Jeep Trail

I haven't posted a couple of things I wanted to about our adventures with Kyle.  After our trip to Denali (which I still haven't posted because I am waiting on some pictures from Kyle), we decided to stay in Girdwood so that Kyle could enjoy the scenic drive down Seward highway.  We stopped at one of my favorite spots, Tern Lake.

 

It's definitely a spot that takes my breath away every time.  The first time I saw this the mountains were still snow capped and reflecting perfectly onto the lake.  Since we decided to make a day of our drive down, Ryan thought it would be fun to go on roads that we haven't been on before.  He found a road behind this lake and there were Alaska state workers working on a path around the lake.  Ryan asked if a dirt road marked "Old Seward Highway" was safe to drive on.  One of the workers encouraged us to go on it and said it met with Old Quartz Road.  The beginning of the road was beautiful. 

As you can see, the road is really only wide enough for 1 car.  I thought it would be a short trip but it ended up being a very scary experience!  The road is not maintained, and it winds through the side of a mountain.  There would be a wall of dirt to the left side of the car and a cliff on our right.  

 This was a part of the road that was wide enough for me to step out of for a picture.  You can see how narrow the path is ahead.  There was a section of the road with a clearing on the right side before a part of the road that had a waterfall running through it.  Kyle and I encouraged Ryan to use the clearing to turn around.  What do you think Ryan's decision was?  He insisted that the car could handle it and drove right through the water.  

Ryan was right, we did make it.  But now there was no turning back.  Kyle had to get out of the car and clear the road of large branches.  He actually walked at a pace faster than the car.  I got pretty worried that a bear might come out and attack him.  All I could hear in my head was Laurie's voice saying, "this is like Deliverance!" Eventually we met a split in the road and knew the main highway was to our right.  We took the right and saw this car. 

Hmm...I wonder what happened here?  Probably another man not listening to his wife.  This road is not one I will ever travel on again. 

Talk about Arduous!

Kyle has joined us in Alaska for the past week.  Ryan and he have been doing a lot of salmon fishing, Kyle has been quite successful in catching silver (coho) salmon.  We made a trip up to Denali at the beginning of the week but I will wait to post pictures after I get pictures from Kyle.  The three of us completed a 8 mile, 3,500 feet hike to the top of a mountain to get a view of the Harding Icefield in Seward. 

The hike was all uphill.  It took us through a cottonwood and adler forest, rocky edges, waterfalls, heather filled meadows, above the treeline into a rocky field.  The above picture shows the type of rock we hiked over as well as a first glimpse of the icefield.

The hike up was a struggle!  I needed lots of rest stops.  I thought San Francisco hills were bad, climbing up a mountain is horrible. 

 There were bear warning signs everywhere and we saw 3 bear scats on our trail.  They are pretty gross and huge!  The warnings pretty accurate, we saw a mom and cub black bear about 100 yards from us.

You can see we are above the tree line and into the meadow.  Further up, all the vegetation was gone and replaced with rocks. 

There was also snow still up on the mountain.  The sun was so hot that I didn't feel cold at all.  I actually wanted to make snow angels to cool off! 

The picture of the icefield hardly does it justice, it was pretty amazing!  You can see the blues in the ice and there were parts with deep crevasses.  Although the hike was probably the hardest thing I've done in a while, it was well worth it. 

Here's a view from our way down, the way down wasn't easy like I thought it would be.  It was hard on our knees and toes!  It was a beautiful hike, I would recommend that everyone does it once in their lifetime.  Ryan and I agreed that this would be our first and last time!

Spur of the Moment

Yesterday morning while Ryan was trying to kill some time until I woke up, he decided he would like us to go drift boat fishing.  He's been hankering to learn how to fly fish and also to go drift boating.  He found a charter that did both.  We went on a half day guided fishing trip in the upper Kenai.  The layout of Kenai river is as follows.  It starts from Kenai Lake, then turns into the Kenai river, which then pours into Skilak Lake, then turns into the river again which pours into the Cook Inlet.  The river between Kenai and Skilak Lake does not allow motorized boats.  This is because that part (called the upper Kenai) is shallow and it is a spawning ground for many different fish.  It is also for conservation purposes.  If you want to take a boat into this part of the river, you have to have a drift boat.  Today our guide did all the rowing for us.

We were lucky to go on the trip with a father/daughter duo.  The daughter was a bit younger than us and it was really cute to see such a great father/daughter relationship.  I think that's a perk of growing up somewhere like Alaska.  You're surrounded by the great outdoors and in order to enjoy it, someone has to teach you.

Fly fishing was pretty cool.  We caught dolly varden trout (pictured above with Ryan and our guide, Mike), rainbow trout, and a spawning red salmon.  We also saw sooooo many spawning red salmon.  Even spawning king (chinook) salmon.  I've really wanted to see how the reds change and I got the chance to today really close up!  If you look carefully above, you can see some red blobs.  These are the same fish Laurie and I were fishing for off our dock.  The reds start to deteriorate after they spawn, turning red and green.

AMAZING, right?!  Such pretty red and green.  I caught this big guy and as soon as this was taken, he slipped out of my hand and bit me!  He got a pretty good grip on the front part of my hood, under my chin.  He was slimy and I was nervous that I would drop him on the boat.  It's so weird that this was the same fish we were catching a month and a half ago.  The dolly varden trout were more plentiful than the rainbows.  Ryan caught only 1 rainbow.

This is not Ryan's rainbow (he was actually the biggest one caught today!).  I only had him hold it because I was afraid I would lose it like this one:

 The rainbow trout are really beautiful, they have these pink cheeks that look like blush.  The dollies have orange spots and look like they have orange lipstick on.  :)

Ryan and I are really enjoying our time in Alaska.  It's such a different life up here than I've ever experienced before and I love it.  But we do miss our family (especially our little nephews) and friends.

B.O.A.T.

Ryan and I have two weeks to figure out what we can do to fill up our time until our next visitor, Kyle, comes to entertain us. :)  Can't wait!  We decided to do the easiest thing possible, fish in a river created by run-off from snow capped mountains in our backyard.  Our target was silver salmon (coho), but it was hard to not catch pink salmon.  Above is a female spawning pink salmon (isn't she beautiful?) I caught.  She kept releasing eggs into our boat while Ryan was trying to get the hook off her.  I'm glad I've never enjoyed Ikura (salmon roe as sushi)...and I don't think I ever will.

Today our adventurous Kenai River trip faced some challenges.  We discovered we had left the bilge pump on which had drained the battery.  That is a picture of Ryan pulling the boat back into the dock.  Imagine how cold the water is!  Ryan went to buy a new battery and we headed back out onto the water.  Everything was going well until we hit a bed of rocks that hadn't been visible before.  The water level dropped drastically in the past few days (warm weather has melted most of the snow affecting the water level).  So the boat is out of commission and is living up to its acronym.    Bust.Out.Another.Thousand.