This past week was a whirlwind! Ryan's uncle John and his kids Jim, Tory, and Paul were able to visit us. The boys did a lot of salmon fishing while Tory and I took a day to visit the Kenai Fjords. On our tour we were able to see sea otter, Stellar sea lions, horned puffins, tufted puffins, a resident orca pod, a humpback, a smack (which is a group of jellyfish), and lots of birds. We had a pretty amazing time! I have to admit that the orca pod was the coolest mammal I have ever seen! We had resident orcas flanking our right and transient orcas flanking our left. There was a baby orca also breaching! Resident orcas have both sexes staying close with their mothers while transient orcas are usually in groups of 3 with their moms and if another is born, a sibling leaves the pod. For me, the orcas were more fun to watch than humpbacks because they were in a pod and it's exciting to see their dorsal fin coming up on the water and then their whole body. The humpbacks tend to blow and show only a little of their back. Their fluke up dive is pretty cool though!
The boys caught a lot of humpies (pink salmon) which they threw back into the water and a couple of silver (coho) salmon. Alaskans prefer not to have pink salmon because they have better options! The boys were able to hook humpies on almost every cast once they figured out the best way to get them.
As a group we were able to spend a day halibut fishing at Deep Creek. Deep Creek is known for their unusual way of getting boats into the water. There is no boat ramp. Instead, a skidder (like a tractor) pushes you into the water. It's pretty cool! The water at the beginning of the day was extremely choppy which made things very uncomfortable. Once anchored, the boat did rock up and down (I am getting queasy just remembering it) for about 3/4 of the trip then finally settled down. Fishing for halibut was a challenge, but fun. Halibut are bottom feeders so you have to make sure that your line hits the bottom of the sea floor. In our case, the depth was about 150 feet and the weight we used to sink the bait was 5 lbs. Cranking the line back up was no joke! Especially when you had a fish on. It was funny to see each other struggle to get the fish up. Tory, Paul, and I were able to just leave our rods in the rod holder and just crank the reel. :) The bait that was used was also pretty ripe (as in stinky, rotting fish) and we were fortunate enough that the Captains of the boat baited all of our hooks for us.
My parents and Jason will be here on Monday. Ryan has his boards on Wednesday so I am planning to take the family up to Mt. Denali and meet Ryan in Anchorage on Wednesday. I am looking forward to seeing the highest peak of North America! Let's hope for clear skies!
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