

Wind Caves Deluxe

The month of August this year has been filled with more activity than in the last two years combined or so it seems. The past two summers we have been so swamped with building our house and trying to keep our lives rolling that we have hardly done any activities as a family at all. This summer has been better already. I have been camping with my two boys, Dane and Ty, we have done some fishing together, and been riding the mountain bike towing them in the bike cart behind me.

In another week or so I am headed on a fairly rugged hiking trip with my buddy Kirk. It will be a three day two night excursion and I have wanted to get some smaller hikes in to try and prep the legs a little bit. Recently I found myself home alone with just the boys, a single parent for the night, and thought it a good opportunity to get out with them. I remembered that we have a kid carrier backpack, it does leave the shoulders aching for some padding, but works just fine. I decided that it might be fun to go on our own little adventure in the mountains, just me and the boys. There is a trail up Logan canyon that leads to what is called the wind caves. There are a few neat features in the rocky hillside that make for a great day hike and is marked by a smooth, easy trail.

Being that it was just myself trying to do the Mr. Mom thing, we struggled a bit to get ready and out the door. Finally after getting two crazy boys ready, and our small supplies packed, we left at about 6:30PM. This was much later that I had hoped, but my thoughts were that we could hike until Dane got tired and turn around,... no big deal! Much to my surprise Dane is quite the trekker. As Ty sat in the pack behind me, loving life, Dane hiked his way slowly up the trail tagging along, and struggling to not focus on bugs and other critters. The going was slow but to my surprise Dane kept a consistent pace all while constantly informing me that "Dad this is a long ways".

Constantly turning around to check on both my little guys and encouraging Dane, I started to not pay great attention to the trail in front of me. This was greatly apparent when suddenly just beside my right leg was this loud rattling, so loud in fact that it was almost a hiss and scarred me stupid. I immediately knew what it was and jumped a mile into the air, even with Ty on my back and let out curse that I thought the whole canyon heard. Once I came down from shreiksville I turned to see exactly where the bugger was. It was indeed a rattlesnake that appeared to be about two and a half feet long and was coiled up ready to strike. Luckily as I had walked by it only 6-8 inches away it did not strike, but quite briskly coiled, then retreated into the rocks. I am extremely glad that there was no further encounter with that bad boy, other than nearly soiling myself. Dane was just sad that he missed it, and wanted to go searching for it. He believed me though as I told him that it was a bad snake and did not want to play.


Dane, Ty and myself made it to the caves just fine. We took some quick pictures and threw some rocks off the ledge as Dane was of course fascinated with as we watched them shatter far below. I soon realized that light was fading fast and the we needed to cruise down off the mountain. No sooner had I realized our daylight problems did I realize that most all Dane's energy was spent on the way up and I knew that in order to make it down alright we could not take the same 3 year old pace as we did coming up. So I took Ty out of the pack and placed the much heavier Dane inside(approx 37 lbs.). Then held Ty across both my arms (about 22 lbs.) and started the hefty trek off the mountain. Now with the much heavier kid in the pack the shoulder straps were really digging in, but there was absolutely no time for comfort or breaks, we had to get down. Once we made it about two-thirds the way down it was too dark to see my footing on the trail, and hefting the two boys I surely didn't want to fall, so I had to put everything down and get out my new trusty headlamp. Once loaded up again with my two fat farts, at least they felt that way, we made it down safely and without further incident.




We were able to have a fellow hiker snap a shot of all three of us boys on top of the caves.

Any future hikes we embark on I believe we will do so with a bit more planning and possibly not push the little guys so far in order to complete the second half of the hike a bit better. It was one of those experiences that was fun and one to laugh at later, but we should do better on our future excursions.