Alaska fishing

Sportsman's Cove had an empty boat so we grabbed it for a fishing trip outside of Ketchikan.

John, Keith, and Nathan and his dad joined us to fill the boat.

 We got lucky and had Josh as our captan, he's been there the longest and found us fish when no other boat could.   

 Our deck hand Joey had been coming up for 7 years as a guest and finally was old enough to do the job legally.  The most practiced beginner ever.

 I caught a big Chinook the first day.

 The boys

 Keith catching a halibut, finally.

 This one fought John hard

 The second day was beautiful, but watch for sunburn

 Whale!

 What in the world is that?

 Fancy lounge chair

 This lingcod took the entire boats' concentrated effort.  He had lodged himself between rocks.

Josh cleaned fish like crazy on the way back to the lodge.  He wasn't the biggest fan of all the rockfish we caught, poor guy.

 Ketchikan for a short star before our plane the next morning.

Bend trip

We joined Eric's parents for a weekend in Bend.   

Fun to see the Deschutes further upstream 

 My attempt to get a rain shadow picture for class. storm spilling over the cascades with sunny skies following

Cherry bumper crop!

Cherry jam!

Strawberries and visits!

My strawberry plants are producing like crazy.

Just in time for Shawna and kids to come and visit. Satchel loved the battle bots and was more talkative than I've ever seen.

Juniper couldn't get enough of the berries.

I sure miss these guys

Later Josh joined them and we had a neighborhood reunion.

sigh

Raccoon in the hen house

Katherine and Tim's chickens hang out in our yard a lot.  One day when they were gone, I noticed an intruder being a little too curious...

Pops' pups

Dinner with Pops and his boys

His big big boys