The Crescent Valley Alliance was at Crescent Creek Park last weekend to share knowledge, displays and experiences to those who wanted to know more about their surroundings.

Lute Jerstad was a man on the move. He didn’t do well sitting still. It’s hard to say whether he was blessed or cursed with a powerful internal momentum that pushed him into a remarkably adventurous trek through life. That journey took him from a shoebox warmed by a heat lamp on a Minnesota farm, where he spent his first weeks in this world, to the top of Mount Everest, where he made mountaineering history by surviving a freezing night in the open at 28,000 feet.

Jake Bujacich casually walked into the Gig Harbor Civic Center on Saturday with several photographs tucked under his arm. “Is that my neighbor?” he asked when he saw Dick Allen seated at a table going over some old photos with architectural preservationists Julie Koler and Mildred Andrew.

The city of Gig Harbor is growing — and it’s the people living outside of the city’s boundaries who are responsible.

Members on opposite sides of the coin expressed their opinions over the recent ruling by Pierce County Examiner Terrence McCarthy regarding geoduck farming on the Key Peninsula.

On Monday, the City of Gig Harbor began the first phase of the onshore portion of the Sewer Outfall Expansion Project: Installing a wider sewer pipe under North Harborview Drive that will carry higher volumes of treated water from the city’s Waste Water Treatment plant through Gig Harbor Bay and into Puget Sound.

It was a crime that Fred Douglas described as “shocking.” On March 29, 2007, Douglas found himself assigned to his first homicide as a detective with the Gig Harbor Police Department. He had been with the force for 10 years, but he had never before worked a murder case.

The Gig Harbor and Key peninsulas boast a multitude of parks and open spaces for the public to enjoy, and on April 19, local residents will have their chance to give back to the park system during Parks Appreciation Day.

Faded brown and green — and exposed without a plastic lining — Kelsey Stonetreet’s binder is scratched from top to bottom with hot pink highlighter to spruce up the tarnished edges and torn binding. Withing the worn cover lays pages etched in multiple ink colors and highlighted events. Drawings, such as a man snorkeling, represent days to look forward to. On one particular day, Stonestreet, a senior at Peninsula High School, is going to Hawaii for a cruise around the islands.

Jordan Blevins didn’t have to search too hard to find the subject for his mandatory school project. In fact, the topic is close to his heart, and the resources he needs to fulfill his senior project are practically in his own backyard. Blevins, a peppy Gig Harbor High School senior, got the idea for his assignment last fall after reading “One Step At A Time,” a book written by a couple of Gig Harbor authors.

Parents of school age children will soon have another outlet to send their children when a Boys & Girls Club community center opens in Gig Harbor.

Yes, it’s true. It’s snowing in Gig Harbor -- in late March. It’s a little odd, since last week marked the official start of spring. But an icy blast hit the region earlier this week, and traces snow are starting to accumulate as of late Friday morning.

Power to some west side Gig Harbor residents' homes may be out until 5 or 5:30 p.m. Thursday after an RV collided with a pole. The single-vehicle accident occurred just after 2 p.m. Thursday in the 8300 block of 86th Avenue NW in Gig Harbor. Power crews were on scene and expected to restore power within two or three hours.

For years, Chet Dennis has been interested in breeding and raising dogs. In 1999, not longer after he finished serving in the U.S. Army, Dennis hoped to raise Dobermans, Rottweilers or German Shepherds. He didn’t have a chance then — he eventually became an officer with the Gig Harbor Police Department — but he kept the idea in the back of his head.

After nearly a year of construction, Gig Harbor’s first hospital, St. Anthony, is becoming a monumental presence in Gig Harbor North. The skeletal structure of steel girders and concrete block walls are taking shape as the state-of-the-art patient 80-bed facility is gradually bleeding off the architect’s drafting table and materializing into reality.

Hip-hop is not just music for a group of 19 Gig Harbor High School students.

Enlisting in the U.S. Army was not a decision that came lightly to Ezra Suko. In early February, the 26-year-old painter signed up for a three-year tour in the infantry with his 19-year-old brother, Elijah. As Suko tells it, he had been considering entering the military since August 2005. That was when his brother-in-law, Gabe DeRoo, was killed while serving in Iraq.

State Rep. Pat Lantz says 12 years is enough.

The City of Gig Harbor’s long-running and traffic-delaying 56th Street NW and Olympic Drive NW Improvements Project is moving ahead of schedule and staying on budget, according to city officials.

For the third time in the past two years, Vaughn Elementary School’s library has all but overflowed with youngsters excited at the prospect of receiving gifts of books from the school’s Marsha Iverson Foundation.

When George Babbitt sold his drum set in December, it was the second time in his 66 years that he had given up his musical career. This time, it was because he needed more space in his Gig Harbor home, a two-story house overlooking Point Defiance and Vashon Island. The first time was in 1960, one year after he joined two Tacoma bricklayers — Don Wilson and Bob Bogle — in an instrumental rock band known as the Ventures.

Theater crowds may be wowed with incredible depth or feel the need to duck when something appears to fly into the stadium seating when the Galaxy Theatres open Friday morning at Uptown Gig Harbor off Point Fosdick Drive.

The little red salt box barn on Wollochet Drive will soon become one of the stars in a local student film.

Next month, the City of Gig Harbor will begin one of its biggest and most expensive projects to date: expanding the capacity of the city’s waste water treatment plant.