Alaska

"I've made a HUGE mistake." - various members of the Bluth and Wall families

Sad to say, that was our motto for the Alaska trip we took in the middle of July. A little background: Jacob and I and various friends/family members enjoy fishing. It's been a desire for quite some time to go salmon and halibut fishing in Alaska. Partially for the fun of it, partially because those two fish are sooooo tasty. I honestly can't remember how this trip first came into being. My memory just isn't that good. I know that I rather quickly invited myself along because...well...I can do that. :) Flights were purchased, emails were exchange, my mother-in-law was enlisted to watch the kids because we stole her husband to come along...everything was in place. Our friend, Jacob Webb (hereafter: Webb, also my sister-in-law's brother - we're all connected) has a cousin who lives in Alaska who he worked out to show us the good places to fish and the best ways to do it, etc. He also graciously offered to let us stay at his house, though he made it clear we'd either be sleeping on the floor or camping outside. Not a problem.

I was rather apprehensive to leave my kids for this trip, partially because it was the longest we'd been away from them for a while (5 and a half days), partially because we were leaving just over 72 hours after getting home from our trip to Texas, and partially because we had never left the Zizah-girl for more than a night and she was going through a rather clingy/whiny phase. But I strapped on my big girl hiking boots and off we went.

Our flight up (Wednesday) was uneventful, just early and long. I gotta tell you Washington people - don't love your weather. Just sitting in the Seattle airport for an hour inside was plenty for me. I like my sunshine, thankyousoverymuch. :-P The Anchorage airport is really cool. We saw more wildlife there than we did for the rest of the trip, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The car rental went pretty smoothly and then we were off to kill some time in Anchorage before we drove up to Wasilla (which is where our host lives).

A couple things about Anchorage:
1. First live wildlife I saw was a caribou in a cage in a backyard in downtown Anchorage. So weird.
2. One-way streets are gross. No city should use them. Like ever.
3. Some people's interpretation of "it's just over there" is not to be trusted.
4. They don't sell beach towels in Alaska. I probably should've bet on that, but I had to ask since it's my default souvenir.
5. They MUST pay someone to do their flowers in downtown Anchorage. I know they only get to grow stuff about 3 months out of the year but wow - those were some crazy amounts of flowers.
6. Apparently all road construction must take place in Alaska during the warm months. It makes sense but it's kind of a bummer since it's also one of their highest tourist times.
7. The Alaskan accent is the oddest accent of English-speaking I've ever heard. I'm pretty good at understanding what people are saying (mostly due to practice trying to understand Speed) but I had to ask many people to repeat themselves.

We drove around for a while (see #2 and #6 above) and then finally found a parking spot. We had been hoping to drive over to a park by the ocean but our map deceived us and the road construction thwarted us. So instead we parked on the street and walked to the Anchorage Visitors' Center. The very nice lady there gave us some maps and suggested a good seafood restaurant for dinner, Simon and Seafort's. (Though because of #7, I thought she said about 3 other things before we finally got the name nailed down.) I got really excited about visiting the Alaska Native Cultural Center, which she said was a lot like the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii, which I loved.

After some shopping during which I discovered #4 on my list above, I was able to buy acceptable souvenirs for our family and my kiddos. I felt a little silly buying that stuff on our first afternoon in Alaska but it ended up being REALLY GOOD that I did. We went to the restaurant to discover that they weren't open for dinner yet. And the people who were in there eating were still there from lunch. I'm not unfamiliar with this set up but the way the hostess explained this to us was rather....off-putting. After a bit of further discussion (and smelling the oh-so-good smells), we decided to just eat at the bar which ended up having almost all of the dishes we wanted to try anyway. SOOOO good. I've said it before and I'll say it again: there's nothing quite like fresh seafood. It was an awesome way to start things.

We hopped back in the car and headed out to Wasilla. After a bit of unplanned off-roading (see #6), and some interesting navigation, we made it. We were further excited about our impending fishing by the loads and loads of fish that our hosts were processing in their kitchen when we got there. They had returned from a dip-netting trip a few days prior. Apparently Alaskan residents can get a subsistence permit, which allows them to catch fish by just dipping a net in the water during the salmon run. Lucky.

Since we'd been up since 4am and Jacob and his dad had to do an airport run after midnight to pick up our friends who had a later flight, we all turned in early. There's something very odd about going to bed around 9:30pm when the sunlight indicates it's only about 5:30pm. I'm told you get used to it, but that doesn't seem likely. We ended up sleeping in a trailer our host borrowed from his father-in-law, so it was nice to have a bed of sorts and a toilet. Especially since when I woke up in the morning, the house was locked so it was the trailer or the trees. And since the house remained locked after everyone in the trailer woke up, we jumped in the rental car and headed off to Wendy's for some breakfast.

It took a while but we finally got headed out to our first fishing spot on Thursday, the name of which I can no longer recall. That's what I get for waiting to write these experiences down. It was north-east-ish of Wasilla. We parked the trailer right off the river and went to work. This was a whole new way of "fishing". Apparently it's called flossing and basically you're trying to keep your line perpendicular to the shore for as along as possible in the river's current hoping that a salmon will happen upon your line while open his or her mouth to breath. Then the line is supposed to slide down as the salmon continues upstream, ending with the hook in his or her mouth and voila - you've got a fish. Weirdest way I've ever fished in my life - very different from what I'm used to.

While we were there, my friend Millie caught two fish, so we were really excited. I actually hooked two (YES!!!!) but one got away while we were trying to net him and the other was HUGE and broke my leader line clean off the swivel. But we kept trying. Oh believe you me, we kept trying. Our two Alaskan hosts caught several fish each but except for Millie, the rest of us came up dry. On the second day (Friday), we checked some fishing reports and decided to relocate for the rest of the day before heading to our ocean departure.

So we packed up a bit early and decided to try our luck at Ship Creek in downtown Anchorage. Whoops. The descriptor "downtown" should've been our first clue this was a bad idea. I won't tell you what we nicknamed this place, but trust me, it wasn't pretty.  Interesting enough, walking down the street toward the creek, we ran into a man from our church back in Phoenix! We knew he came up to fish in Alaska and was supposed to be there the same time we were but we had no plans or suppositions that we would run into him. Alaska is kind of a BIG place after all. But it was fun to run into him, though a little sad for us to hear that he had been catching his bag limit daily down on the Kenai River.

Also while we were there, we got the completely depressing news that our Saturday ocean voyage would not be happening. Apparently the weather was worse than our captain (who was doing this as a favor anyway) was willing to deal with. I gotta tell you, looking up at that clear blue sky, I didn't get it. But I'm not an ocean-going boat captain either. We were DEPRESSED. Seriously. Even if we caught zero fish the entire trip (which we were well on our way to doing), we would get to go out on the ocean. As we sat contemplating what to do, our conversation with our fellow Phoenician came to mind....and that's when we decided to try to the Kenai.

The problems with fishing the Kenai River were these: 1. Our host had never fished there. 2. It was a 3 - 4 hour drive from Anchorage and it was already 7pm. 3. We had no reservation for camping or hotel and with this being the peak of the salmon run, finding accommodations could be interesting. But we decided it was worth the try and headed off. We still got lots of pretty views on the drive down since the sun didn't go down until we got to Soldotna. We did stop at one little creek while we tried to figure our where precisely we wanted to try to camp and Webb caught one tiny little fish that he threw back. I was trying to not be nervous about the "Recent Bear Sighting" signs but come on - bears are SCARY. We never saw one, thankfully.

I'd prefer to skip over the 90 minute ordeal that was us finding a place to park the trailer that night so we could sleep. Let's just say I woke up on Saturday in the trailer in an abandoned lot behind an abandoned car rental place in the middle of Soldotna, Alaska. That's a first for me.

After a bit, we made it to the Kenai only to realize that we were either fishing with a boat or waders. Which we didn't have. (Okay, my father-in-law and our host had their waders but that left the other 4 of us with nothing to do because trust me, none of us had a boat hiding in our carry-on.) After some discussion, Jacob decided he was content to sit back and watch that day and the rest of us went on a crazed run to Sportsman Warehouse to buy waders. I didn't want to buy any but Millie and I determined that if I was willing to suck in my gut, we could probably share. We got back to the river with our gear in the early afternoon. Millie took the first turn with our waders so I stayed on the shore with Jacob to watch.

OH. Somewhere in all of our hiking from the river to the car and trailer, we saw a wild moose!! Just hanging out about 50 feet away, eating some leaves. And of course, I didn't have my camera. Webb had his phone so he got a picture or two, though I haven't seen them yet. One of our goals was to see some wildlife bigger than a beaver so at least that was fulfilled. :)

Back at the river, I was definitely nervous when it was my turn to get the waders on and give it a try. There may or may not be some INCREDIBLY embarrassing video of me trying to get to and from the shore. Where a dog is barking at me and the men on the shore are asking if I'm alright as I stop to decide if I'm about to be swept downstream or not. And where I almost fall. Nope, nothing like that exists. Or ever did. Ever.

To sum up, Webb ended up catching 3 fish that day (the bag limit) so it was worth the venture. The rest of us who tried had nibbles but we didn't land anything (again, except our host - so unfair, right?). It was the same fishing technique we had used in the other river (can't believe I can't remember what it's called!) but there were so many people, we were practically shoulder to shoulder. We were constantly getting lines tangled and I'm really surprised no one got hooked. The one tool that we didn't have and didn't want to buy because it was expensive was a big net. Usually when someone hooked a fish, someone else standing further back in the river would be willing to help out with his net. However with one of Webb's fish, no one stepped up to lend a hand. So he basically wrestled the thing while trying to grab his billy club from its hook so he could bop it on the head to put it out of its misery. I can't believe we didn't have the camera rolling for that one. It was epic.

We stayed at the Kenai River until late that night (Saturday) and then drove back to Wasilla (about 6 hours I think). I don't really know for sure how long it took because I fell asleep pretty quick after we got underway. Jacob had taken a nap earlier so he was nice and awake to help with the driving. We got back to our host's house in Wasilla around 3am Sunday morning and I had to seriously think if I wanted to bother moving from the backseat of the rental car to the trailer. The desire to lay flat eventually won out and I moved.

In the morning on Sunday, we were treated to hot showers (hooray for hot water!) and scrambled eggs and caribou sausage (really, really good). After that, there was the mad dash to Walmart to get the necessary items to check a box of fish to bring home. No, you didn't miss the part where anyone with the last name of Wall caught anything. :) But our hosts was super nice (and felt really bad about our bad luck and the ocean trip getting canceled I think) and offered us some of their salmon, halibut and caribou to take home.

After dropping the Webbs at the airport, we commenced the quest for dry ice. There were wrong turns made, Jacob's phone to be cursed, and the one way streets to be blamed for our problems. In the end, we finally got a hot tip from a nice lady in the Walmart customer service line that we should try Fred Meyer. The employees were far less than helpful but at least the customers were nice. We were looking for dry ice to keep our fish frozen since we didn't depart from Anchorage until 2am that night/the next morning (you know what I mean). When we finally found the dry ice and finished packaging the fish, it was only 11am....yeah, we had some time to kill. After checking some of the tourist stuff we got the first day in Alaska, we decided to go eat at this seriously awesome pizza place called the Moose's Tooth (Spicy Thai Chicken Pizza - yummmmm) and then go hike Flattop Mountain outside of Anchorage.

We were slightly misled about the distance and difficulty of this hike. I'm blaming it on something akin to item #3 on my list above though it's possible I'm just wussy and too used to Arizona's definition of "mountain". We made it to the second saddle and no where near the summit. Partially it was the time because we had already bought tickets to go see Red 2 that night to help kill time and didn't want to miss that. It was also partially that we had no where to shower and no more clean clothes before getting on the airplane, so we were trying to not get too gross. But the main reason for me was that after the second saddle, that was not a trail. That was a joke. There was even a sign saying they didn't recommend taking children past that point. I'm not saying I'm a child but it was not happening. On the upside, the views were awesome.

After some bad directions that ended with me being fired as the navigator (never wanted to job in the first place!) we decided that we didn't have enough time for the Alaska Native Cultural Center (sigh) but that we could probably find our way to the Anchorage LDS Temple. It was right in the middle of a residential neighborhood, which shouldn't be that weird (even Mesa is that way) but it was funny that we couldn't even see it until we pulled into the parking lot. That was a fun stop, especially considering it was Sunday. :)

We wasted about an hour outside the theater eating leftover pizza and calling home to check in. Red 2 was not as good as the first one but still SUPER fun. When we got done there, it was 10pm. And even though it looked like it was 5pm, everything was closed so there wasn't much left to do but head to the airport. The system of getting bags checked and going through security at the Anchorage Airport was so, so, so odd. But whatever. We didn't need to have that much time, but it was nice to know that there was pretty much no way we could possibly miss our flight because we had so much time. That and the fact that there were flights to Seattle every hour so even if we did miss our's, it's not like we'd be stuck for long.

The traveling back was nice and uneventful. I didn't sleep as much as the men did but I still dozed several times. We had a quick little stop in the Portland Airport (sorry, Burnetts - I thought of you in the 45 minutes we were on the ground) and then we were on the way home. I was SOOO glad to be home. It was a long, crazy, fun, and disappointing trip. Overall, I'm really glad we went. My expectations for any further trips to Alaska will be much more realistic now. Don't think that I hated the trip. There were lots of fun times and good things to see and experience (the moose!). If we go back again, we'll certainly do it differently. I don't know how precisely :) but differently. I was very grateful to our host for taking us around everywhere and trying to hard to help us have success. He was very understanding of our frustrations and disappointment while understanding that we weren't mad at him. Not the best trip of the year for me (Austin still wins) but certainly an adventure I'll never forget.