This has been a long time coming. Shows how on top of posting I am. It's also a long, comprehensive one of our trip, so be prepared. On July 26th, my mom and dad, my brothers David and Ryan, and Sterling, Austin, and I all flew out to Anchorage. (Cami stayed in Utah with Sterling's mom since we would have had to buy her a ticket now that she's two.) We rented a motor home...
... and drove down to Moose Pass where my dad planned on doing float plane flying lessons. They took us up for a 45 min flight up over the mountains and the glaciers.
So beautiful.
After that we drove down to Seward where all the boys (except Austin of course) were scheduled to go out on a boat the next day to go halibut fishing. They seemed to have a good time. Each of them caught at least one fish. Over all, they caught about 90 lbs of halibut. That's a lot of fish.
Ryan was wearing 'lucky shoes' and ended up catching six or seven total, including a cod (the big one) and a red rock fish (the small, red one).
While they were out there, they saw a pod of orcas. None of them breached much farther than this, but it was still pretty neat.
Initially they were trying for something around this size, but nothing was biting, so after about a half hour they went to a different spot. This one weighs in at about 150 lbs. Imagine pulling that thing up from 300-400 feet down. For those who don't know, halibut are bottom dwellers, they're flat fish with eyes on one side of their head. In order to catch them, you bait your hook with salmon and drop the line to the ocean floor, somewhere between 300-400 feet down. In one of the videos they took, my dad spent over a minute and a half of the video just trying to reel his halibut in.
Meanwhile, my mom, Austin, and I spent the entire day playing every game that we'd brought with us. When that got old we decided to go see the town. It was roughly 45-50 degrees outside and the sun was constantly behind cloud cover. The locals all said that last summer would have been better to visit because it was around 70 degrees every day and was sunny. This summer was cold.
If you look at the sign in this picture, you'll see it's the starting mark for the 1910 Iditarod Sled dog race. It outlines were the race went along to coast from Seward to Nome. 900 miles. In the middle of winter. Across frozen, snow covered ground. With nothing but a team of dogs. More power to ya.
The next day we drove to Whittier. There is only one road leading into the town and it's a one lane tunnel that accommodates cars going both ways and a train. So, for 15 minutes traffic went one direction, then the other direction for another 15, then all traffic was stopped for 30 minutes as the train goes through. If you time it wrong, you could be waiting for 45 minutes before it's your turn to drive through the tunnel. It's also the longest tunnel in North America, spanning 2.5 miles. Mom and Ryan stated that it was still nothing compared to one of the tunnels in Hong Kong.
When we got there, we decided to try our hand at fishing on our own. So we rented a boat for the day and set sail across Prince William Sound to try to find some halibut and/or silver salmon.
Unfortunately we only caught one fish. One salmon which my mom got to reel in. We also put down some shrimp pots and caught a grand total of...... 18 shrimp.
Despite the disappointments, we had a great time and saw some interesting wildlife. At one point during our fishing we saw lots of fish jumping but could never catch any. Turns out they were being hunted by a seal, hence the jumping. Rotten luck for us.
This is the Bird Waterfalls. They're all a type of seagull, though we didn't care to determine exactly what type.
Over all we had a good time, we ate the salmon and shrimp, as well as Ryan's rock fish that night. All very, very tasty, though the eyes on the shrimp kinda freaked me out. Yuck.
After that we packed up and headed back to Anchorage to drop David off at the airport. He had to head back for EFY, his job that he had over the summer. Then we made the long drive to Soldotna. Along the way we stopped and admired the views and the wildlife.
Once in Soldotna, we spend a few days there while dad, Ryan, and Sterling fished the Kenai (pronounced key-nigh) River. The red salmon make their run around this time of year, unfortunately we missed it by just a few days. They say it's really crowded when the salmon are running, you're standing shoulder to shoulder with the others out there. And I thought it was crowded now. See how there's a person every three or so feet? And this is before the run starts.
They had to take the ferry across the river. It was neat to watch. I wish I'd gotten a video of it going across, but didn't think of it till it was too late. Very ingenious, I thought, the way they use the water to push them across. Once again, they only caught one fish. It was dad's. That what happens when you miss the run. Otherwise you can get your bag limit of six per person in about an hour.
Mom and I stayed at the camper and tried to keep busy by playing games and finding other ways to amuse ourselves.
That night we camped at the lake and ate dinner, then cooked smores, having some fun while we were at it.
The next morning they went fishing again. Again, only one fish. Well, you can't get lucky all the time. Or any of the time in our case.
After that we started heading back towards Anchorage to catch our flight home. We went back to Seward to pick up all our halibut, and ate dinner at a local restaurant. It was actually a great place to eat.
Just outside of Seward we stopped by Exit Glacier. It's connected to the Harding Ice Field which is a full day hike to the top of it. I would have loved to do it if we'd had the time.
If the alternative is to continue to play dead while it eats you, what else would you do? Hmmm....
It was a nice, easy hike. The closer you got to the glacier though, the colder it was.
We also went to the Anchorage Temple. It's a very small temple, but beautiful just the same.
Our flight home was delayed because the plane that we would take home was delayed in Chicago because of weather. The Alaskan natives scoffed at what others considered 'a bad snow storm'. We toured the airport a little while we waited and found the world's largest (at least that had been killed) grizzly bear. Very cool. Scary though to think of one of those things coming after you. Or eating you. While you continue to play dead.
So, that was our trip. We had a great time and maybe someday we can do it again. Whew! Glad that post is over.
