alaskan days off//

this past week it was pouring rain every single day, until our day off. so we took advantage of the beautiful weather and headed up to one of the mountain lakes in ketchikan. we went on a cool little hike around the lake and enjoyed the mossy scenery and even found some rope swings to play on! since it doesn't get dark here until about 10 pm, we decided we still had enough daylight to do something else too. so we headed back to the ocean to go sea kayaking! we rented a tandem kayak and paddled out around some of the small islands across the way. it's a pretty exciting feeling to be in a teeny kayak atop the massive ocean, we felt so small! as we were going we spotted a cute sea lion splashing and playing around right in front of us! they're the funniest little creatures. it's amazing how alive the ocean is, and it's been so fun to be able to explore it and get so close to all the sea life.

fishy wishy//

we are lucky enough to be able to use fishing equipment while we are here, so we've been trying our best to get out there every chance we get! if josh could have it his way, he would be just fine with fishing every second of every day. here are some of the fish we've caught ourselves, and also some of the awesome fish that customers bring to our dock for processing.

josh's first catch in alaska, a big chum salmon!

josh's first king salmon!

beautiful red sculpin

brit's quillback rockfish

rockfish

oops... somehow caught a sunstar!

big sculpin he caught off the dock

40 lb king salmon

halibut! the big one weighed 200 lbs and was as long as josh!

HUGE yellow eye snapper

creepy ling cod

holding the head of a massive 50 lb king salmon

life lately//

oh hi there! the days and weeks have been FLYING by here. i seriously find myself wondering how time can go this fast. but we're still here, still loving alaska, and definitely having the greatest time of our lives. we've been keeping busy fishing, working, and soaking up every ounce of free time we have to explore this beautiful place. we absolutely love it here! now if we could just find a way to make time slooooowwww dooowwwwwwwn. here are some pictures from the past few weeks of what we've been up to!

this is where we work! this is the dock that we spend all our time on :)

the view from the dock

catching crabs at work

jelllllllyyy! we see these pretty things everyday

pretty mosaic on the dock near the cruise ships

filleting a 40 lb king salmon

look at this creepy fish! 

josh's work attire for cutting fish

the walk down creek street

good ol' lumberjacks ;)

appreciate those gorgeous locks. because they are now gone :( josh had to cut it all off for work!

home away from home//

last week, we made it to our new home for the summer! we got a job at this awesome fishing lodge in ketchikan, alaska. we fell in love with alaska last summer on the cruise we took for our honeymoon. we knew we wanted to come back, and we can hardly believe that we are here now, staying for the whole summer. it took us 3 ish days to get here, and we stopped in some pretty cool places along the way. we drove up through alberta and all the way across british columbia, and took a ferry from there. ketchikan is a little teeny town on a big island covered in alaskan rainforest. we're so excited to explore this beautiful place, and we're hoping we will be able to catch so much fish that we won't know what to do with all of it ;). this first week we've been able to kind of get familiar with the town. since it's only 30 miles from end to end, it shouldn't take long to find our favorite spots. we've been learning bits and pieces of the jobs we'll be doing on the dock, and josh even got to start learning how to filet the fish. here's to a good summer!

driving through british columbia

bears! on the side of the road

banff national park

lake louise in all her frozen glory

looking in on ketchikan