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Alaska Trip

This is my dad-he's 71. On our first morning he made smoothies. My mom makes his wear the earphones because the blender is really loud. During breakfast he told us of how back in the day when would eat 12 eggs, 10 pancakes, half a loaf of toasted bread, a pot of coffee and a pound of bacon before going out and working 18 hours a day as a hunting guide. Now he is retired and eats a 16oz fruit smoothie and 2 or 2 pieces of toast. My dad is really frank and doesn;t exagerate about food. If he says he ate that much and worked it off I believe him. One of his major accomplishments in life has been carving something out of nothing in the Alaskan Bush, something many would pale at the thought of but for him he just dug in and did the job

Here he is with his tractor. He has cleared much of the brush that obstructed the view to the lake he and my mom have lived on for 36 years. I doubt he will ever stop working on something. His generation did much of the work building the infrastructure that has set America up to be the modern place that it is. There are a lot of guys like him driving around in a beat up trucks and keep the little things running.

On the way to Denali National Park Charisse and I stopped by this now defunct hotel and gas station. This location is a prime area to snowmobile in the winter and some one might open the hotel up for a couple months. It's been here for as long as I can remember. It is mid way between Palmer and Denali. with nothing around it for 80 miles in any direction. Many of the destinations in Alaska can be considered the middle of nowhere.

This picture was taken by an older Indian couple. We did not know where they were from but like all Indians they were very friendly. They offered to take the picture for us. Much of Alaska is wide open like in this picture.

Here is a very nice looking Dall ram we saw out of the bus that takes tourists up into the back country at Denali. The Dall sheep is one of 4 large American sheep and are native to Alaska. We saw a moose with 2 calves, a heard of caribou and a fox. No bear although they told us a couple days before they were all over the place and some ares had been closed to hikers because grizzlys were getting into peoples tents. Yikes!

That big floating mass towering above everything else is Denali, formerly known as Mt McKinley- before that and forever ago it was called Denali by the Athabascan native peoples. It means "The Great One". It rises 20,320 ft above sea level and the hill in the foreground is about 4500 ft while the mid-ground rise up to about 8000. We were 65 miles away when I took the picture on high telephoto. A valley and rolling hills stretch out below where the picture cuts off. As a kid, working for my dad, I spent all my summers to the south of it about 50 miles. Some times when the sun hits it right it looks like it will come right down on you. We were lucky to get a look at it with even with the sunny weather- it is so big it makes it's own weather.

After Denali we came south again to Palmer where I spent my youth. My great, great grand father MD Snodgrass settled in this part of Alaska soon after his arival in the then territory in 1909. His name is on the fire house in Palmer. He worked with the Federal government to colonize Alaska and ran the experimental farm that led to FDR paving the way for out of work Depression Era farmers to colonize the Matanuska Valley in 1936. My Dad is coaching his great grandson Charlies t-ball team. He is really sweet with all of them spending most of his time reminding them there is a game on and to stop playing in the dirt.

After Palmer we went to the Kenai penninsula and rafted on the Kenai River. My nephew and Charrise are all set for any kind of white water we might run into. We saw a bunch of Bald Eagles in their nests but again no bear. There are grizzlys all over the place but we did not get to see one. We did see a moose. The guide told us one of his friends had been mauled by one a year ago and the guy with him nearly got it too. Both of them lived but he guy that got mauled lost his eyes in the first swipe.

The water is blue/green from the reflection of the sun off the glacial silt in the water. Some rivers look grey with silt but the Kenai is really deep- 900 ft in some places and the silt all falls to the bottom. They get lots of salmon in this river and 6 other kinds of fish- arctic char, greyling, rainbow trout and the impressive king salmon whch can weigh in at 45lbs to name a few.

These folks are lined up at the confluence of the Kenai and the Russian River. The Russian runs clear and 2.5 million salmon go up in over the season with 40,000 vieing for a chance to catch one or two. Freqently a grizzly with barge in for dinner and the fishermen part like the Red Sea. Most folks wont stop fishing but they do get a bit nervous looking- so I am told by our guide anyway.

That night about 8pm we arrived at the mouth of the Kasilof River where for 10 days a year Alaskan residents can subsistence fish with a gill net. The mountain in the background is name Redoubt and is an active volcano. 20 miles across Cook Inlet and a bit to the south is Katmai the place famous for in-the-river salmon-feeding Brown Bears (a grizzly by design but better fed. They get bigger and have a tedancy to be thicker furred and be more light in color hence the name change). The place was also made famous by "Crazy Tim Treadwell" as the locals call him- the guy who lived among them and got eaten a few years back. Anyway we are on the other side of the inlet from all that.

The picture was taken about 11pm with the sun still quite up. If there had been no clouds id would have looked like 6pm in the evening. I was flying a kite in the stiff SE wind. It was really one of the most beautiful places we visted in my book. It happened to be summer solstice that night as well.

Charisse is so cute in this picture I had to put it in. She loved Alaska and said she wanted to spend a winter there. The winter is about as opposite as it can be from summer so I suggested we try it September-December the first time. Right now thats kind of a far off thought but someday it might be fun.

In the morning we got up and it had rained all night. The surf was up or I shoud say the tide was in and the waves were doing their best to crash all night. With it so light and so noisy it was hard to get a good nights sleep. Many in Alaska will get 4-5 hours a night and make up for it in the winter. Both of us had vivid dreams on this trip from not really getting deep sleep. Anyway, we choked on smoke with our week fire until Debbie my sister in law and 18 year Alaska veteran got up and stoked really big one and warmed us up in the rainy morning.

Here, Debbie has given Charisse a lesson in splitting logs. Charisse practiced on this one until it was sawdust. It's hard work being an Alaskan but she did pretty good.

Here is my mom and dad. They have been married 51 years. They have mastered the art of being together. It was not always easy but they are really happy now and are lcuky to have each other to enjoy life with.

Debbie and my nephews Mat and Taylor. They are really great to hang out with.

The nets get set at low tide and once it comes up fish start getting stuck in it. After 3 hours it gets pulled in. Every head of house who gets a permit can harvest 25 fish. Everyone eles in that house can take 10 each. So a family of 5 could take 65 salmon to fill up their freezer.

Since Charisse and I were not residents we could only watch. Once they pulled in the nets everyone went down and pulled the fish free. 2 nets took in 27 fish. Thats a lot of fish for a few hours work.

Alaska is an amazing place for sure. Everytime I visit I learn a little more about it and little more about myself. It is a very conservative place- people are very close to survival and many of the ideas we hold to be common truths are very foriegn to them. Gill netting a bunch of salmon is hardcore to me but from a subsistence point of view its food on the table in the dead of winter. There are tons of churches, one every 2, 10, 20 miles around populated areas. (religion is a good business it seems) But like all of us people need a place to gather and find solace in the spirit and one another. I know of 3 yoga studios but its not a big draw. In Anchorage yoga does ok but the studio I go to in Palmer struggles to coexist in a world that has other fish to fry (sorry). I am really happy to be from there and to have learned what I have from the experience. Going there and seeing it with Charisse was a treat too. Someday we will go back, get a house for a few months and have monthly yoga camps. I hope many of you will come up and join us and see what a different and amazing place Alaska is.

By the way I am a vegetarian but could not help but have a baked salmon filet while on this trip. It was yummy.

25 Jun 2006 by Charisse

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