Boats and a float plane

Brooklin driving the boat out to Excursion Inlet (Doc Warners)




Float plane landing


Float plane ride.

A Teenager in the House

Brooklin became an official teenager this morning at 3:22 am (MDT). She had an awesome day. She got up early and we made her one of her favorite breakfasts...homemade egg"McMuffins". (a toasted english muffin topped with a slice of cheddar cheese and scrambled eggs with bacon.) After breakfast, she got to open her presents. She got a new dress (made by me!), 4 pairs of knee-hi picture socks, and a Nintendo DS, an accessory pack and a game called SimAnimals.

Next, she left with her dad to go out to Auke Bay to go on a boat ride. There is a fishing tour operation near here that ordered new boats for their business, and needed help driving the boats out to their place. Darwin is friends with the owner's son, and gladly volunteered to help out. It just happened to be on Brooklin's birthday, so she got to go too! I hear she even drove the boat for awhile! (Darwin took some video, but I haven't seen it yet...I will post it as soon as I get it downloaded). After they got out to the lodge, they had lunch, and then got to ride in a float plane back to Juneau. (I need to get Darwin's camera so those pictures can make it here too).

After they were back in town, I went and picked them up at the airport and we headed downtown. There is a tramway here in downtown Juneau. One day a year, they have a sort of local appreciation day. Normally, the price to ride up the side of the mountain is $27 a person...but today only, it was only $6 a piece! We have all been up there once before (last time we lived here) but I don't think any of them remember it (except maybe Brooklin). They have asked to go up on it several times, so I am glad I completely stumbled across the message on facebook telling about it. (thanks to Kathy for posting about it!!) I will also post those pictures in another post. We got to ride up the tram, which goes up to 1800 feet from 6 feet. There is a theater, museum, restrauant, and gift shop up there, along with a bald eagle. The eagle comes up for the tourist season. She was injured and is not releaseable, so she is now a star attraction at the Mount Roberts Tramway.

When we got home, we sang to her and had her birthday cheesecake. It was called chocolate chip cookie dough cheesecake. It ws a regular cheesecake with dalops of chocolate chip cookie dough in it. It was sooo good and sooo rich! After that, Darwin and I let her stay up to play her DS until midnight....because we went out to see the new Star Trek movie at 10 pm...which was awesome. Here are some pictures of her birthday.

A hard day at work!

I have often been accused of not working hard and playing all the time by my family members and I want you to know that it is just not true. So to show how hard I work I have decide to post today's efforts on this blog site. This should put to rest the unfounded rummer that I do things that are unrelated to my primary responsabilities during the work day. Now two Saturdays ago I worked the entire day talking to people about how to prepare for a hurricaine and conducting a harbor patrol in Kahului harbor. As a result today may not be the best example of a hard working day but I will do my best to put the right type of spin on it.

I arose a 0300 to begin an arduous day of work. I arrived in the harbor in time to assist in launching the vessel and getting underway in moderate to heavy seas where we could assist the Maui Fire Rescue vessel (who really did launch at the same time and went fishing in the same place) provide oversight to recreational activities happening about 12 miles outside of Kahului Harbor. When we arrive we found that there were Mahi Mahi (dolphin) and Ahi (tuna) that needed to be taken as sample specimens from the environment. We did the best that we could to take a sampling that were representative of the area: 2 dolphin and 4 tuna. When we completed the sampling we decided we should widen our search for other types of life. During our fishing (I mean searching) we collected a short billed spear fish. I will admit that it was a lot of fun to reel this one in.

OK, I have a really cool job and I had fun today. I hope all of you have as much fun as I do. Love what you do and do what you love.

This is the demonstrating my workout in the short billed spear fish lifting exercises.

This is me and Hunter Betts (the vessel owner).

This is a fish sample that we took. OK, they are a little small, but they were a lot of fun to catch.

Snorkel pictures

After watching the whales, we went out to Molokini Crater and went snorkeling. We were in 35 ft. of water, and from the boat, you could see clear to the bottom. There were some fish and coral to see, and luckily (for me) no sharks today. Darwin and Brooklin were praying to see sharks today!

Pictures of the whales

The video is really small, so here are some shots of the whales I took with the 300mm zoom lens. This one was really playing around, and slapped the water for several minutes.

We only got wet

On Saturday, we took out the Coast Guard' s morale boat. We were going to try and see some whales, but we only got wet and cold. The ocean was choppy, and the wind was really blowing. I am glad we bought the water proof housing for the video camera. The kids would laugh their heads off every time we got hit with more water, Dar was grinning from ear to ear, and I never let go of the handle near where I was sitting. Darwin actually did see two whales, but none of the rest of us did. We might try and go out again....hopefully on a calmer day. I didn't think that we would be able to hear anything on the video, since the microphone was sealed tightly inside the waterproof housing, but some sound did get through. Enjoy watching us get soaked.