Alaska

I have the greatest husband in the world, but I might have our next baby before he gets to this post. Seriously, though, our to-do list is a mile long, he's been super swamped at work, and every spare second is spent watching lectures/doing assignments for the Statistics class he's taking through Colorado State's distance program. He's a busy boy.

I'm going to take a stab at it, but it won't be nearly as fishing-centric as his post would be. He can always add to it later, I guess, but I'd like to get something up.

First of all, I would never have been able to go if Zonda hadn't been willing to watch our kids for the whole week, so thank you again, Zonda! It was so nice to be able to take a couple's trip. Second, this trip was actually a work trip (mostly); Ryan presented a paper at the AAS/AIAA Astrodynamics Specialist Conference in Girdwood, AK called "Mars Sample Return - Launch and Detection Strategies for Rendezvous," which was awesome, by the way. We decided we could extend our trip beyond the end of the conference, though, and make it a sort of 4-year anniversary/fishing trip.

We left our Barnhart family reunion super early on Sunday (July 31st) to fly into Anchorage. We rented a car there and drove the 45 minutes southeast to Girdwood. The Alyeska resort where we stayed for the conference was beautiful, and we had a beautiful room overlooking the lake.

(note the blueberry festival sign beside it, Cliff? We missed it by 2 weeks, though)

The weather was drizzly and cool, which was pretty much the M.O. for the week. (I was curious, so I looked up M.O. It stands for Modus Operandi in Latin and technically means "mode of operating".) Still, the sun was up by 4 or so, and it stayed daylight until after 10:30, so we had long days to enjoy, even if they were somewhat dreary (but still beautiful).

After we were all settled in that evening, we grabbed some chicken fingers from the nearby gas station and drove down to the river to have a picnic dinner. Apparently, our camera fell out of one of our pockets when we were rock hopping from the sand bar in the middle of the river where we ate, at least that's the last place we took pictures. We went back to look for it and even posted signs by the parking lot and left lost-and-found reports with the hotel, park rangers, and sheriff's office. No luck. At least we lost it the first day (so we only lost a few pictures from the trip), and at least we had Ryan's iPhone, so we were able to take pictures of the rest of the trip. Could've been worse.

Anyways, the conference started Monday, and Ryan spent most of the day either prepping for his presentation or watching other presentations of interest. He was very good and refrained from buying a fishing license, so he wouldn't be distracted from his work. That evening we checked out complimentary cruiser bikes from the hotel and went for an 8 mile bike ride (partly to look for our camera).

That night there was also a little social mixer, which lasted three hours, so we went an hour into it, but all the food was gone! You better believe we didn't go late for anything else that week if there was supposed to be food.

Ryan presented his paper on Tuesday afternoon, and I snuck in to watch. Not only was his presentation awesome, but he did a great job fielding questions from the audience. That night we went to a big conference dinner on top of the nearby mountain. Included as part of the dinner was the gondola ride up. After the dinner, which had crazy long lines but was awesome, we hiked up to the nearby glacier. It was windy and COLD, and this is August! I would not be cut out for Alaska winters!

On Wednesday, Ryan's attention mostly shifted to the most "important" aspect of the trip: fishing. He was up way before me to go get a license and to fish. He came back about an hour after I woke up. I'm not sure if I'm going to get the fish pictures with the correct streams or anything, but here is one of the earlier pink salmons he caught. (Ryan's edit: Glacier Creek, 10 min. from the hotel, was really silty, but had a ton of salmon in a sweet little hole next to the train tracks. Literally hundreds of fish - mostly Pinks, but some Silvers and Dog Salmon. I would generally catch about 10-20 and hour).

They were running, swimming from the ocean up the river where they were born to spawn and die. They stop eating once they hit fresh water, so you often just snag them instead of them biting at your lure. We snagged a bunch in the big humps they develop as they're nearing the end of their life cycles.

Anyways, we pretty of skipped out on the last day of the conference to drive up to Hatcher Pass area, which is a couple of hours from Girdwood (north of Anchorage). We hiked to Box Lake, and it was a wonderful hike.

We checked out this neat little visitor center that was part of an old abandoned mine, and then we headed over to see Hatcher Pass (and the roadside Summit Lake).

On our way back through Anchorage, we stopped to see the Anchorage Alaska LDS Temple.

Then on Thursday, we drove to Portage and took a boat cruise to Portage Glacier.

The glacier looks so blue because the deep ice absorbs all wavelengths of visible light except blue.

After the boat cruise, we drove to the Portage train station and took the Alaska Railroad into Spencer Lake (there are no roads to the lake).

We were supposed to go canoeing across the 2 mile wide lake to Spencer Glacier and back, but when we got to the lake, the guides canceled the canoe trip because of high winds. We had to default to the back-up trip, which was river rafting. After a deli lunch (with some of the yummiest tomato and cheese soup I've ever had), we loaded up into rafts and our guide started out across the lake to the river mouth. We still got to be in amongst the glacier field, even if we didn't get to the main glacier body.

It was a pretty lazy, relaxed 2 hour float down the river with one "exciting" class 4 (or so the guide claimed) section, so it wasn't quite the intense interactive experience I was hoping for, but it was still cool.

The train picked us up at our drop point and we rode back to the Portage Station.

Throughout the day, we fished a couple of rivers along there somewhere, but I can't remember their names. (Ryan's edit: One was called Indian Creek, it was very small - 6" deep in places, and full of pink salmon. It seemed amazing to pull a lure through and not get one).

On Friday, Ryan and I got up well before the sun and drove down to Seward for our all day deep-sea fishing charter out of Miller's Landing.

The boat wasn't exactly fancy. The toilet was a metal seat at the back of the boat, completely open to the world. I took some ginger pills to help with the nausea; I was already morning sick (I was ~10 weeks pregnant during this trip), and I can't take anything like Dramamine when I'm pregnant, but the ginger seemed to help. I got close, but I never actually threw up.

It was super cloudy when we started, and we just figured it'd be another one of those days. But as soon as we got outside of Resurrection Bay, it was gorgeous! It was our one day of sunshine, and we wouldn't have picked it for any other day!

Fighting a Halibut


Halibut:

Rock bass:
(we hit our boat limit of 28 in about 15 minutes)

Silver Salmon:


All in all I caught
3 silver salmon
1 halibut
5 rock bass

Ryan caught
1 silver salmon
1 halibut
5 rock bass
1 Pacific cod

Pretty sure that makes me the winner, especially since my halibut was bigger than his! Honestly, though, Ryan would much rather me catch something than for him to catch something. He likes to see me catch fish and how happy it makes me. I don't quite have his fishing stamina; if I go a couple hours without catching something, I'm pretty bored. Plus, if I'm cold, I'm not happy. This trip, though, I was comfy AND catching fish. Good day!

The captain Andrew filleted the fish for us back at the dock, and then we took it to be flash frozen and packaged, so we could carry it back with us (as a checked bag). We were able to bring home 46 pounds of meat!

Filleting those bad boys:

Lowell Point, where Miller's Landing is

There were four other people on the boat with us that day. Here is a portion of our catch (that monster 65 lb halibut in the middle wasn't ours, unfortunately).

These were our halibut:

We were STARVING by the time we got back to Seward. We hadn't eaten much more than the sandwiches we'd brought for lunch, and it was after 10 pm (and still light) by the time we got to town. There was only one place open, but it was the best calzone ever (pretty sure a brick would've tasted good).

We had an adorable little cabin that night, but we got there after dark, so here it is the next morning.

We were only there about 11 hours. I wish we could've stayed there a few days. It was adorable and very comfortable. There was a little river behind our cabin. Ryan, of course, got up early to fish it, but mostly what he found were tiny little minnows like these. (Ryan's edit: I caught brook, rainbow and my very first dolly varden - all under 10 inches.)

After we left the cabin Saturday morning, we drove into Kenai Fjords National Park to hike to Exit Glacier. Exit Glacier is the only part of the park that's accessible by road (isn't that just Alaska for you?), so it was pretty crowded, and they don't let you actually touch the glacier anymore (that glacier is not two feet across a rope like the picture suggests. It was ~20' away down a steep hill). Still, it was pretty and a nice little 3 mile hike.

At the ranger station there was a gift shop where we bought Jer a stuffed salmon and fish stickers and we got Chloe bear and moose finger puppets.

Then we headed back to Seward to pick up our fish. We checked out the pier while we were there.

Then Ryan wanted to see what it was like to fish into a saltwater bay, but we had zero luck and man, was that wind COLD.

On our drive back to Anchorage to catch our red eye flight that night, we stopped to fish a couple more roadside streams. (Ryan's edit: One was Ingram Creek. It was a little wider, but still crossable in waders. Being a Saturday there were over 50 anglers. But I found a good spot down stream and caught dozens in the rain. Venessa slept in the car). This was the day that I caught my one and only pink salmon. (Back at Glacier Creek, in pouring rain). Unfortunately, it was also the day that I caught myself in the mouth with my own hook! That was awesome, let me tell ya! Luckily, Ryan was able to extricate it with minimal pain. He likes to tease me that I'm the biggest catch of the trip! (Ryan's edit: In order to legally keep a salmon it must be hooked in the mouth and not snagged. I always knew Nessa was a keeper, now I can prove it.)

It was a really amazing trip, and I'm so glad I got to go and spend time with my amazing hubby! I missed my babies, but I sure loved having Ryan all to myself for a while! Maybe we'll go back in a decade or two...