Eagle River Valley Hike

Went on a hike in Eagle River Valley Monday....what a badass place. Kept our eyes out for bears as we kept walking over bear scat, and Kevin, who came along, told us of a guy he knew who got maulled here. Great.

I found my hiding place from Smokey the Bear

The 3 Musketeers at Echo Point....Crow's Pass is behind us - a very desired backpacking trip we are gonna do this summer!

Russian River Combat Salmon Fishing

Ben and I went down to the Russian River last weekend to go salmon fishing....combat salmon fishing. We left our house at midnight and were fishing by 3am. Yes, its Alaska, there was plenty of light.

See em all line up!

The area around the river was beautiful, loved these wild roses. Kept my eye out for the pink grizzly bears - yes, thats right, pink. The brilliant Alaska Fish and Game dept has come up with the brilliant idea to paint the problem bears so you can stay away. Disgusting!

Ben in all his glory! You can see where the glacial water and the freshwater converge, that's where we were told to fish.

THere are handy cleaning stations in the river to keep the smelly carcasses from stinkin and littering the place. Ben sharpening his BIG KNOOOIIIIIFE.

Final deck shots!

So that's it. We are officially done with the deck! Looks pretty good eh? What a job,...

Happy Summer Solstice!!!

Summer solstice is here!!!! The longest day we get up here in Alaska.....a full 19 hours and 21 minutes of the sun being visible. However it will be light all through the nights, dont even need to drive with lights on! Not sure what we're doing tonight, its a pretty big day to celebrate for Alaskans.
Thought we would share a couple more pics around the house...a picture of our front porch with our new hanging plants and our gorgeous tulips that Ben planted last year.

Had the Browns and their twin baby girls over for a barbeque, thought this was a great picture. No, Andy's head was not set on fire. It was our citronella candle behind him....good face though!

Enjoying some good food and company on our new deck set on our new deck! :)

A beautiful sunset (at midnight) we had last night.

Deck Construction Continued!

As of writing this, the deck is complete! However I just spent about 4 hours waterproofing it and it needs to dry.....then I will take the final pictures!!!!!! Its so awesome, we sit on it everyday just in awe.
But in the meantime, here are some more pictures of the construction.

Andy helpin out building and drinking. :)

Trying my hand out at using a Skillsaw....fun but kinda freaky!

This is a funny story....Ben was doing a GREAT job at building the handrails for the deck, however made them about a foot too short!!! However, with his imaginative creativity....we used them anyway and it made the deck look even better, like someone designed it that way. Good job Ben!

Nailing in the handrails, if you can tell they worked great, we just added another board below it. Stay tuned for the completed pictures!!!!

Goodnight Alaskan-style!

We went out last night with a few friends then decided to go watch part of the ever-lasting sunset. This picture was taken at 11:30pm over Cook Inlet looking over toward Mount Susitna. Beautiful.

Our trip to Tucson

Last weekend we travelled to Tucson, to find OUR PLACE, the place we're going to get married at next year! Not only did we find a FANTASTIC place, but we also go to visit Ben's family and our great friends Kevin and Spring.

Click on the picture below to view our trip!

Tucson Trip

Deck Day 5

So today we decided to tackle the stairs so that we could start using the deck to let the dogs out instead of having to go down the stairs all the time.... The stairs were the hardest part, calculation wise. The ground in the back yard slopes up as you go away from the house as you can see, this creates a tough math problem for us college calculus graduates... We eventually got it figured out though...

Here is a shot of me cuttin the stringers... An interesting fact about building a deck is that you get to learn a ton of new terminology. Joist, beam, post, header, ledger, treads, stringers, toenail, hurricane brackets, hangers, denier and on and on...

We also got the 3 tons, yes you read that right, 3 tons of rock delivered by a big dump truck today. This is the pile in the driveway that took about 30 very full and heavy wheel barrow trips to the back yard. We are spreading it under the deck cuz grass isn't going to grow down there any more.

Lisa was a trooper! We had a big day, got a lot done and are really enjoying the deck now. Glad we did it and glad we did it ourselves.

One step at a time...

All that's left now is to waterproof and then onto the handrails.

Memorial Day Weekend continued

Here are some more pictures from our jam packed memorial weekend with Kevin. After our hike up Bird Ridge, we decided to drive down to Seward to hike Exit Glacier, then camp overnight on the beach at Resurrection Bay, then take a chartered fishing boat trip out the next morning......great time had by all, even though multiple blisters ensued from all the hiking and our quads didn't work that well. :)

Click on the picture below to take a look at the photos......ENJOY!

Seward Trip

Deck Day 4

So this is what we did today, bent over and screwed our brains out, some 500+ screws! good news is that the top is amost done, we are 3 boards short of a full deck!

The decks stability was in question for a while but now it is strong and stable as a mountain! What a great thing to have for the summer, we are getting really excited....

The parting shot at 11 PM, almost done, and with plenty of daylight to spare! Hand rail here we come on day 5!

Deck Day 3

So progress has been made and at an alarming pace I might add. We finished the subframe on day 3 and are ready to put the decking on now... I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!

A shot from above showing our joists...

Kevin and Laura stopped by to hammer in about 12 nails... too much fun for them;)

Lisa and I in action.

Joey and Rachel have been a huge help with all of this and we are planning to put a deck in her back yard next! Look for Rachel on the Day 4 photos...

Deck Project Day 2

Just a quick update to keep you all up to speed on the progress, we got the wood delivered the other day (all 2600 lbs. of it) so we decided to tear the old deck off... Man was it time for a replacement, the old one had a lot of rotted wood. We had a blast as demolition only took about 45 min, wish we could build the new one that fast! We got the ledger board up and bolted in, man is that sucka attached good!

Here are our 3 construction bosses: Kaena, Cubby and Sipsy (our roommates dog)

The stacks of wood, waiting to be installed. Made the garage smell awesome!

Lisa, trying to figure out how to get the dogs to the ground.... :)