Every other year, for a week, I throw my hair into a baseball cap, put my make up away, and run around in rain gear and waders. I fish and fish and play and play until I’m so tired I can’t function. And I’m really lucky that I get to do this in Alaska with my brother and all his fun toys. On the way up, we spent a good share of time in the Seattle airport, which thankfully is a great airport with rocking chairs and an amazing view.
This year, like ones in the past, we went during the salmon run, which is a crazy time for Alaskans. They are bombarded by tourists, and us. We leave one crazy town (CFD) to go to one crazy state. We were lucky enough to have beautiful weather a good share of the time. And rain a little bit…but it sure didn’t slow us down. We look forward to our salmon fix and it never lasts as long as we want it to. We are all big fish eaters.
The first day we were able to borrow a car from our sweet little cousin and we wandered around the mountains around Eagle River and Palmer. We found a beautiful little lake, Eklutna, that we were able to spend the day at, kayaking (which we also borrowed a couple blow up kayaks from our sweet little cousin) and fishing. Of course my kid fell in my husband had caught a fish and was not super happy about that. He takes after his mother. If there is a body of water around….he will fall in. Normally backwards. It was a beautiful day and we even got to stop for ice cream a couple miles down the road (there are coffee shops and ice cream shops everywhere in Alaska, even out in the middle of nowhere. It’s my dream come true, because I always know there is a latte not far away.)
We spent the next day shopping around downtown Anchorage, which is one of our favorite things to do in cities. We always find random fun places to eat and random fun things to do. And drink a lot of coffee. There are a lot of stuffed bears we found amusing and some amazing art shops which I adored. We also checked out the museum, which was so much fun for kids. Sooooo many hands on things. The giant bubble were my favorite. Then as soon as my brother and his fiancé were done with work we headed back home and headed out for a hike at the Eagle River Nature Center, which is just really a huge place out in the middle of the wilderness with trails and places for bears to hang out.
We combat fished for red salmon the next day on the Kenai River. My husband and I get a huge kick out of it, and most of the time you are surrounded with people who are friendly and happy for you when you catch the big one. And there is normally someone there to help you net them after you have to fight them back to shore. And then sometimes you are next to a really grumpy old man, that is fishing the wrong way, with the wrong lures and gets really mad when everyone around him is limiting out. (there is a certain way to fish and everyone does it the same way. not hard, but you need to fit in.) We all caught our fish when we were standing next to him.
The next day we took the big boat out on the Deshska River as it was raining pretty hard. The worse the weather, the better the fish. So I’m told. And oh man….I’ve never seen soooooooo many fish in my life. This time we found the pink run. But we were also able to catch a few silvers in there. Mine was the biggest, though I’m sure my kiddo would have something to say about that. There were literally thousands of fish around us. Thousands. I could watch them coming down the river in heats. You could fish for a while and go crazy and then it would be kind of slow, but a half hour later there would be another heat of them. Our first stringer of swam away. One wasn’t quite ready to be our lunch, so he pulled them all away. We lost 10 fish and were very sad about it, because we basically had to start over for the day. So we caught several more. 3 hours laster our stringer of fish came swimming back to us. We had double the fish. It was one of the most amazing and fun days of fishing we have ever had.
We went back to the Kenai the next day to float it on the cataraft. My brother’s newest toy. It was a fun, slow ride down the blue river. (That river has glacier water in it, which is what makes it so blue. ) We saw eagles and a little bear cub, though we heard that the momma and a couple other cubs were running around there. It rained about half the time, but as my brother says….if you don’t go out and play in the rain, you won’t get to play at all. It rains there as much as it does in Seattle and Portland. If not more.
Our last full day was spent on four wheelers. Which is my favorite thing to do. Unless I have to ride with my son. He didn’t like riding with me either. He kept yelling in my ear “I’m so scare mom, I want Uncle Sean, I want Uncle Sean.” He thinks my brother is like the superman of the wilderness. Which, compared to me, he is. We also got to hang out on the river for a while, and of course throw a line in.
The week went too fast. We could have played and played, but we utterly wore my brother out. Coming home to my own pillow was nice too.
Until next time Alaska.
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