The Alaska Range

The Alaska Range, featuring the Kahiltna Glacier, Ruth Glacier and Denali herself. Enjoy.

When Pigs Fly

Pigging is the term used in the oilfield for sending devices through the pipelines to scrape, clean, and monitor. Smart pigs are capable of detecting corrosion levels in the pipe. Regardless of what the pig is doing, it must be launched and received.
Much of this winters work has consisted of preparing for these mods. We built ice roads and drove pilings, welded caps, and did lots of piping work to accomodate the new routes that these pigs will take throughout the field from the drill pads to the processing facilities. The lifting and setting of these pig mods was a much anticipated, high profile, very dynamic job. And we pulled it off in two nights without a hitch.

Dutch Oven Madness

It's official. I am mad about cooking outdoors with a dutch oven. This summers addition is a 12 inch, 9 quart oven that is capapble of feeding a small army. We took it camping across the bay and it was a culinary success every time.

I did a little research and asked a few trustworthy folks on the proper way to heat these ovens. The answer is charcoal briquets. A 12 inch oven requires 24 briquets; using the "plus 4, minus 4" technique we put 8 briquets underneath and 16 on top. This resulted in an oven temperature of 350 degrees fpr about 45 minutes.

 This wonderful dish is called a strata ,which means layers. We put down multiple layers of artisan bread, eggs and cream, sauteed vegetables with cream cheese, and a smoked king salmon topping. It was crazy delicious.

We also made a delicious rhubarb, cherry, strawberry crisp for dessert that was out of this world. Here also is a large lasagna that fed 10 people twice. It took quite a while to bake due to its voluminous size but was well worth the wait.