Our First Alaska  Trip:   3 weeks in August-September 1999

Anchorage Skyline

Our youngest daughter Danielle is a biologist who works for USGS and lives in Anchorage.  We flew up to visit her for 3 1/2 weeks in August-September  of  1999.    (Note:  A year or so later she moved up to Fairbanks to work and go back to Grad School. She has since gotten married and now lives with her husband and two boys in Delta Junction)

I liked Anchorage, mostly because the surrounding scenery is beautiful and within 20 miles you can be in the midst of some pretty spectacular sights in the form of mountains, wildlife (Beluga whales, Dall sheep, Moose, Bears) and a body of water called the Turnagain Arm. Within two hours you can be pretty well down the Kenai Penninsula, which I thought was prettier than Denali.  Anchorage is actually a "big"  small town, not too hard to get around in once you figure out the system of one-way streets, in spite of a fair amount of traffic. In any case, I can definitely understand why our daughter loved it there (she actually woke up one morning with a moose standing in the front yard outside her bedroom window and they live IN the city).

                 

  

Dansie picked us up at the airport and took us directly to her outdoor soccer game. It was a kick (a bad pun I know) to see her play soccer again after all these years, although her women's team generally doesn't have enough members show up to make a full team so they pretty much lose every game, they have a good time. We went to one and 1/4 games in two weeks. The 1/4 is for the one that I didn't get out of the truck because it was darn windy, drizzling, and cold with the wind coming off the snow covered mountains in the background. They were in a tournament and playing the AK State Girl's High School Championship team .........the "Frank's Bail Bond" women's team lost 9-0.

<--Dans on her way out to the Soccer Field

 In spite of dire warnings to her from her friends about lending "parents" their cars and having all manner of nasty things go wrong mysteriously with vehicles while the parents were driving them, she let us borrow her venerable Subaru Outback- "The car of Alaska"- for the first week and we headed down the Kenai Penninsula to Homer. We stayed there for 3 nights.

Rest stop on the drive down to Homer

We were supposed to meet Dansie & her roommate Kim on Friday night on the "Spit",  a long thin arm of land which juts out into the Bay and is the place to go for all the action.  Although we stayed at a motel one night and a B&B the next, they had planned on camping on the Spit and going fishing with us. 

  View of the Spit from a hill 

 

We made our way to the Salty Dog, a tiny hut with a dirt floor, bar, a couple picnic tables, and decorated with tourists dollar bills stuck up in every available inch of space from which the odor of smoke, dead fish and sweat emanates off everything that leaves.  Gary elbowed his way to the bar for a couple drinks and I'm sitting there at a picnic table, when the pay phone on the wall starts to ring. It rings 5 or 6 times and no one seems inclined to answer it so I pick it up and say "Salty Dog".  A voice says, "I have a sort of favor to ask ....My parents should be there waiting for me...could you please ask around for my Mother, Pam Mather"..............I start to laugh just as a guy comes up and says, "Is That call for me?" ....and I can say back "No, it's for me"  and "Kid, this IS your Mother speaking "    So Dans cracks up and says..."What? You've been there 10 minutes and you're one of the regulars answering the phone already? "  As it turned out Kim's truck sprung a radiator leak (seems the parent/vehicle prohibition thing works on roommate's vehicles as well) and they weren't going to make it down afterall. They had even called every car rental agency in Anchorage but it was opening "Salmon Derby" weekend and nothing was available anywhere.

 

The  start of "Combat" salmon fishing 

In Homer, we went fishing, took a water taxi ride over to a wilderness area for an all day hike (much to my surprise since Gary is really not interested in hiking, maybe it was the lure of the wild and a possible bear confrontation) where we encountered our first of many glaciers and other tourists from Wisconsin. We stayed in the Seaside Motel for two nights and then a B&B the third night.

Water Taxi Hiking

We went out on a charter boat with 4 other people (who it turned out were from Eau Claire WI) and had a long, but fun  day.   We left at 6AM and got back in around 2, bringing back a total of  12 Halibut (our limit) of which mine was the biggest at 48 lbs.   It was a LOT of work, I actually reeled up five of them suckers from over 200 feet down, but anything under about 20 lbs we released in the early part of the day, but fun!  Gary also caught a "skate" which looks like a pink sting-ray. It was neat to see up close and got released. I can't imagine anyone bringing up a halibut over 200 lbs, but they do.  We arranged to Fed Ex 68 lbs of Halibut filet home, which was timed to arrive two days after we did.

 

Our Charter Boat	Day's Catch for the 6 of us

      

                                                                 

MY Fish was the biggest at 48 lbs.  :-) 

Sure made for sore arms for a couple days, especially since we had rented gear and casted for a couple hours the evening before in a spot on the Spit they call the Hole. The tide comes in the Hole and the salmon come with it and some stay trapped when the tide goes out. Sometimes they are hungry and sometimes not. Gary caught a nice one and just gave it to a local  fisherman, but I didn't have any luck. 

Gary fishing in the Hole

 

We headed back up to Cooper's Landing where we stayed the night in Dans' roommate's log cabin. It was cute, albeit with two built-in twin size bunk beds (and a small loft), no running water, a small built in propane gas jet for light and cook stove and a wood stove for heat.  Gary built a fire in the stove and we tried to read by the gaslight for awhile then gave up and went to bed. I woke up around 1AM and it must have been 100 degrees in there! Gary had closed down the stove, he thought, but evidently not enough . We had to open a window and the door (temporarily, there's bears in them there hills) to cool it off and then it got very damp, and by morning we woke up freezing. Not much happy medium there. Great view from the outhouse doorway though :-)

Kim's Cabin