Peninsula Clarion - Sights and Sounds

Rock Band

M. Scott Moon — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:26:14 +0000

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.”

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‘My life’

M. Scott Moon — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:18:22 +0000

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.

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Tustumena 200 Sled Dog Race

M. Scott Moon — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 09:44:58 +0000

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.

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Still ‘The King’

M. Scott Moon — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:16:28 +0000

Friday, Jan. 8, 2009, would have been the 75th birthday of “The King of Rock and Roll.” For a Nikiski woman, her daughter, and her good friend, it was a day to recognize. Listen in as they talk about Elvis Presley and what the musician still means to them.

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Cutting Room Floor

M. Scott Moon — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 04:39:56 +0000

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.

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‘A Reality Check’

M. Scott Moon — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:49:09 +0000

Students in two different classes at Soldotna High School are using very realistic baby simulators to learn the responsibilities that come with a newborn infant.

Listen as one student shares her experience having the “baby” for a long three-day weekend.

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Small Schools State Football Championship

M. Scott Moon — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 05:08:10 +0000

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.

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Autumn in Denali

M. Scott Moon — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:56:26 +0000

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.

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Big Air, Big Fun

M. Scott Moon — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 04:48:09 +0000

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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Salmon Frenzy

M. Scott Moon — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:04:26 +0000

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.

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Kenai Peninsula State Fair

M. Scott Moon — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 01:35:50 +0000

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.

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Summer Decor

M. Scott Moon — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:57:16 +0000

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.

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‘An awful lot of fun’

M. Scott Moon — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:34:22 +0000

Members of the Peninsula Modelers Association take to the sky with a variety of remote control airplanes. Each Father’s Day, they meet on Wik Lake in Nikiski for their annual Float Fly event.

Learn more about the group from their Web site.

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Shifting Sand

M. Scott Moon — Thu, 14 May 2009 09:51:15 +0000

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.

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Learning 2 ski

M. Scott Moon — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:39:11 +0000

The Tsalteshi Trails Association launched a learn-to-ski program for youths this winter at their trails behind Skyview High School in Soldotna. Coaches, parents, volunteers and kids all agree: It has been too much fun.

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