Arctic Adventures

Our Smokehouse Last weekend Kyle and I tried our hand at fish smoking. We decided that we were going to try to fabricate our own little smokehouse and smoke some salmon. The week before this I went out fishing a couple times targeting salmon destined for the smokehouse. At this point in the year it is very hard to find fish that are in good shape. I ended cutting only 4 fish out of 20 some that I caught. A lot of the fish that are still alive are so moldy and deteriorated that they would not be fit for human consumption. (Although that phrase has a slightly different definition here.) I pulled one salmon out of the freezer. That was a fresh salmon caught earlier in the year. You can see the difference in the color of the flesh. The fresh salmon has a nice healthy darker orange look to it and the old salmon is a pale, sort of sickly looking color. Old Fish and Fresh Fish I think that we left the fish in the smokehouse for a little too long. Most of the pieces were pretty tough to chew.

Here are the pictures from our surprise "wedding reception" that I promised! We had no idea what was going on! The whole clan. Front row: Stan's parents, Doris, Darlene, Donna, Laura, Alision, Brett, Michael, Craig (principal); Second Row: Stan, John, Lori, Norman, Timm's parents, me; Back Row: Timm's Dad, Timm, Mark T. Caleb (Stan and Doris's son) with Timm Me, Alision, Lori, and Donna They even had a cake for us I was trying to make a deal with Brett. . . It didn't work. . . But we made peace

Weekly Panoramic Just when it seems like things are going to take a turn for the worse and get cold the weather decides to warm up again. The beginning of last week was really chilly with morning temps in the teens and barely warming up to above freezing during the day. I though for sure that we would be able to walk across the lake by Friday. Instead the temperature climbed back up and on Thursday morning it was right around freezing at 7:30 am and warmed up nicely during the day. We are now able to take the shortcut behind the new town which cuts some time off of the walk. The tundra is frozen enough that you can walk through it without getting soaked. I'm not sure when we will be able to take the real shortcut because although it has been getting cold at night it is still warming up enough during the day to melt some of the ice. I have really slowed down fishing as of late, going only a few times in the past two weeks. The weather hadn't been cooperating very well. I did man