Gone Fishing

Wednesday was a beautiful sunny day so we decided to pack up our fishing poles and head over to the Russian River to catch some Red Salmon.

As soon as we got to the river the clouds rolled in and it started raining on us. But knowing how competitive my dad is, told us "true fishermen don't run from the rain" so we just had to put on our rain jackets and fish in the rain. Lucky for us, the rain cleared up after an hour or so.

This is the face of a true happy fisherman =] This was my dad's 3rd and last Red he caught that day. When he was reeling it in, Bryson was holding out the net and the fish went aerial and jumped right in the net! The fish figured he was doomed either way and would rather get it over with quick and easy.

I got bored of fishing so i went around and tried to take some cool pictures

Here's my mom, she's the head of the cheerleader squad (ploy and i join her when we get tired of fishing). Our cheers really work, just ask Preston. He caught his first Red right after we started cheering for him! and he caught 2 more after, but they got away.

When the fisherman are done for the day, they fillet their fish right there by the river so they don't have to pack out the whole fish and it makes it less heavy to carry out. When they are done filleting they just leave the carcass on the edges of the river for the wildlife to eat. While we were fishing, we saw 3 different black bears that would come grab a carcass and take it back into the forest to eat. Well this smart little bear got tired of eating the leftover scraps and wanted a JuIcY WHOLE fish so he sniffed out some guy's string of fish that was in the water. He walked right over to it and while the guy wasn't looking, reached down and slipped a fish right off the top of the line. The guy didn't even notice until he saw the bear happily prancing back into the trees with his fish. When the bear came back for seconds, he was disappointed to see that the string of fish was gone, the fisherman decided he would out-smart the bear and tie his fish to his leg. And of course the bear was too lazy to swim out and steal the other fish, so he had to go back to scraping meat off carcasses.

Preston fishing in the lucky hole

At the end of the day, my dad was the only one that caught anything. He is the most patient person i have ever seen! Better luck next time...

Heres a short video of Bryson realing in his fish. I had to turn the video off because we were heading straight for a branch (at the end you can hear my dad telling us to duck). It was funny because when my dad said "Everyone Duck" Ploy was all "Where are the ducks?" hahaha so we had to explain to her what it meant.

New record holder!

Bryson's king he named "Bessy" put up a good fight, it took 15 minutes till she finally came close enough to the boat to net her.

It was so heavy he could barely hold it up!

Bryson holds the family record: 32 pounds

Look at all that meat!

Salmon eggs

Adventures of Alaska

Plane ride to Alaska!


I was just listening to my music, and looking out the window and i looked over and saw that everyone was out cold.


The drive from anchorage to soldotna was so Pretty! It's one of the top scenic drives in the world.






There were so many waterfalls, Ploy wanted to stop at every one we saw to take pictures so instead of a 2 hour drive it took us 3 and a half to get to the cabin =]

The car ride was this exciting..... Ploy is trying to convince me that she wasn't really asleep here (but we all know she can sleep anytime, anywhere and i even heard her snore a couple times) so she WAS really asleep haha

As soon as we got to the cabin, there was a moose in our yard and wishbone was chasing it around. When wishbone saw us he was so excited he ditched the moose and came running up to us.

So Sunday night at about 11:00p.m. Bryson and Preston the bright idea to go for a ranger ride. They asked Ploy and I if we wanted to go, Ploy being smart said she was going to go to bed early because the next day we were going to go fishing, but me on the other hand said sure I'll go! Right before we left my mom said "don't be gone too long because it's getting late and it will start to get dark soon". We were just thinking "ok, whatever" and didn't really listen to her. So Bryson was driving and we were looking for some trails to take in our neighborhood and we came upon a road called 'Lonely Road'. We looked down the road and saw that at the end the road there was a trail we could take. We went for it. We were driving down the trail having a good time, it was a little cold but by now we were pretty much numb.

The day before it had rained all day so there were tons of puddles that we were romping through and sliding around in. We had been on the trail for about a good 5 minutes when we came up to a huge deep puddle. We didn't know if we should turn around or just try to go through it. We switched to four wheel drive and charged the puddle full speed. When we were in the middle of the puddle all of a sudden the wheels started spinning and we were sinking into the mud. We were stuck. A million things started running through my head like "oh man what if a bear comes, are we going to have to walk back, what if a crazy mountain man comes and kidnaps us and throws us in chicken coops, why didn't i bring my phone?". So we got out, rolled up our pants and walked around bare foot looking for logs to put under the tires. After our failed attempt to drive out on the logs we took the key out, put on our shoes and started walking back. I remembered passing a cabin on the trail and then told Bryson and Preston we should ask if we could use their phone to call my dad. When we came up to the cabin i changed my mind, the cabin was run-down and in the middle of no where and who knows what kind of people lived there. So we kept walking. While walking all i could think of was how Ploy was in the warm cabin sleeping in her nice comfy bed. We passed two moose and luckily hadn't seen any bears yet. We had been walking about a mile now when we finally got to the main road we saw my dad driving towards us! We were so happy to see him!!! We told him what had happened and he said we would take the truck out there tomorrow and pull the ranger out. I had never been so happy to be in our cabin.

The next day we took the truck out on the trail not knowing if the truck would make it back out or not. We successfully pulled the ranger YAYYY!!!

While my dad was driving the truck through the side of a puddle he slipped fell into a rut full of mucky mud and now... HE was stuck. He tried to drive out on four wheel drive but the truck didn't budge. So he decided to come back TOMORROW with a jack and get it out. We went back the next day and it took us a good 3 hours of cutting logs and shoveling mud to get the truck out. We finally got the truck AND the ranger back back to the cabin! We haven't gone on another ranger ride since...

~Blue Skys~

~Fresh Air~

Welcome back to the blogging world

So i decided to resurrect my blog because i am going to Alaska for the whole summer... once again. And since my whole family isn't going up this year i thought it would be nice to post pictures so they can see the progress on the cabins and all the HUGE fish we are going to catch to make them jealous :)

Bryson, Ploy, Bryson's friend Preston, my parents and I are leaving for the icebox on May 28 at 3 a.m.! As the days keep getting hotter and hotter here in the valley, the more excited i am to be escaping the scorching hot summer days!