New on Kern This Studio: Elizabeth and Jaxson

Before my friend Elizabeth and her family left town for a new adventure living in Seattle, we got together for a mommy-baby photo sess. She looked beautiful, and Jaxon, simply serious and smart. Check out more from the shoot on http://kernthisstudio.com/

How can you not LOVE baby feet? Seriously.

Have a great week!

Friday Fun: Lilacs

Joshua picked me a bouquet of lilacs out of our front yard this afternoon. They make our house smell beautiful.

Friday Fun: Not pictured, everybody else

Happy Friday! Anybody else love this poster poking fun at U.S. maps that exclude Alaska and Hawaii? Because I do. It's funny to think Alaska is almost 1/3 the land size of the rest of the country and gets shrunk down to a little corner on most graphics. Find the clever artist here.

We're kicking the Anchorage dust off our shoes this weekend and heading down the Kenai Peninsula for a camping with friends and salmon fishing on the Russian River. Don't worry, I'll take tons of pictures like always.

Have an adventuresome weekend!

A bike ride to the market

We hopped on our bikes and rode the four miles each way downtown to the Anchorage Market and Festival this weekend. We took the Tony Knowles Coastal trail most of the way, which winds along Cook Inlet. The view was beautiful and the exercise was pretty nice too.

 Bridge over Northern Lights Boulevard.

 Mudflats off the coastal trail.

 Tony Knowles Trail.

 Handmade ulus at the market.

 Westchester Lagoon.

Summer evenings look like this

 We played in the front yard the other night and I took a few pictures.

Google Guitar

Have you played with the Google guitar yet? If not, go to google.com and run your mouse over the strings to play. It's You can even record your digital masterpieces. Google's guitar-themed gadget is to commemorate Les Paul, pioneer of the solid body electric guitar.

Friday Fun: Happy trails this weekend

Did I mention that I got to walk barefoot in the sand on the Homer spit when I was there recently? I waded in the ocean in ALASKA and didn't freeze to death. Temps were in the 70s.

Exciting plans this weekend? We're planning a long bike ride downtown to the Saturday market for a two-wheeled adventure ending ... in my case, the grilled salmon wrap I've been daydreaming about since last summer.

Happy trails this weekend.

Halibut fishing in Homer

Happy Friday everyone! I wish I had as amazing plans for this weekend as I did for Memorial Day. For our anniversary gift to each other, Josh and I went on a half-day halibut fishing charter in Homer, the halibut-fishing capital of the world.

We got a little sea-sick on those wild ocean waves, but still managed to both catch our limit, two halibut each. I actually pulled three, but threw the first one back in hopes of a bigger one. It was amazing. It seemed like every time I dropped my line I was reeling it back up with something heavy at the end of my line.

My bait was stolen many times, but the amazing charter crew were quick to re-bait our hooks. In fact, they did most the work, from finding a great fishing spot, giving a quick lesson on catching halibut to baiting our hooks and cleaning our catch! It was pretty cool to get all the fun of fishing without the work of gutting and cleaning them. Not to mention I would have a clue where to start filleting one of those big, sideways fish. There was an amazing young women on the crew that probably blew some stereotypes about seasonal fishing workers, but you wouldn't doubt her skills if you saw her wrangle those fish or wield a knife.

We took home 17.3 lbs. of fillet halibut, ready for summer grilling and much more!

See that pole bend? Those babies were heavy ... plus they had two-pound weights on our lines to boot.

Got one!

Trophy shot.

The day's catch.

Charter Captain Josh is doing his last summer after six years of seasonal charter work. He just graduated with a degree in nautical engineering with which he hopes to design boats.

Cooper Landing and Homer anniversary weekend

We packed up the Subaru and hit the road last weekend. Saturday we set up camp on the shore of Crescent Creek in Cooper Landing next to the only patch of snow around. Our campsite was just a few miles from the site of our wedding the previous year. I waded in the blue creek of glacial melt, we cooked dinner right on the coals of the fire and listened to the water rush all night.

  Nature's ice chest. Why yes, that is Costco brand beer.

Sunday morning we packed up and headed to Homer at the far west end of the Kenai Peninsula. We stopped to look at Mt. Iliamna and Mt. ReDoubt, the latter of which erupted for several months the first year I lived in Alaska. Homer is the "Halibut fishing capital of the world" and known for it's adorable tourist trap, a 4.5 mile spit lined with shops, restaurants, docks and tour companies. We had never been there before.

 Mt. Augustine is currently in an active volcanic state, visibly releasing steam here.

The view of Homer from just outside town. The strip of land projecting in to Kachemak Bay is the aforementioned Homer Spit. We booked a room at the Land's End Resort at the tip of the spit.

 

A row of shops on the spit.

Art in a restaurant where we grabbed chowder and cocktails.

  Me and my martini.

  Our shadows and the view from the deck of our hotel.

Josh was wincing from the sun in every single photo of the two of us from the weekend. So I gave up and posted this one anyway.

NEXT UP: The last morning of our trip we hopped aboard a charter halibut tour to try to catch some fish. Photos soon.