Alaska Road Warriors

Things are quiet in the campground this morning, which I guess makes sense when you stay up well past midnight since that’s about the time it starts to get dark. When I was reading forums while planning the trip (what little I did), I read numerous posts trying to prepare first-time visitors for the locals and their ability to seemingly party all night long. I get it now. 

It was about 8:30 or 9 when we pulled out with plans to head toward Girdwood and the ski town of Alyeska. Dave is doing ALL the planning now because my time is spent cooking, writing and posting. I’m working FULL TIME, people. The least he can do is plan my time off. He seems a bit… resentful of this. But when the talent scouts stumble across the Road Warrior series and offer me a book deal, which will — of course — be followed by a movie deal, maybe he will turn that frown upsidedown? 

Just to be clear, I’m only going to sign over the rights to the movie if Dave and I get to play ourselves. If they cast someone like say… Greg Kinear as Dave, I’d never be able to hit my finer notes of exasperation, humor and downright annoyance. Just saying.

All I’m saying is: I don’t want to plan. So I’m practicing my excuses for getting out of it. Besides. I’m a TOTAL cheapskate. When Dave plans, we end up in planes, on trains, and at a bar with a bottle of wine in front of us. It’s a win-win for everyone involved. Including the local economy. 

I am in a sort of “I’m sick of this” mood… kind of missing my routine at home, my garden, my friends. Feeling like we don’t know what the heck we are doing… nothing huge. Just a general malaise…

Dave wanted to go back to the Noisy Goose for breakfast again, but it was too out of the way so I tried to find something similar in Wasilla. Wasilla is (apparently) a big town. Everyone we have met on the road who lives in Alaska seems to live in Wasilla. There were exactly two breaksfast places. Both rated a solid 3/5 — Which is not very good in the Googleverse. But beggars can’t be chooses so we picked the first one we drove by. The name doesn’t matter. It was quite bad. Why, why, WHY did I order the eggs Bennie? I guess because I thought you couldn’t screw that up? News flash: you CAN screw it up. Yuk. Wish I had a picture of the unnaturally yellow hollandaise. Still, I powered my way through most of it and washed it down with a few Mike and Ikes when we got back out to the car so that I could get the taste out of my mouth. 

And I am not even trying to be funny. I really did eat it and I really did eat Mike and Ikes in the car immediately after. How ridiculous is that?

Dave had corned beef hash. He said it wasn’t that bad, but that it also wasn’t very good. I snuck a piece of his toast and even thought that tasted a bit off. They didn’t have half and half for coffee. Just coffeemate.

OK, ok, you get the picture, I’ll move on. We continued on the road and since we were driving right past the fly shop I talked about earlier, we stopped back in because we needed more tippet. You see, upon returning to camp yesterday, I set about to make more bead rigs for when we are in the Kenai and realized I had lost my whole tippet holder off my fishing pack. Somehow, in all the bushwacking and tripping and falling, it must have come off. How, I cannot even fathom. It’s almost as much of a mystery as the solar panel… I would need a video showing just how difficult that thing was to attach to the pack. It wove behind an attachment point that isn’t ripped… It makes no sense. And I am very sad about it. Thankfully, I had taken off several of the smaller tippet spools we wouldn’t be using, so I have SOME tippet left (fluorocarbon tippet is spendy) just not the sizes we need for Alaska. Good reason to swing back in.

Had another fun chat with A.J., and headed toward Girdwood and Alyeska, the ski-town just south of Anchorage. 

We drove through Anchorage, which I had been looking forward to, since we had not yet seen any real “city” in Alaska. But Anchorage — at least what we saw of it — cannot be called a true city. It seemed more like a big suburb. But of what? We’ll have a better look at it when we head back there some time in the next week to hit the museum and pick up the grill regulator…

There weren’t a lot of camping options, so I made a quick rez at an old gold mine that is open for tours that had 8 camping spots, too. It actually wasn’t bad and — oddly — we had the whole place to ourselves! It was almost like dispersed camping, but hey!, you get to pay $35 fee for it! 

I was gravely opposed to paying for camping at the start of this trip, but I’m 100% over it. Well… I lie. I’m 75% over it. I know I said we were learning that even gravel turnouts that had signs clearly posted saying “NO CAMPING” are completely OK to camp at (verified by every local we have asked), but we haven’t trusted it. I can say that we are *almost* at the point of trusting it. So *maybe* you will find us at one of those some night soon. 

It was mid day when we got set up — and a beautiful day — I crawled in the camper (mostly to get away from the flies but also because I was still in my malaise) and laid in the sun coming through the stargazer window on my neatly made bed and recharged. Like our missing solar panel should have doing. It was warm. My book was good. It was glorious. It was just what I needed. No moving. No needing to be anywhere. Just reading.

When I thought Dave would lose his mind from boredom, I re-emerged, like a beautiful butterfly. Metamorphosis!

The “grim” forecast that Dave had been harping on and on about for the past many days seemed to me to be completely wrong. When I mentioned that to him, he quickly drew his phone from its holster, unlatched the safety and loaded his premium weather app as ammo to prove himself right. “See this?” (pulling up Seward, AK forecast).

100%. 100%. 100%. 100%. (That is the daily likelihood of rain in Seward.)

–Where I have been harping on and on about wanting to go.

To see the PUFFINS.

I didn’t drive (ride) 6,000 miles to NOT see the damn PUFFINS. I need to see the Puffins. In Seward.

But Dave is the planner now. And Dave is very good at it. And that is why we are in Girdwood, on the top of Alyeska Mountain in 100% sunshine drinking a delicious beer.

So I nod my head and say, “Yes…I see what you mean. That makes a lot of sense. That was really smart. I really appreciate that. This is beautiful.”

And lots of stuff like that so that Dave will keep planning everything for me. 

Because, you know, he’s good at it.

We had done a drive-through of the ski-town of Girdwood on our way to the campsite and found a “Laundromall” with a huge sign claiming to be the “#1 voted laundromat in North America”.

Bold.

But they also had showers. 

We were IN. And we had planned ahead and brought our laundry (and sheets, which is a whole nuther story) along with us from camp. 

And, after our tram ride, we headed to the laundry, loaded the machines, took fabulous hot showers, and headed to a sunny outside bar at a cute restaurant to eat at while the laundry dried. 

The food was amazing. We split a huge app of little clams and toasted bread. Then I had shrimp and grits and dave had a pork chop. We even got a bottle of wine! I guess with clean hair and underwear, we decided to be fancy like that.

This was the total mental-health day I so badly needed. I was so grateful. 

The only thing left to do when we got back to camp was to go to bed!

Wait. First I had to make the bed. Don’t you hate that?

Words can’t describe just how difficult it is to put sheets on this memory foam mattress in the camper. It’s heavy, you can hardly bend it. You definitely can’t do it from outside.

But Dave took this flattering picture of me in the process and I include it here for your entertainment:

So I finished making the bed, Dave waiting patiently and doing his part…

And we went to bed. On clean sheets. And I’m here to say there is nothing better than clean sheets. Ever. Even camping.

The bugs are bad in this site. We’d had a general reprieve from the bugs the past few days. We can’t really make sense of where they are bad and where they are not. Is it the area? Is it camping in gravel vs not gravel? We have no idea. 

In this site, it’s little flies. Not black biting flies, but smaller, stickier, dumber flies. They land on your face, in your hair… everywhere. And they don’t “shoo away”. They are super easy to kill. Which is good? But also gross. 

We wandered down the road to the Crow Creek Gold Mine where we assumed there would be some port-a-potties — or at least something to show for the $35 privilege of camping there. We were not disappointed. There were port-a-potties. But not garbage.

We wandered around the gold mine museum, which was absolutely adorable. The flowers were AMAZING. I was more enamored with that than the historical value… we walked along the river… I got my newly laundered, favorite socks muddy and was quite cross about it… 

On our way out, Dave went inside to ask them if we could pay for another night, since the weather forecast here was better than almost anywhere else and there were a few things we could tick off our lists here. And, although we had the whole place to ourselves last night, apparently OUR site was reserved for tonight (oh the irony…). So we picked another and dragged the camper to that one before heading out to talk to a kayaking tour place and to go find a place to rent some MOUNTAIN BIKES.

Dave had sat me down to propose doing the kayaking trip out of here. He pulled his phone out of the holster, unlatched the safety and loaded the premium weather app once again. He used terms like hourly percentage and satellite imagery. I nodded my head a lot and said “mmmhmmmm….” I DIDN’T say “Puffins.” I knew damn well the Spencer Glacier did not have puffins. If I’m not willing to do the planning, I have to be willing to keep my mouth shut and trust the planner. I said, “Sounds great! I agree!” 

The Chugach Adventure Guides offered all kinds of trips to see Spencer Glacier. We stopped there and Dave hopped out to got talk to them, as they were not answering their phone. He was in there forEVER. I thought maybe he slipped out the back and was on Spencer Glacier without me. 

When he finally came back, he said, “Well. Unfortunately the train is full tomorrow.” (You need to take the train for the out and back leg to the glacier because there are no roads.).

“Ohhhh. Dang,” I said.

“But I signed us up for a helicopter instead.”

And that, dear friends, is why Dave is the planner and I am not. I can tell you with 100% certainty that our trip would be 95% less fun if I were in charge.

I get to ride in my very first helicopter tomorrow!

But first I have to mountain bike.

So off we went to the mountain bike place.

The good news is: they have e-mountain bikes.

The bad news is: they have e-mountain bikes.

Obviously, it’s good news is that they are e-bikes. But it’s also bad. Because, since they are e-bikes, we have the ability to ride UP the mountain. Which, despite being e-bikes, is still really, REALLY hard.

And, actually, terrifying. Because these bikes weigh about 60 lbs. Hard to describe, but there is a fine line between not enough assist and too much assist. Your wheels spin out on the shale/gravel path — which is SUPER steep — and if you stop you are basically screwed. Because you can’t get going again. When you DO eventually get going, the assist kicks in and you risk popping a wheelie — which can also be terrifying. 

Mind you, this is MY experience, not Dave’s. I’m a TERRIBLE biker. I have no idea why, but it’s a fact. Dave had dialed into a formula that worked for him with the assist and gears — not to mention the fact that he seemed to not have a problem getting going again on a steep incline. I never really figured any of it out. The only formula that seemed to work for me was 25% assist so I didn’t risk death — which wasn’t enough to get me up the steep stuff. At one point I simply couldn’t ride up the shale path any further, so I screamed a little as Dave sped past me, hopped off and attempted to push the bike up. It was so steep, and the bike so heavy, that I truly could not do it. I could not push the bike up the hill. I turned around. I realized I also couldn’t ride it down (too steep). And it dawned on me: what in the HELL am I even DOING HERE???

I did make it to the top. It was comforting to hear Dave equally concerned about our route down. Comforting because I wasn’t the only one. Discomfiting because… we were stuck. We HAD to ride down. There was no other way.

To say that we were way beyond our abilities is putting so mildly as to be laughable. Survival was my goal. Prayer was my technique. Brakes were my friend. We pretty much crawled down various blue downhill trails (intermediate, people. There were no green trails). Again, these bikes are SO HEAVY and SO DIFFERENT than a regular mountain bike. The ludicrousness of the guys in the shop sending us off to ride this mountain downhill on these bikes is insanity. I’m pretty sure we could be featured on a segment of “Lucky to Be Alive.”

We were (lucky to be alive). But we also payed for a full day rental, so our fun wasn’t over just yet. We set off on the next recommended trail: Winner Creek. Thankfully, it was a tame, well-maintained trail. I couldn’t get over how cool it was. Vail needs something like that to hold up to all the summer tourists it gets. The trails in Vail are so beaten down…

I was singing and feeling all cool, like a real mountain biker as we sped past pedestrians on a smooth gravel path. “Now THIS is mountain biking!” 

(Sarcasm/not sarcasm)

We kept going, as we vaguely remembered the guy at the shop telling us how there was one trail that went behind Alyeska mountain and popped back out in Girdwood. Not that he was really to be trusted, though, having sent us straight up the mountain with tiny little plastic caps on our heads to protect us from death. But we weren’t thinking about that. We were just enjoying a trail we could actually navigate.

I’m not sure how long we biked before the trail became more of a single track. Several miles, for sure. It was gorgeous. And so was the weather. We did eventually hit terrain that got pretty tricky – 90 degrees turns between rocks and loose shale with narrow lanes between large boulders. I have this problem keeping my front tire steady — especially pedaling uphill. It wildly veers side to side. Not good when you need to thread the needle. Thread the needle or DIE, that is. That’s how it feels anyway. If not die, then experience very serious bodily harm.

There is ALWAYS the tendency for both of us to “keep going” in any situation: hiking, driving and biking. “Just to see.” It’s something we both suffer from. So I can’t even blame Dave. But in this case I pulled the pin. I tapped out. I quit. I told him “I can’t do this. It’s too scary.”

And then I felt like a super big baby. A weeny. I felt guilty. 

Which is all stupid. I shouldn’t feel like that. And I tried not to…

So we turned around, me behind Dave. Verbally giving myself a pep talk. Praying to God. Telling myself to “Relax.” And “Just take your time.” And…. my tire hit a boulder and I skidded sideways and jumped off my bike and the seat rammed into my butt while I dug my feet into the loose rabble as the tire went over the edge and the spiked pedal hit my calf and I hung on trying to hold that stupid-heavy bike and myself from rolling over the cliff. 

I did manage to not die.

And I got back on my bike. And was thanking God for sparing me. And I came upon Dave walking back down the trail to come find me (he heard me scream) and I started crying and couldn’t stop. All adrenaline. But I think it freaked Dave out cuz he was super nice to me for the rest of the day.

I’ll have to remember that. Maybe pull it out of my back pocket someday.

Aside from that relatively short section of the trail, it was quite nice. We finished our day with the bikes and turned them back in. As we were talking to the guys, I was telling them about my trouble doing the uphill on the mountain and getting stuck and one of them goes, “ohhhhh. We forget to show you how to do WALK MODE…” There is a feature where the bike will self-propel as you walk beside it. OMG I wanted to KILL them both. Squeeze their skrawny little hippy necks. Walk mode….  

We headed back to the campsite hoping the bugs wouldn’t be too bad. I made pork chops with a big portobello mushroom that i found in the cooler …

which I had bought to go with the steak from a few nights ago but forgot! Also some potatoes and broccoli. Tasty fare. I forced Dave to make a fire since I had dumped some meat juice in the fire ring — seriously, what are you supposed to do with stuff like that in bear country? I have no idea…

We do like that this campground is at least quiet. We got to thinking that we probably needed to stay here one more night so I hopped online (another perk of this location) to reserve it. And…

You guessed it.

It was already reserved for tomorrow.

So we found YET ANOTHER site that was open for tomorrow. We need to be to the Chugach glacier outfitters for our helicopter trip at 7:30 am so we debated moving the camper before going to bed but opted to do it in the morning.

The morning came quick, but always being loathe to actually get my ass out of bed, I laid in the camper until the very last minute. So much so that Dave, who had hitched it up the night before to save time in the morning, decided to drive it to the next site with me still in it. A first. I got to experience our squeaking suspension first hand.

We made a quick stop at a store in Girdwood to grab some snacks for the day. Dave: apple, banana, cheese. Me: peanut m&m’s, cheesy popcorn. 

Yeah, yeah, I WISH a banana sounded good. But it doesn’t.

We met our guide and headed to the airfield and signed our lives away before heading out to the helicopter. Dave has done a few heli-ski trips before, so it wasn’t that big a deal for him, but I’ve never been in one. I wasn’t really nervous, but I didn’t know what to expect. Taking off is wild. You just go straight up. Super slowly. Very unnatural — as if any type of flying is NATURAL. 

Very quickly I was wishing she’d go faster and do some sick banking and dives. But she didn’t. She drove in a slow, straight, safe line. All the way to the glacier where she dropped us off. Then she drove out of there like a mad-woman, having all the fun without us. We did get to see a huge bull moose on the flight out, so that was pretty cool.

Our guide had prepared us that there would be some “bushwacking” on the 1.5 mile hike from the glacier to the end of the lake where we would get into kayaks. We told him “no problem”, we are EXPERT bushwackers. He left us a few times to “scout routes” for us and then led us through “the bush”, consisting of some overgrown alders on a nice gravel path. He was “astonished” at our “abilities.”

I forget sometimes that we are 60 and that 60 is considered really old if you are in your 20s. 

Still, as we got to the camp and John said “I’ll get your lunches” and it was only 10:30 I was a little surprised. When another guide asked us if we had “run” the trail, I was even more confused. 

We were, apparently, the fastest “hikers” they had had all season. I can’t help wonder just how low that bar has been set? It left us more time to kayak the lake and around all the huge icebergs. Very cool.

I should mention that, while we had definitely proved our hiking mettle, they didn’t trust us enough to give us our own kayaks. We were in a tandem. Which I do totally understand. I’ve been in our kayak in Hayward on the windy side of the lake wishing for a partner before. And it afforded me lots of opportunities to coast, while Dave propelled us.

After our kayaking (again, winning the award for most paddling of anyone for the season…), we opted to walk to the train station vs taking the bus. We got there just in time and hopped on for a scenic ride to Grandview.

Once there, we turned around and headed back to Girdwood, picking people up along the way. John (our guide) got on at the glacier and we chatted with him for the rest of the return trip.

We opted to eat out again since Girdwood had so many options. We really haven’t been all that tempted to eat out because of that. Two of the ones that looked interesting were closed, though, so we picked the one next to Spoonline where we had eaten two nights ago. 

Three steps into the restaurant we looked at each other with the same expression: FRIED FOOD: OH NO!

At home, we frequent certain spots where we know we are going to come out stinking. We dress strategically and plan on showering. But CAMPING? I mean: showers are a luxury and we had just done our laundry. WHAT TO DO? They were already making a spot for us. We felt bad just turning around and walking out. So we sat at the bar. Ordered one beer and literally slammed it.

We call that Minnesota Nice.

We paid, and walked next door to Spoonline. Sitting inside because it was misty and cold out.

At our previous visit we had wished they offered a side of linguini to eat with the clams we ordered. They gave you bread to sop up the yummy juice, but there was still so much left over! So Dave ordered the clams and the only pasta they had: fusilli, while I had a sort of Korean lettuce wrap appetizer. We saw a carrot cake go by and decided to partake — not because we really wanted the carrot cake, but because we wanted to sit inside the restaurant longer so that by the time we got back to our camper we could legitimately just go to bed. (Which we did.)

There was a loud, raucous group of two families from California at the table next to us who ALSO looked interested in OUR carrot cake. When we held up the half we didn’t eat and asked if they wanted it, the 14 year old boy in the group nearly vaulted the table in his quest to nab it. 

It was awesome. No waste!

We planned an early departure but, lucky for me, Dave became hungry and decided to make blueberry pancakes and serve me in bed. His pancakes are legitimately better than mine. He did two batches so we could vote which were better: store-bought (sweeter) blueberries or wild (sour) blueberries. 

Definitely the wild were better. The tang was perfect with the super sweet syrup.

Dave, ever-watching the weather, had id’ed one day in Seward, out of the next 5, that it wouldn’t be raining and had me find a boat tour to see wildlife and glaciers for that day. I started to tell him I was BUSY (writing and posting) but then decided maybe I should do my part.

I’m reasonable like that.

We drove a few hours, having lunch in the car consisting of potato chips, Fritos, peanut m&ms — and an apple, so that we don’t get scurvy. 

We stopped at a wildlife refuge and donated $50 to drive around and look at a few fenced animals…

We stopped off in Hope Alaska, walked around on the cape and watched flossers…

We needed to be in the vicinity of Cooper’s Landing on the Kenai Peninsula for our float trip in the morning. Months ago, dave picked up a United in-flight magazine about the must do’s in Alaska and read about a Minnesota fishing guide in the area. He reached out to him and booked this trip. We were excited to finally talk to someone who could explain — in detail and correctly — this Alaskan fishing thing that we were struggling so hard to understand. 

Of course these guys are a super busy and connecting with them is tough. So we weren’t sure exactly where we were supposed to meet him, we knew it was near Cooper’s Landing and since Quartz Creek is right there (which was a spot A.J. the fly shop guy told us about) we decided to stay in a campground for the night there. The forecast wasn’t great, and indeed, it did spit rain on and off starting that morning and continued all day, though it wasn’t a downpour — that started about the time I started cooking dinner.

We found a decent site at Quartz Creek Campground and decided to fish, using our handy-dandy Kenai bead rigs. 

It still feels super strange, hucking these long leaders and giant bobbers with weight. I’m terrible at it. I just can’t get my rig out there very far, but whatEVER. When will I ever do this again? I don’t need to be great at it. We separated a bit and Dave was downriver from me and he actually caught a fish! But it ended up being a giant red salmon hooked on the dorsal fin. (So I guess he’s an official SNAG fisherman now). When you foul-hook a fish, they are super hard to land because you aren’t controlling their head. It was a HUGE fish and it took him a LONG time to bring it in. Of COURSE he didn’t have his stupid phone with him (it seems like he never does), so the size and variety are unconfirmed, though we now strongly believe it was a very large male sockeye.

Not long after, I saw him catch another — and he yelled that it was another salmon, but that this one was hooked in the mouth. Cool. Must be a humpy?

Eventually I caught what I thought at first was a nice trout, but turned out to be a salmon (I think a sockeye?). Dave was on his way back toward me and — very thankfully — netted it, unhooked it, and held it for a pic. Cuz I was not touching that thing. 

I was pretty sure mine was a sockeye. And it bit my bead. Those two things didn’t jive with what we knew about sockeye. Much googling ensued. 

My question was what kind of fish had I caught, and “do sockeye salmon ever bite beads?” Dave’s question was could we have eaten them: “Can you eat a red Sockeye salmon?” I, being me, was “ONE HUNDRED PERCENT SURE” we could have kept (and eaten) those salmon. But wanting to humor Dave, set out to prove my point on Google. 

I challenge you: try to google that question. All you will find is how long fresh (and filleted) salmon will last in your fridge. What you will not find is at what point live salmon, swimming upriver, go from yummy to yucky. (Mike, I’m talking to you: accept the challenge! I will look for the answer in the comment section.)

I finally put my phone down and said “We can ask the guide. We can get ALL our questions answered tomorrow.”

And I stood up, leaving the sanctuary of the canopy, to cook our dinner of cooler remnants. My specialty!

I seriously love to figure out what to cook from random stuff. In this case: 1/2 can refried beans, two tiny fingers of thin pork chop, tiny bit of leftover canned chicken, a tiny wedge of CABBAGE, some very sad cilantro, a half a tomato and a nice avocado I had forgotten all about, along with some other less remnant-y things.

Mexican is ON THE MENU!

So yummy.

But we were so, so wet and bedraggled. 

We were trying to figure out the next day’s logistics when Dave had the most brilliant idea: pay for another night at this site so that we wouldn’t have to deal with the wet canopy, our wet stuff, etc, etc. We could just leave it there and go!

That’s why I brought him along, friends. He has some good ideas.

We cleaned up and crawled in. 

And listened to it rain all night long.

It was still raining pretty steadily in the morning.

And we had learned we weren’t all that close to our meeting point with our guide: NOT Jason, who’d promised us he’d be taking us out himself, but Mark. Jason (the Minnesota guy Dave learned about from the United inflight mag), explained to us that he gives priority to repeat customers and we totally understand that. But we were disappointed. 

But that’s just life in the big city. We got over it.

We needed to meet Mark at a spot 30-45 minutes away, so we left. Giving ourselves a little 30 minutes to get there.

That’s how we roll.

And that’s why we are ALWAYS LATE.

Cuz we also, you know, wanted to pick up some snacks… and coffee… and maybe a delicious chorizo breakfast burrito.

Check. Check. Check.

So now we were REALLY late.

So Dave had to drive REALLY fast.

Check.

We got to the landing 12 minutes after our agreed upon time of 7 am. Where we met Mark, all of TWENTY ONE YEARS OLD, who didn’t mind at all.

He was fricken adorable.

But we did sort of wonder what wisdom he could impart on these wizened bones of ours…

But, as a seasoned veteran of four years of Alaskan guiding, he had PLENTY of wisdom to impart. It was all simply fascinating stuff. 

The takeaway? I don’t think I would come back to Alaska to fish for trout — except maybe in the late fall. They just have too much “flesh” to eat in the way of salmon eggs and carcasses to eat in the summer. I truly don’t care about catching “giant” fish. At least not at this point in my career. I care about the experience. And I like to dry fly when I can. ALL the trout fishing is subsurface. Good LORD IN HEAVEN: I do that all winter long in Colorado. No thanks.

Plus, with all the rain in summer, the rivers get high and blown out and then you can’t fish. I guess that’s why salmon is the name of the game, obviously. And, truth be told, we DO want to catch some salmon to ship home. We relied on Mark to guide us: both literally and figuratively. What would HE do?

It was a match made in heaven, because sweet Mark was very (VERY) tired of killing fish. He was tired of clients hopping on the boat, their only goal being to slay as many sockeye as possible in the least amount of time. Yes, yes, we too, wanted some fish, but we were also looking forward to floating and catching them. We had the unique experience of being able to troll for Sockeye vs “flossing” them. I won’t go into all the details, but think of it this way: when you troll, they bite. When you “floss” you snag them. One is fishing, the other is harvesting. We weren’t so keen on flossing. 

It rained most of the day, the morning being particularly rough. We stayed just warm enough. I was thankful that the temp went up a degree or two from when we started because I was starting to get the whole-body shivers and that can be hard to recover from that. Bone chilling.

We learned a lot from Mark. For those of you who care:

1. Sockeye salmon typically do NOT bite on flies or lures. The one exception is when they are defending their spawning area and is relatively rare.
2. 99% of sockeye caught (that are not dip-netted by locals) are caught by flossing. Or “flipping” as the guides say. Which consists of throwing a heavily weighted hook a few yards into the current letting it drift and then setting the hook, regardless of whether you feel anything. If your hook and line happened to float between the jaws of a fish, as you set that hook, it will lodge in the side of the mouth. And you “catch” your fish.
3. The other tiny percent are caught on “plugs” trolling. That was what we did. These are like the old Lazy Ike artificial lures. Some local guy figured out 15 years ago that he could get sockeye to bite in this particular spot of the Kenai river and now there are always several boats trolling. Mark likes this better and so did we.
4. I was one hundred percent WRONG when I said I was sure you could eat the fish we caught. You only want to eat light colored females. Technically, the males would still be good after they turned red, but generally speaking, the lighter the fish (the more silvery) the better. Score ONE for TEAM DAVE.
5. There really isn’t any dry fly fishing for trout in Alaska. Not down in this area at least.
6. King salmon should be on the endangered list. They might be as early as next year.
7. Too many fish are taken. There is no set limit on how much fish you can take home with you. (There is a possession limit for the day, which is very generous.) People just get gluttonous. And it makes these guides sad. They have to kill and fillet these fish. They have to hit the fish on the head with a mallet several times after they are caught. Our guide said “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…” with each hit. And I, frankly, really appreciated that. 
8. Silver Salmon (starting soon) will bite. They are fun. And it is pure chaos in this area once that run starts because you aren’t just standing in a line flipping. (Although Mark didn’t say that, we heard it the next day on our boat tour. You get amateurs driving boats over whales… lots of just irresponsible fishing.) 

After we got six sockeye, we started fishing for trout. But we knew not to expect too much with the high water and the well-fed trout. We caught several Dolly Varden (I finally caught one) and I think one rainbow trout. 

As we prepared to head over to the take out spot the skies opened up again, just to keep us humble. And wet.

We headed back to get the camper because tonight we were staying at GRIZZLY RIDGE. A cute little cabin, right on the highway. 

We took our filets to a nearby processor and shipper and headed to our cabin.

I can’t say it was peaceful (road noise). But it was a nice reprieve from the rain. And it was cute and clean and comfortable. We dried out, watched our first Olympics (we are so sad to have missed them), and cooked some FRESH SALMON (also our first of the trip). The salmon was as good as I remembered. *Phew* — I have to admit: I was super nervous. I’m not a salmon lover at all. But I remember just loving the stuff Dave brought home probably 18 years ago from a trip he took with Charlie, Wes and Hank. Those were Silver salmon, though. Sockeye is more red and — depending on where you are reading — either way better or way “stronger” or “fishier” or “salmon-y-er.” So I was kind of worried. 

No longer! It was fabbie. 

It was nice to sit on a couch. It wasn’t even that comfortable of a couch. I have sat in three places since leaving home more than a month ago: the car, the camper and my camp chair. 

We showered and crawled into bed, watching the Olympics. Luxurious!

We had to be on the road by 6:30-ISH. I say “ish” because, 1) ish, and 2) they said we needed to check in for our 8:30 tour an hour early. Which seemed extreme. Surely they wouldn’t turn us away if we were 10 or 15 minutes later than that? I mean… not that I ever plan to be late, but I’m also not going to build in an extra 30 minutes to be on the safe side. Besides, the coffee shops wouldn’t be open yet so we wouldn’t lose time there like we did the other day…

We got on the road right at 6:30 — so proud of ourselves — but were quickly stymied by road construction that we had not planned for. It was kind of stressful, to be honest, because we also had no cell signal. So I couldn’t call the tour people to let them know. The construction delayed us almost 30 minutes and we arrived closer to 8 am. Plus, we needed to find a spot to park that was big enough for the camper. I was able to get a call out to them about 10 minutes out of town, so I knew we were ok, but it was still stressful. 

We were the last ones to board at 8:10 and they left right after we got on. Ugh. You never want to be THOSE people… (and now we are.)

Tours — of any kind — are not my thing. But this came highly recommended by a few different people. It was an 8+ hour tour, though. And hat’s a really long time. There were 60 people aboard and — even if we didn’t see wildlife — I knew there would be plenty of people watching. I wasn’t disappointed.

However, we DID see wildlife. Lots of it, I think — though I really have nothing to compare it to. Mostly I wanted to see Puffins. There were lots of puffins. They are smaller than I expected and for some reason I wasn’t expecting them to be like ducks. In my mind they were more penguin-like. What do I know?! The best part about the puffins is the way they FRANTICALLY swim/fly along the top of the water. I want to consult with them: “Listen Mr. Puffin: pick one. Swim or fly. You can’t have both.” But I can’t get a meeting with the head of the puffins so I expect this will continue, long after my tour. 

We saw RIDICULOUS sea otters. Just floating along on their backs. Not a care in the world. 

We saw giant whales. Sea lions. Dolphins. Coastal mountain goats. Seals. Birds. And Northwestern glacier – with giant slabs of ice falling into the ocean. It was great.

I learned that most of the people on a Fjord/Wildlife trip are REALLY excited about seeing whales. The whales don’t even have to be doing anything special or be that close. Tour people want the boat to sit in one place INDEFINITELY in the hope of seeing the back of a whale just ONE MORE TIME. Dave and I are more like “Cool. We saw a whale. Check. Let’s move on.” I guess it’s good we are on the same page and can entertain ourselves by making funny faces at each other as we eavesdrop. To be fair, Dave and I could have stared at the glacier calving slabs of ice all day long. And I’m pretty sure Mr. and Mrs. Whale Watcher were making funny faces at each other about US!

Again, it was great. It was just a little long. As we turned to go back they announced they were serving glacier drinks made with ice from the glacier. I wasn’t interested in the signature drink of the day (the margarita), so they made me a Puffin on the Rock-which I thought was a very clever name. It was very good. And while I sipped it (and simultaneously held Daves head up while he slept so it wouldn’t bang against the side of the boat) I fleshed out the stories I had made up for many of the interesting characters on our boat. (Eight hours is a lot of time to observe people.) It was a lovely ride back.

When Dave woke up, he braved giant seas (truly) to get down there before they closed the bar. After the drinks, the crew brought up warm brownies. This tour was getting better and better!

Alas it was over. We filed through the gift shop on our way out and I begged for a puffin hat souvenir, but Dave said no.

We hiked the half-mile to the outer parking lot to retrieve the car and camper and drove around looking for a spot to spend the night. There weren’t many places to choose from, so we set up shop at the city municipal campground. We made a critical error in selecting the site, though, as it abutted a little bike terrain park that was popular with the kids, so it made potty runs verrrra difficult…

Right on cue it started to rain as I started dinner. We unfurled the canopy and I made another meal of pasta. This one with — surprise — Italian sausage, tomato, onion, pepper and red wine. (I was out of cabbage.). I also dumped in the remaining cottage cheese. 

It was getting really cold, so we crawled in just before 9 and fell asleep to sounds of semi’s rolling by on highway and train engines idling just beyond.