July 8 and 9th: Alaskan Adventures

Not exactly sunny but no rain today so we used every last bit of it.  Breakfast by the fire to start.  The camper gets cramped pretty quickly so we take any advantage to get outside.  Abbey woke up with a sore throat and the chills and I was so sad she was going to miss out on our “nice” day.  Funny that we ended up with a whole jar of colloidal silver - no more cases of pinkeye besides Zippy but the Lord knew we would need it for the sore throats to follow.  I’m not sure why we’ve been so sick.  We’ve had just about every common ailment: cold, stomach bug, pinkeye, and flu.  I think our immune systems must be shot from travel exhaustion, cold, rainy weather, not so great camping food and less sanitary conditions due to hauling water.

We’ve really been camping since we can’t dump the camper until we get out of here so we need to really watch how much water we use and how much we let down the drain.  So, no letting water run to heat up with the hot water heater - we heat it on the stove and then wash dishes in a bin and dump it all outside.  It’s really what most island folk around here do on a daily basis anyway since wells don’t exist on a rock island.  They gather rain water or collect it from a waterfall by the 100s of gallons and bring it back to their homes.

Abbey stayed behind this morning to sleep and the rest of us hiked the Rocky Ridge trail right outside of town.  It turned out to be a really nice morning for it, and while we fended off mosquito after mosquito, we had some really lovely views of town.

After lunch at the camper and checking on Abbey, we headed back out to fish for Dolly Vardens (dollies) at the head of Barabara Creek (yes, that is the correct spelling, it is not Barbara creek :).  This trail starts behind the house we lived in during Abbey’s first 6 months of life.  A beautiful cabin on a cliff edge with an incredible view.  No running water or electricity so we didn’t stay during the winter months but it was a neat spot for our short stay.  We had fun peeking in the windows and seeing that very little had changed over the years.

The trail was pretty overgrown and it become obvious that it hadn’t really been used in a while.  But the kids enjoyed bushwhacking a bit and finding the trail bit by bit.  I enjoyed watching  the kids really get into the adventure of making a trail and finding a way to the creek through the devil’s club and pushki. 

The ground cover of an Alaskan forest is very unforgiving - there’s no way to ever just walk through the woods without having to beat out a trail. The hard work of the hike made the trip because there were unfortunately no fish in the creek.  So we hung around a bit on the beach before heading back up.  There’s a steep, muddy spot that would have been easier with the rope that once hung there years ago, but we managed to get everyone down and back up, thankfully.  Even Zippy had fun despite the bugs and the spikes branches hovering over her head.   

The next day was beautiful as we headed out to church.  And there we heard that the reds were in!!  All summer, people this side wait for the “Tutka reds”.  I don’t really understand it all, but the state sets up various hatcheries throughout the state to increase the economy and revenue for fisherman and canneries and such.  Not every salmon run is natural.  And certain salmon need a particular  kind of water to hatch and live and breed and all that.  Anyway, there is a pink and a red salmon run in Tutka bay.  Thousands of fry (salmon minnows) are released each year at the head of the bay at the hatchery there.  If you didn’t know, all salmon return to the place of their birth to spawn (lay eggs or sperm) and die. It is this end-of-life cycle that fishermen prepare to take advantage of each year - and timing is critical.  The longer a salmon is in its birth place, the softer and fishier the meat once it spawns.  So catching one early on means top quality fish.  Really, a spawned out fish at the end of its life is almost inedible.  Randy and Bernadette (who I’ll talk more about later) had made a detour into the lagoon on their way to church and “limited out” (each person can snag 6 a day).  And when I say snag, I literally mean snag.  We use large, three pronged, heavily weighted hook.  Once you fling it out over the school fish, you then reel and jerk it right through the school and it “snags” a fish.  No bait required.  Most fun ever.  I know people like to say “well, that’s not very sportsmanlike”.  But up here with locals

it’s not about sport so much.  The fish is considered subsistence or harvest.  Alaskans take “putting up” fish very seriously.  Smoked, canned, dried, frozen - you name it, it’s eaten all winter long in many forms.

And so the boys were offered a fishing trip that evening at high tide.  Arne, with the big boat I mentioned earlier,  took the boys along with Hannah and Moriah (who weren’t too excited about live music in a bar) up to the lagoon that night 6-9pm while Abbey, Ruth (our friend staying the night) and I went to the Linwood bar to listen to another good friend play music that night. I dropped them off at the Jakalof dock, drove back into Seldovia, and then picked them up once they were done.   They had a blast in the rainy night fishing adventure and caught 7 fish (usually we catch a lot more, but a seiner was in there and scooped up most of it before they got to it).  And then it was cleaning time.  No matter that it was late - you clean your fish as soon as you get in 1) to keep the meat fresher and 2) so you can dispose of the carcass easiest but simply throwing it into the ocean.

Previous Post: SUN at last!

Next Post: "Nice" Weather