WHAT A DAY!!!

What a HUGE day for our cause! We'd like to thank Donna, the Ballards, the Gilkesons, and the Boroczks for their contributions today! Because of them, we are now almost 1/4 of the way to our goal! Very exciting stuff.

Most of you received our newsletter that Lisa has been working very hard to put together. She does a quarterly newsletter for the Alaska chapter of the March of Dimes. She's taken those skills and continues to improve our own newsletter that we email out to raise awareness and encourage everybody to donate. Lisa does a PHENOMENAL job!! If you didn't receive the newsletter by email today and would like to see it, please email us or make a comment at the end of this post.

Today was an incredible day because...well, I made my first fishing trip of the year. I know. I know. You check the blog to see pictures of the girls.

The drive down there. Even though it was a little chilly (38 degrees), the sunny skies made up for it. What an amazing day in Alaska.

Just past Girdwood is the remains of an impressive avalanche. I think this one closed the highway for a while. You can tell that it was well on the right side of road and all the way down to the water. I got a glimpse of the guard rail on the right and it was demolished. Amazing sight to see.

So here's the fishing spot! Amazing, huh? This is at Cooper Landing where the mostly frozen Kenai Lake becomes the Kenai River. Right there, the fish hang out and come out of the deep lake and into the warm shallower water at the ice edge and feed. In theory, it should have worked great. Not so much.



I like this picture. This is exactly where I was standing for about an hour and a half with no bites. It was so beautiful. Didn't matter at all that I didn't have a hit.

SWAN BUTT!!

Jeff working on his form.

Jeff picked up the camera and got some great pictures of me in action.



You should click on this next one to really see how cool it is. Great picture of the tracks down the mountain.

Portage Lake. This is where the banner at the top of the blog was taken. Incredible how much snow they get.

Bald eagle in Portage Valley.

No kidding...a beluga whale on the way home!

So our final count for my half day fishing trip...held up in traffic because of a rockslide, a handful of bald eagles, several swans, 7 moose, 2 pods of beluga whales...but NO FISH!! Oh well. I love living in this state. What an amazing day. Lisa and the girls took a walk down to Madison's trail and saw a moose of their own and were SO excited to tell me all about it when I got home.

Thank you again for your donations! Today was HUGE!! THANK YOU!! Keep them coming.

Tomorrow is the girls' ballerina birthday party. I am attending as the official photographer. I hope I get to share the photos tomorrow evening .