Anchor River Kings

A late update on our fishing trip two weeks ago. We went to the Anchor River for a little bit of king salmon fishing and were pretty successful, as the picture shows. John and I each caught four or five kings over the weekend.

Preparing for Denali

We're getting ready for our big adventure of the summer (other than having james/jen/beck, bill/billy/mikey, jennifer/lauren/mason, & bill/maria for visits!). We are taking the bus back to Wonder Lake in Denali on Friday morning and then riding out, which is about 85 miles. We're planning on riding at night when there are no buses on the road and the animals are the most active. The first leg should be about 32 miles to Toklat rest area, then to Sanctuary River the next day and the last 20 miles out on Sunday morning. More to come!

a new arrival ...

our friends Greg & Megan welcomed Elias Reid Soule into the world last Thursday. I think his eyes were open at birth - he's a cute little fella. Not to take anything away from mr. chubbycheeks (beck), who has a bit more of the telly savalas thing that the little babes love ...

Bother ... er ... Brother ....

James has been bugging me to put up some new posts, but we are waiting on some photos from last weekend. So just to hold James over, here is a fine photo of the brothers Olson

The Pribilof Islands

At the beginning of May I got to take a trip to the Pribilof Islands to do some tech support for our field office there.

It was a pretty incredible trip - very few people get out to "the Pribs". It's a three hour flight in a twin-engine Saab turboprop from Anchorage, mainly over water. Almost 3/4 of the entire population (~600,000) of the Northern Fur Seal breeds on the islands of St. Paul and St. George, but only the big males were on the beach when I was there. When the breeding is taking place in July/August, the entire beach under the boardwalks are covered with seals. NMFS does counts from the boardwalks during the summer. I know Bill has already done some research, but here are some links for the rest of you ....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pribilof_Islands
http://www.pinnipeds.org/species/norfursl.htm

House Projects

This weekend was spent working around the house. A new fence, garden boxes, and the greenhouse were the main projects. We had a horrible spring, but things are looking up .....

Quartz Creek Camping

Our first camping trip of the year was a week ago. We stayed at the Quartz Creek campground (on the shore of Kenai Lake) and then went on to Homer for the weekend. Fishing wasn't that great, but the company was fabulous (as always).

We're looking forward to getting all the siblings up this year. First will be James, Jennifer & Beck at the end of June, then Bill, Billy & Mikey in the middle of July. Jennifer, Lauren, and the finally-mobile Mason will follow in August. Bringing up the caboose will be Bill & Maria in September. They just can't get enough Kachemak Bay oysters!

Our first post

Our photos will never be as good as Beck's Daddy ... but our dogs are cooler than their cat.

Here's a recent picture of the front of the house, and the big@ss truck we had to get to pull the bambi.

More pictures to follow .....