Alaska is Perty

Wow, it has been a while. Two main updates in my life:

1) Our house got robbed, but whatever.
2) I spent a (truncated) week fishing in Alaska. Sweet!

Alaska

So, my dad and I had planned all summer to go on a fishing trip in southern Alaska, Thursday to Wednesday. Wednesday night, I get home to a guilty looking dog, a broken window, and a half-eaten piece of pizza. The burglars broke a back window, took a piece of pizza out of our fridge to settle the big dog down, and proceed to burgle my Xbox, Dru's laptop, two bottles of wine, and a broken iPod. I understandably felt violated over the invasion of the fridge (for the pizza), really wanted to play some Halo to calm down, and had a "well, crap" moment. Several hours later, police report is filed, house is dusted for prints (really!), and Dru and I were trying the new Pho place in our neighborhood. In the end, our departure was pushed back to early Saturday morning, but we still had to come back Wednesday for a variety of reasons.

Up North

We traveled to Juneau via Salt Lake and Seattle and then took a float plane about 60 miles out to the lodge. The picture up top is the view from the dock...the peaks are the mainland and all the low hills and foggy area are islands in the channel. Alaska is totally awesome...where else can you see sea otters, whales, sea birds, porpoises, and sea lions in the same place? Here is a whole mess of sea lions, lounging on some very sharp rocks and hanging out in the water.

Just doing their thing

The fishing was fantastic; salmon, halibut and bass on the ocean, plus salmon and Dolly Vardens (a type of trout) in the rivers. The Dollies are probably the most fun, just because the salmon are swarming and everywhere...they literally bump into you in the river because they are so thick. The picture to the right is representative of a small group working up the river. All those dark marks in the water are fish. (Click to get a big version.)

Here's me in the river, waiting for a bump:

Like I said above...AK=perty.

Re: ocean catches, I brought back a fresh halibut (60 lb fish!) and several salmon. To the left , the partitioning of said fish.

Food on the trip, as you can imagine, was lots and lots of fresh halibut, salmon, bass, and crab. In fact, the folks we were with have several shrimp and crab pots in various places around the island, so our very last stop on the day we left was at the shrimp pots, for fresh shrimp to bring home.

All in all, I ended up with about three pounds of cleaned shrimp. It would have been more, except for a very happy octopus that was doing its thing in one of the pots...not too many shrimp in there.

So I leave you with an amused Ben and a floppy octopus: