Men with Guns is a Kenai rock band looking to revitalize the local music scene, especially for the underage crowd. Citing influences of Tom Waits to the Misfits to Death Cab for Cutie, Men With Guns just wants to jam.
Take a look at the band and listen to an excerpt from their song “Zombie Girl.”
Jane Faulkner of Soldotna is an emergency room nurse at Central Peninsula Hospital. When she’s not working, sled dogs are her life. This year, she is pursuing her dream to run the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. She has trained the dogs, she has shipped the nearly 2,000 pounds of food for the trail. Here, she takes a moment to talk about getting to the starting line.
The Tustumena 200 Sled Dog Race is the Kenai Peninsula’s premier mushing event. Starting in Kasilof, it works its way into the Caribou Hills before turning back to the coast. Mushers can use the race as a qualifying event for the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. This is a gallery of images from the race start.
As the credits rolled for 2009, I took a moment to look back at some of the photos that ended up on the cutting room floor over the past year. The images in this gallery haven’t been published before. Some went with stories I was working on, others just caught my eye. Take a look for yourself.
Cross-town rivals Kenai Central and Soldotna high schools met in Anchorage to decide the Alaska small schools state football championship on Oct. 17, 2009.
This is a gallery of images from that game.
Denali National Park is beautiful at any time of the year but for many visitors, autumn is when the park is at its peak. Each September, for a four-day period beginning the second Friday after Labor Day, the park uses a lottery to sell 400 permits to drive the road for a day. Normally the 92-mile road is accessible only by bus. This gallery of photos offers a glimpse of the park’s scenery and wildlife made during the lottery periods this year, and in 2006 and 2008.
They don’t have wings but a group of central peninsula motocross riders enjoy making their bikes fly. Daniel Gentry of the Dirt Napp Krew explains his thoughts as his bike takes to the air, where he and other Krew members perform tricks for awed fans: “You just have to put all your fears behind you and just go for it, because if you’re afraid, or you half-attempt something, that’s when you get hurt,” he said.
Images of the Dirt Napp Krew motocross group performing at Twin Cities Raceway fly here. Take a ride.
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Each July, red salmon return by the thousands to the Kenai River’s mouth in downtown Kenai to finish their migration upstream to spawn. And with the salmon, come hungry Alaskans, also by the thousands, their minds set on using a dipnet to fill their freezers and canning jars with the tasty flesh of the prized fish.
The act of collecting the salmon is one part subsistence, one part carnival as beginners and seasoned pros mix their families and techniques in a fishery seen few other places.
Ninilchik hosts the Kenai Peninsula State Fair each August. It features entertainment for both youngsters and adults and is a chance for participants in 4H to show off and to auction their livestock. This is a gallery of photos from the 2009 fair.
Once winter’s monochrome has been washed away by spring rains, it doesn’t take long for summer’s wildflowers to take bloom. On the central Kenai Peninsula, lupine is perhaps as emblematic of early summer as fireweed is for the first weeks of autumn. But many other varieties decorate the land in the months of June and July. Here, with a piano solo from Kenai musician Maria Allison, are a few of those flowers.
Sometimes it seems like we spend seven months of the year dropping sand on our highways, driveways, and walkways; and then we spend another five months of the year brushing, spraying and blowing it away. For some, it’s all in a day’s work. For others, it’s nothing other than a chore.
No landmark defines the central Kenai Peninsula as well as Mount Redoubt. The 10,197-foot active volcano looms on the horizon 50 miles to the west of Kenai. It is the first land in view to receive the rising sun and has inspired countless artists with its image at sunset. We’ve named roads, schools and businesses after the symmetrical rock.
In 1999, ten years after its last eruption, the Peninsula Clarion accompanied a team from the Alaska Volcano Observatory as they checked instruments and took measurements on Redoubt. AVO is the agency that keeps tabs on the many active volcanos around the northern Pacific Rim.
Now, as Redoubt is restless again, the AVO is in the public’s eye once more. This gallery features photos from the 1999 trip, along with photos of the mountain from around the peninsula, and a few from the recent active period.
Submit your own Redoubt photos
Many people modify their bodies to one degree or another. Some dye their hair, others decorate nails. Teeth can be straightened or whitened for cosmetic effect. Pierced ears are commonplace. For some however, the average ear jewelry just doesn’t go far enough. Listen as people who “gauge” their ears share their experiences.
Most drivers like to slow down when the conditions get icy. But a fun-loving group of auto enthusiasts meet each Sunday at the Decanter Inn in Kasilof to see just how fast they can go on an ice-covered lake down the hill from the lodge and bar. With tires mounted inside of tires and steel spikes for traction, they race each other and the elements as long as the ice on the lake holds.
Witnessing the northern lights is an unforgettable experience. Their beauty inspires artists, astronomers and anyone else who is fortunate enough to see them. They are a winter treat, as long hours of daylight drown them out in the summer months. Friends telephone each other in the middle of the night to call attention to a good show. Maria Allison of Kenai, Alaska, performs the music accompanying these images of the northern lights.
Members of the Soldotna Equestrian Association and other riders herd cattle down Kalifornsky Beach Road on Sunday afternoon at the end of the first cattle drive from Diamond M Ranch Resort to the Soldotna Rodeo Grounds.
