Road Trippin'

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="180" caption="Ling cod"][/caption]

It’s been a busy August. Lots of fishing, lots of work. It goes without saying that I’d rather be fishing. So I won’t say it.

We went on our 2nd annual halibut trip with Jimmy Swelltime out of Seward and it was even better than last year. Once again we got lucky and the guys we shared the charter with were pretty cool. There were 3 of them up from Minnesota on their annual fishing vacation – one being on his eighth year.

They all had terribly thick accents and as Wes said, it was like being trapped in a Fargo movie for 12 hours. I couldn’t help but laugh every time Hilly said, ‘Git ‘em, Jer-mee, you can doo et!’ and I wanted to ask Jeremy if he knew his name actually has three syllables, but he was the quieter of the two and I wasn’t sure how well he would take the ribbing. But they were wild guys, I’m sure he would have taken it just fine.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="180" caption="Hilly & Jeremy"][/caption]

The first Busch got cracked open at 9:30 when we dropped anchor and flowed throughout the day. They brought 2 large coolers and only one had a little food in it. But they maintained and never crossed the asshole drunk line. And they didn’t even give me too much shit when I got sick.

Yeah, sick. I refuse to call it seasickness because it didn’t last. I think it was a bad combination of no sleep, lots of coffee, generic dramamine and a strange sausage biscuit thing I got from the bakery in Seward. But once I puked up the coffee and biscuit, had a couple hours of sleep curled up in the tiny booth in the cabin, I was good to go. Evidently I didn’t miss much and we changed fishing holes a couple of times while I was out, but I never woke up. I needed the sleep. We had stayed at Miller’s Landing, in one of their ‘backpacker’ rooms and they suck. SUCK. The mattress’s shouldn’t even be allowed to be called a mattress. So don’t do it. Do not stay in the backpacker rooms at Miller’s Landing. You’ve been warned.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="180" caption="Captain Jim bonks a Ling"][/caption]

Anyway. Finally, about noon, I woke and we were at the Chicken hole. If you don’t know, a chicken hole is a known area where large schools of smaller halibut are known to be. I don’t mind the Chicken holes – they’re pretty much a sure thing, there’s not too much work in bringing the smaller halibut up and you usually get some bonus fish like cod, rockfish or quillback. Chicken sized halibut are also usually tastier than their larger, older fish.

Ling cod are my favorite to catch, though. They come up easy and they can be pretty big, bringing lots of meat for the freezer. And they sure are ugly. Almost as ugly as the halibut. That’s fine, I love them for what they are on the inside. It’s what is inside that counts, right?

So the fishing trip was a success and we ended up with about 60lbs of halibut and cod. That should make us plenty of fish & chips and halibut tacos to get us through the winter.

So then, the following Saturday was the Alaska State Fair and rodeo.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Flag girl at the Alaska State Rodeo, 2008"][/caption]

It was fun. The rodeo was kinda small, it rained, the PA system sucked and the roping was really bad, but it was fun. And bull riding is always fun, no matter how good or bad the riders might be. And some were actually pretty good. I finally had a chance to check how fast my new camera is and I got a few decent shots, except that I’ve only got a 28mm lens! There’s a few more photos here, in the gallery.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="180" caption="Get that ribbon!"][/caption]

The highlight of the event had to be when they turned 60+ kids lose on a calf to retrieve the ribbon tied to his tail. That poor calf sauntered out into that ring and was quite immediately descended upon by a screaming, racing mob of children. He made a valiant effort but got cornered in a round arena and an 11 yr old girl won the contest. I lol’d. There’s a few photos of that in the gallery as well.

After the rodeo we walked through the farm & animal exhibits, grabbed a funnel cake and headed home. By that time, people were shoulder to shoulder everywhere you went and they squeezed us right out to the parking lot.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="180" caption="Baahhh!"][/caption]

Tomorrow we’re headed back down to the Kenai and Uncle Jim’s cabin. Hopefully we’ll hunt down some nice silvers for smoking. It’s the last big meet-up of the summer and all the friends, family and neighbors from the cul-de-sac will gather for an end of the season bar-b-que and campfire bullshit session to rehash fish stories from the summer and tease Jim about how many times we’ve all heard his stories. It will be awesome.

And finally, there’s a nice tide so we’ll be hunting down razor clams, and then back home again on Sunday to process fish and clams. We could save so much money in gas and time in driving if we could just move.

Move.

Soon, we must move to the peninsula.

For now, I will continue to tend to my micro garden of tomatoes that has taken over my entire living room picture window. And boy oh boy, do we have tomatoes. I’ll have to post photos when my new lens arrives next week. Yay! A new lens! Actually two new lenses! I can’t wait! A Canon 28-90MM F/4-5.6 and a Tamron 75-300mm. Woot!

We made our first trip of the summer to Kenai this weekend. Well, I did. Wes had been down a few times to visit with his dad. It was so great to get out of town. The weather was fair to poor – no sun, lots of clouds, cool and sometimes windy. The fish aren’t here yet and the only boats in the water were guides. Poor suckers on that trip basically got an overpriced boat ride down the river.

But you know what? I don’t care. I just really needed to get the eff out of Anchorage. I just need space. A slower, less populated, space.

On Saturday, me, Wes and Terry took a trip to Homer for fish & chips on the spit. We stopped at the reservoir and saw no fish, just a few fishermen. Then we went to Ninilchik and there wasn’t much going on there, but there wasn’t a tide either.

So mostly we hung out at the cabin and visited with Wes’s dad. We barbq’d, sat around the firepit roasting marshamallows, eating home made ice cream, and traded bullshit and stories with Jim & Robin. It was fun and lots of laughs.

Early in the evening, the ravens come home to roost in the meadow just behind the cabin. There are a few nests in the area and so there lots of young ravens flying around testing their new wings as well as testing their growing vocal chords before bedtime. It was one of the coolest things I’ve seen. They were very loud and very gruff – nothing like the liquid ‘kuhl-lunk!’ that I love so much. Ravens are very private and secretive birds and to have a nest so close to your home is quite a privelage. I shot some video of some of the commotion. I’ll take a look at it tomorrow and post it if it’s any good. It was a long zoom and I had no tripod so I’m sure it’s really shaky.

In the meantime, here’s the moose that greeted us outside our bunkhouse Saturday morning. Still a baby; I’d guess about 2 years old.

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(some of the most boring, uneventful video EVER)