Halibut Hunting!

A few days ago my mom came to Alaska for a visit. It was nice and we had a good time. I got to take a few days off work and see some things in Alaska I had yet to see. First we took a little trip to Homer. It is about 2.5 hours from Seward and fairly similar. Both are small towns that sit right on the water except Homer is way more artsy and hippie. We stayed at a cute little B&B that was right on the beach. It had a lovely outdoor hot tub that I couldn't get enough of. From the hot tub I could see 7 glaciers, the Homer spit and St. Augustine Volcano. Very Impressive! On one particular night in the hot tub I watched three guys kite boarding which was pretty cool, seeing as the water is quite chilly. After our time in Homer we headed back to Seward. So for the first time my mom got to check out what I call home. I think her words were "it's quaint"! She loved going to the SeaLife Center and seeing the puffins. She even got to meet Nemo and Dory, my kids from my summer of 2005 project. The Sunday before she left we went out on my friend Jeff Roy's boat to do some Halibut fishing. We had a decent day for fishing, it was raining and a bit chilly but the water was pretty flat. Tasha came along as did Jeff Roy's mother in law. Tasha and I were the boat rock stars catching the majority of the fish, including her 45lber!!!!! It was a lot of fun and I even have my first fishing story, The One That Got Away! I had the very first catch of the day in Pony Cove and it was a Silver Salmon. It was a fun catch and as I raised it into the net the hook ripped out of his mouth and plop he fell in the net. Except there was a splash and to our surprise the fish was gone and that's when we found a big hole in our net! Bummer, but thankfully the Halibut were biting and we reached the boat limit. Back at the dock we took pictures of our catch and cleaned/filleted the fish. Tasha and I took our portion of the meat back to the house to vacuum seal and freeze. Later in the week mom and I again went back on the water to do a boat tour. It ended up being a beautiful day. The water was so flat and we even had sunshine for most of the afternoon, otherwise known as cloud failure here in Alaska. It was a nice 10 day visit and I got to give her a pretty good feel of what I do and what life is like here.

Day at the Beach!

So maybe summer finally has arrived in Alaska. The last two days which just so happen to be my weekend have been absolutely amazing. Temperatures in the 70's and not a cloud in the sky so it was time to head to the beach. I took Coho along and we had an excellent day romping around, playing fetch and doing some swimming. I found a nice piece of driftwood to prop up against and I did some reading and snoozing. All and all it was an excellent weekend and hopefully the weather will stay like this since we had 3 straight weeks of rain.