Got's to Love Pike

Sucker Lake is about a forty-five minute flight in the float plane, from Palmer were we live. The float plane is an awesome toy and is something I am going to have to get someday. The lake is out in the Bush, over the Susitna River and really in the middle of nowhere. I have been there before and there are a couple of canoe's that folks have stuffed in the tree's, so we just borrow one of those and can fish for pike almost 24 hours a day. There is a little point that is decent enough to camp on, so that is exactly what my by, Dane and I did. We set up the tent and hung out eating some good food and fishing for pike that are so full in the lake that it really is a piece of cake to catch them. Though not difficult to catch they are extremely fun, because we fish with top water frogs or something that causes those pike to be fairly explosive when they strike and that is just a blast to watch.
The first night was a bit windy and Dane got cold so we did not fish too long, rather we got camp set up and started a fire so he could warm up. Eventually he was falling asleep in the camp chair so I put him in his mummy bag and he crawled down inside and was out within a couple minutes. He slept until 9:30 the next morning, so he played pretty hard.



Dane was able to catch a fish or two all by himself and was very excited about it. I was surprised how well he did and that he was able to hold onto the pole when those fish hit his lure only five feet off the bank. It was pretty fun to watch him hang on and reel those suckers in. We were picked up by Chuck that next day about noon and headed for home. Dane loves flying in Grandpa's airplane. It was very cool to take my boy out and camp in the Alaska wilderness with him. He loved it and I enjoyed having him with me, even though I could not fish near as much as I would have liked due to taking care of him, but I would not trade it at all, it was awesome.

Dirt Update

It has been a slow process, but there is some shape starting to take place on the track now. A good portion of memorial day was spent in moving dirt and working the shovel to mold and shape it into burm's and roller's. The area that I've got the track located is still a little wet, which is making the work a little difficult. It is exciting for me to see a couple things coming together.

Kirk is also in the process of building a pump track in his back yard and its cool to chat with him about ideas and where each of us are at in our construction. He has had a track before, but tore it up to put in his lawn. Now that bike season has come around and both of us are so stoked to ride he cant stand it and is putting another track over top of the lawn... Awesome!

There is one 8' radius burm and two rollers heading into it right here.





















This Video is incredible, check it out!

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!