Alaska
Fun Facts About Alaska
.The state flower is the Forget-Me-Not
.The state bird is the Willow Ptarmigan
.The state tree is the Sitka Spruce
.The state sport is dog mushing
.The state motto is: North to the future
.The state flag was designed by a 13-year-old schoolboy
.Alaska's population of 606,000 makes it the third least populated state
.There is 1 person per square mile in Alaska.
.Alaska is the most eastern and also the most western state in the U.S.
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First view of Homer,Alaska |
Fireweed |
Forget-me-nots Alaska state flower |
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Lupine |
Yellow flower ??? |
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Exit Glacier near Seward |
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Glacier Blue |
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Fred at base of glacier |
Great-nephew Phillip |
Outflow plain |
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Glacier pothole (Note) |
Water flow from glacier |
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Seward, Alaska |
Port of Seward (Note) |
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Off on our Halibut fishing trip |
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Smiling before I got sick |
Sister-in-law Arlene Blair |
Smiling now that we are on firm land |
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Halibut hook |
Small halibut (Note) |
Good eating |
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Family reunion |
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Alaska sunset at 11 p.m. |
Alaska transportation-float planes |
Anchor River fly fishing |
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"Combat" fishing-almost shoulder to shoulder(Note) |
Baby moose |
Momma moose |
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Bald eagle |
Cook Inlet |
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Kachemak Bay |
Cirque (Note) |
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Mountain lake from plane |
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Tractor retrieve from beach instead of boat dock |
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King salmon in Anchor River (Note) |
Our trip to The Land of the Midnight Sun began in Houston with a stop in Detroit for a couple of hours and then a long 7 hour flight across western Canada. The view of the Canadian Rockies was fantastic with snow covered mountains with glaciers filling the valleys. The early part of the flight was overcast so the view of the Canadian Rockies was a welcome view.
We arrived in Anchorage, AK at 11 PM, which is 3 AM in Houston time; 22 hours after we got up in Houston. The Sun was already below the horizon, but it leaves the sky looking like dusk in Houston. It never really gets dark. The other amazing facet of the sky is that the Sun comes right back up at 4 AM. Lois woke up and was wondering if we had overslept, but the clock confirmed it was 4 AM.
We spent the night in Anchorage and left the next morning to make a short flight to Homer. As you leave the Anchorage airport you fly right across miles of mud from the low tide. As we continued we began to see the water of Cook Inlet; named after Captain Cook who first explored this area. Our niece, Arnel, husband Steve and son Phillip live in Anchor Point, named from a story that Captain Cook lost an anchor right offshore from this area.
Tuesday, we visited a small Russian village close to Anchor Point, Nicolaivesk. It is a small village of just a few hundred people of Russian decent. This village is one of several Russian settlements. These settlements are referred to as the “Russian Free Villages”, they came to Alaska to have the freedom to worship at their own churches. The ladies and girls wear the traditional dresses from the old country with lots of lace and decorative threads. Today at the Safeway we saw a couple of young ladies with their children shopping. The ladies' heads were covered and their dresses were beautiful. The boy’s shirts were decorated with embroidered patterns in the collars and down the front of the shirts.
Our first full day in Anchor Point, Arnel’s home town, provided us with bright sunshine, but no boat for the fishing. Their boat needed a part and Steve headed to Anchorage to borrow another boat. The rest of the group headed for Seward to travel to Exit Glacier. The trip to Seward was about 2 ½ hours, but the scenery was fantastic. This area of Alaska is totally covered in huge spruce and birch trees. Everything is green and the trees along the highway are so thick that many times you can’t see into the forest. The highway keeps the trees trimmed back about 50 ft. to try and create a buffer for the wildlife that wander onto the road. Even with the buffer, there were 220 moose killed last winter on the 220 miles of road from Homer to Anchorage. We haven’t seen one yet.
The first stop along the way was at a bridge over the Kenai River, the largest river in this area of Alaska. The Kenai is traveled by three species of salmon that move through this area to spawn in the upper areas of the Kenai and other tributaries. At our first stop we were at an area that is a favorite place for Alaskan residents to use dip nets to catch salmon. Each Alaskan family is allowed to catch a huge amount of salmon this way. The head of household is allowed 25 salmon and each other family member is allowed 10 salmon. This is an annual limit. They are still allowed their daily limits for fishing the rivers with rod and reel. Dip netting is done from a boat or just standing along the shore in your waders waiting for a fish to swim into your net. The net size is limited to 5 ft. in diameter.
Our trip continued on toward Seward with another special stop. This second stop was at the confluence of the Kenai River and the Russian River. The Sockeye Salmon, also known ‘reds’, leave the Kenai River and head up the Russian River to their spawning areas. At this spot you can view a special method of fishing called ‘combat fishing’. This name comes from fishermen standing very close to each other trying to snag a salmon. They use long rods with one large fly or jig and they are trying to cast it out into the river and then snag a salmon in the mouth. If you snag one anywhere else, you have to release it back into the river. Arnel says when you cast out, you are trying to feel the salmon bump the fly out of the way and then snag it at that point. The reason for the snagging effort is that once the salmon leave the salt water area and move into fresh water, they go into full ‘spawn mode’, and don’t eat anymore. They spawn and then die, completing the cycle of birth, reproduction and death. The amazing part of this whole process is that the salmon are born in the upper part of a river or stream and move out into the ocean and then return to the same stream where they were born to spawn and then die. Depending on the type of salmon they stay out in the ocean for as long as 4 years.
We finally got the Seward and ate lunch. Seward was the first deep water port of Alaska and was the point of entry for all the supplies needed to build the Alaskan Railroad. In 1994, there was a 9.5 earthquake offshore that created a 100 ft. tidal wave that destroyed the port area of Seward. Luckily the loss of life was small, but the port and many boats had to be rebuilt.
From Seward, we traveled up to the Exit Glacier. This glacier is one of 8-9 that flow out of huge area called the Harding Ice Field. The Harding Ice Field covers most of the east side of the Kenai Peninsula and from mountain peak to mountain peak it is all ice, 2,000 ft. deep in places. The Harding Ice Field is bigger than the state of Rhode Island, 50 miles by 30 miles. Each of the major valleys that run out of this area contains a glacier.
The Exit Glacier is a favorite because it is easily reached by car. From the visitor center to the base of the glacier is only a short half mile walk. We were eagerly waiting to get a clear view of the glacier to see if it was like those that friends have described from their Alaskan cruise. As we rounded the hillside, there it was, a valley full of ice, hundreds of feet thick. And as described by others, the ice is a deep blue; it is such a neat color, almost magical. The trail takes you up to within 50 ft. of the actual glacier. From the bottom of the glacier there is a constant flow of water that creates a stream that continues down into the Kenai River and then into the ocean. Actually the glacier is really dirty looking, it is constantly scraping dirt from the bottom as it slides down the mountain side. The ground under the glacier is changed forever and most of the valleys that we see today in our mountains were formed by glaciers from earlier ice ages. One of the mountain features we saw is called a "cirque" and looks like a bowl of snow up in the mountains. The bowl gets larger each season as the melting and freezing snow cracks away the mountain under.
The water in most of the rivers in this area are kind of a milky, blue color from the sand scraped out by the glacier. One area that has blue color to the water is a "pothole", this small pond is form when a huge chunk of the glacier breaks off and later melts. Since the water is from the glacier it is bluer than the other water melting from the bottom of the glacier.
Tomorrow we are heading into Cook Inlet and the surrounding waters to fish for halibut.
We woke on Wednesday morning to a light drizzle, but it seemed warmer than the day before. In Alaska, you go halibut fishing in any type of weather so we all got ready with rain coats as the last layer. By the time we got into Homer to the boat launching site, the rain had stopped, but it was still going to be a cloudy day. The boat is a 24 ft. Osprey, a fiberglass boat with two outboard engines. It is equipped with a GPS/depth finder/fish finder and a radar unit. All boats in this area have radios and the chatter was constant with people reporting fishing activity and boat problems.
Steve, my nephew by marriage and the ship captain, headed out into Cook Inlet heading for 200 ft water. We ran at 28-30 mph for about 45 minutes. We were going into the water next to Flat Island, so as we approached that area, Steve slowed down and began looking for a sharp drop off in the bottom. The halibut are bottom feeders, but they prefer area just away from a sharp drop off. Steve found the spot and out went the anchor; 300 ft of nylon rope with 50 feet of chain attached to the anchor. We were timing our trip to be at the fishing site just as the tide began to change from incoming to outgoing to be able to have slower currents. Even with that in mind, the current was about 6 mph.
Fishing for halibut is work – we fished with a 3 lb weight to get the bait down to the bottom and hold it there against the current. Steve says sometimes they have to use as much as 6 lbs of lead to keep it down. The rods are about 5 ft. long and are very stiff. A bite from the halibut is a series of quick tugs on the end of the rod; much like any other fish, but like a tug than a tap. Setting the hook is just a matter of raising the rod tip being careful to not jerk too hard or you can pull the hook out of their soft mouth. Then the work begins, reeling in 200-300 ft of line with a dead weight on the other end; hopefully a halibut.
After everyone had bait on their lines and the lines were out, we quickly began to get bites; Arlene first, then Eddie, then Fred. The bad part was that after several minutes of reeling, we both had on dog fish, a type of shark. After one more dog fish was caught, Steve said we were moving away about 200 yards.
We pulled the anchor off the bottom and ran with the anchor still way down in the water out to another deeper place. When we got to the new spot, we quickly had hookups and the long trip to the surface began for 3 fish. Luckily they were all halibut, the largest about 30 lbs.
Halibut is a fish similar to the flounder found in the Gulf waters, only much bigger; the record for Alaska waters is 250 lbs. The halibut is born with eyes on each side of his head, but at about 1 inch of length, the eyes migrate to one side of their body. As they mature, they begin to swim on their side with the white side toward the bottom and the dark side up. Just like the flounder, the dark side is mottled and provides camouflage for anything above them.
The part I have not mentioned is that by the time we got to the final fishing place, the seas were 5-6 ft swells and even in a 24 ft. boat that translates to a lot of movement. All the people from Alaska, Arnel, Steve and Phillip were fine in the movement. But, all the people from the lower 48 were not feeling well and one by one we went to the side of the boat. I take that back – Lois the one most fearing the boat ride, never got completely sick, she was just really yucky feeling.
We had our memorial service for my brother, Pete, and then began the trip back home. Since the swells were so deep we could only run about 15 mph so it was a much longer ride home. Steve took a route through some islands that protected us from most of the wind.
The biggest surprise of the trip was that we saw a mother whale and a baby playing in the water. They would breech and come almost completely out of the water. They were certainly putting on a show for us. Just imagine, we traveled all the way to Maine and paid big dollars to go on a whale watching trip and saw nothing. This trip was free and the whales were great.
We got home and began the cleaning chore. First the rods get sprayed with fresh water to remove the salt water and then the boat got a complete cleaning. Steve got ready to clean the halibut. He said the halibut came with ‘cleaning instructions’ and when he turned the fish over to the white side there was a thin red line that runs from the gill area down to the tail. Steve ran the knife right down the red line and then began to filet from that cut out to the outside of the fish. Each halibut gave four huge filets with two smaller ones that come from the cheek area of the fish.
We had wonderful, fresh, halibut for the evening meal. Arnel both deep fried some and baked the other. For the fish left, she vacuumed sealed the meat.
On Saturday, Eddie, Phillip and Fred went down to the Anchor River to do some fresh water fishing. We were using spinning tackle with spinners trying to entice a Dolly Varden Char, a fish similar to a trout. I had one Dolly on the line, but was not able to slow it down with the light tackle I was using and then it broke off. The river was full of King Salmon were moving up the river getting to their spawning grounds. As the King Salmon start their run into the fresh water two things happen. First, their bodies turn red and then they quit eating. The Fish & Game people had already closed off the King Salmon fishing in this river so all we could do is watch them and be amazed at their struggle to get up river, nature at her best.
Sunday is a rest day and I took Lois down to the Anchor River to view the King Salmon. It is amazing to see such huge fish swimming along in just inches of water.
Monday sees our journey back to Houston begin with a 9 pm departure from Anchorage.