Playing catch-up...too long without a blog

Well, its been too long and I have no excuse.  Sorry to say that our next adventure after the lake fishing trip was a CRAZY dip netting experience with no photos.  First of all, the trip had to go on the salmon's timetable...not ours, so we waited by the phone until Dylan gave us the word that the salmon were running on the Kenai and then left work on a Thursday night, driving straight through until 3 in the morning when we, with Fred in the back seat arrived at the Home Depot in Soldatna. where we were to sleep until 6 am.  Now, David has to do all of the driving because I fall asleep at the wheel...and he does a great job while I do a good job of passengering.  We never argue, except this time when we had a major fight at the Home Depot parking lot about the exact place to park in the empty lot.  "No...you cannot park there, the light is shining in my eyes."  "No, we cannot park here because it is too close to the building."  We must have looked like we were crazy, driving in circles around the parking lot.

Too soon the phone rang and Dylan was telling us that he would meet us at the gas station down the road in 20 minutes.  Way to little time for Fred, David amd me to pee, dress, eat and drive.  Sure enough, 20 minutes passed and Dylan was on the phone, "Where are you?"  This should have given us a clue to the rest of the day.

We met Dylan and followed him and his loaded truck to a place where we parked our car, transferred our stuff and Fred to his truck and then drove to the put-in place for dip-netting.  There was no room in the truck for me, so I had to ride in the bed with all the stuff.

I don't know what we expected, but certainly not the 6 or 7 hundred people all dragging an undescribable array of coolers, nets, tents, etc. onto the beach which was already full of tents from the night before and more seagulls than I have ever seen.

At 6 am sharp, the fishing began.  The tide was running out, the optimum fishing time at this spot which was at the mouth of the sea.  So, here you have, standing shoulder to shoulder, hundred of men and woman in chest waders, holding 20 foot long poles on the end of which is a 5 foot diameter net...big enough to catch a small child.  You hold the net perpendicular to the flow of the water, wedge it against your neck and hope to keep your balance.  Since my net was broken, I was "support" for the first run.  This meant that when Dylan or David caught a fish in their net, they flipped the net on its side to keep the fish in and started walking onto the beach, shouting for me.  In the meantime, I ran splashing into the swiftly running river and helped drag the net out and untangled the flopping fish weighing about 20 pounds.  Then...I bonked the fish on the head with a club, all the while apologizing like crazy...then hooked my finger into its mouth, ripped out its gills, slit it from gill to tail, ripped out the guts, threw the guts to the birds who I had to beat off my head, drop everything when David or Dylan shouted and I ran into the water again.

Of course, David and Dylan were standing in freezing water up to their armpits, braced against a swift running current, dragging giant fish out of the water...and then Dylan and  I did it all again at 4 am the next morning.  What great fun!? But no time for photos. Please be aware that this, unlike the trout fishing, is not really "fishing" but harvesting. But we did end up with about 50 pounds of cleaned, flash frozen red (chanook)salmon)

We came home and bought a freezer the next day!  And then even traded some salmon for moose!

Going from the sublime the the ridiculous...Fairbanks has a traditional boat race called the Red and Green Regatta in which anybody who wishes can create something that floats and float down the Chena River through town.  Just goes to reinforce my feeling that small things can mean a great deal.

     

Even better than the boat race was the Governor's Picnic and Sarah Palin's reisgnation announcement in Fairbanks.  What a hoot. Especially when she marched her kids on stage and then castigated the press for picking on them.  This was my favorite sign:





Since we bought the freezer, we have been acting like the supermarkets are going to close in the winter here.  We have been blueberry picking, cranberry (lingonberry picking) and freezing the produce that we get from our CSA and our own cotnainer garden.  Since we pay for water which is delivered monthly from the water delivery service here, we took to watering our garden with water we hauled from David's office.  I grew squash, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes and herbs which did quite well in containers, although no one gets red tomatoes in this short season.  Everyone brings them in and lets them ripen inside.  And my eggplant is the size of a kernel of corn, because,apparently, some veggies must stay in a greenhouse, even though there is lots of sunlight.  The growing season is just too short!

Another "big" event in Fairbanks is the rubber ducky race which is a big fundraiser for the town.  You buy a duck and hope that it wins the race from one bridge to another down the Chena River.  Just like the Nenana Ice Classic, our big chance came and went!

The first duck to be scoopedout of the water wins!  It was not us.

But lots of folks were downtown.  Because this is a big deal!

We went to a nearby bluegrass festival in Anderson, and seem to have missed the boat.  The music was not great on the stage, and the good music was in the campground where we were NOT staying.  We were staying in the campground where people played heavy metal from their trucks.  And the festival music wasn't great, but , at least, Anderson is close to Fairbanks.  This was during the time of the big smoke in Fairbanks, when the town was ringed in forest fires and we drove through some spots where we could hardly see.  Fairbanks, for about two weeks was covered in smoke, and, since no place is air conditioned, it was very hard to breath and very hard to see.

 Others might have bucking broncos.  We have bucking salmon.  Go figure!

We had our first guests in August!  Don, my banjo teacher and friend from back east and Ann came by in their RV.  Typical of Fairbanks, on their first day they ran into a couple whom they knew from other bluegrass festivals.  What a hoot.  We ended up inviting themf or dinner the following night, which was great, but would have been even better if we had not had a "dinner malfunction" and ended up not serving until almost 11 pm.  But great music, lessons for me, and RB even took my banjo apart and set it up beautifully!

One of the things we did was the obligiatory blueberry picking..and then we had blueberry bluckle for dessert and blueberry pancakes for breakfast. Fred loves blueberries!





Don and Ann were here for another big event..the return of the sand hill cranes.  The newspaper actually lets us know their impending arrival date by tracking them from place to place.  They come in great gabbling flocks along with the Canada geese and everyone goes to Creamer's field where they put food out for them.  This is done to keep them away from the airport. This is a bitterwsweet pre-cursor to fall.

The weekend after Don and Ann left, we set off for a trip on the Denali Highway which connects the Richardson and the Parks highways.  It is one of the oldest roads in AK and is bumpy and unpaved, but considered one of the most beautiful rides in AK.  It did not disapppoint.





It did get much better than our campsite that night on waterfowl lake with loons, moose mama and yearling munching on the shore, swans, bear poop...and, unfortunately, rain in the morning.  But beautiful nevertheless.

Then, our much anticipated labor Day trip up the Haul Road to Prudhoe Bay and the Arctic Ocean.  We had been on the Haul Road through Antigan Pass on Memorial Day and had made up to push through to Prudhoe on Labor Day. On Memorial Day there was snow on the ground.  On Labor Day, snow fell from the sky, but we drove through absolute tunnels of golden trees lining the road. Its a hard road on cars.

We camped at Galbraith Lake the first night out..one of our favorite campgrounds and made up to take a long hike the next day which dawned cold, but blue. 

After a lovely breakfast, I decided to go for a short walk with Fred which did not last very long because about 5 minutes into the walk I looked up and saw a ground smothering cloud come barreling toward me, pushing cold wind ahead of it.  Fred and I started back to the camp where David was crazily throwing stuff into the car.  By the time he had finished loading up we were completely covered with the cloud which brought rain and snow for the rest of the ride to Prudhoe. 

I don't know what David expected, because before the trip he kept asking folks what there was to do in Deadhorse.  The answer is nothing! 

No one actually lives there.  It is just the place where there is a post office for the North Slope Oilfields.  There is a terrible hotel type thing which costs $200.00 per night, a hardware/everything store and miles and miles of oil rigs and support buildings.  We had to take a $40.00 per person tour to the Arctic Sea since it went through the oil fields.  Notice the outfit.  It was COLD!

Leaving Prudhoe in a snowstorm.  But what great sights!

Camping the night we left Prudhoe left something to be desired.  We pulled off into a roadside rest stop because it was dark and snowing and threw up our tent, cooked our dinner which we ate in the car, and then camped in the snow.  First of all, a BIG truck pulled into the parking area and stayed their idling his engine the whole night!  Then, I felt sorry for Fred, who was sleeping in the car, so I brought him into the tent at about 4 am where he promptly wedged himself into my mummy bag head first and stayed there nice and warm, but leaving no room for me.

We made up to leave first thing and go right home.  But, first we had to stop for the musk ox.



 Then as soon as we went through Adigan pass, the snow stopped, the sun came out and the temperature rose by 20 degrees. So we decided to stop in Coldfoot for lunch and then camp at a little lake overnight.

  After some great berry picking, we went home, again marveling at the golds, yellows, reds and greens.

Fall is definitely here, as I write this blog on September 20.  We are bringing in our pots of veggies because a frost is predicted and we are a bit flabbergasted that at 8:45 it is quite dark.  Of course, last year at this time we were equally flabbergasted that it seems still light at this hour.  Amazing how relative things are!