Day 5: 2 adventures by the 2 Groups: Bear Viewing And fishing on the Spit

We woke up a tad late on Tuesday morning after hitting the sack around 2am. I had to be in town (20 minutes away) by 8:30 for my flight-seeing tour of the glaciers and bears in Katmai park with Bald Mountain Air service along with lunch and water.

My aunt’s place up on Bald Mountain:

I woke up at 7:45, we packed up quickly and were out of the house by eight. I rambled down the hill taking corners far too swiftly in the small SUV and swung through McDonalds picking up 4 Egg McMuffins: 2 for Breakfast, 2 for Lunch. Mission accomplished.

We rolled into the parking lot and the guys dropped me off as I sent them towards the Homer Spit and told them where to fish.

DAY 4: Driving, Fishing, Bears, and Bald Mountain

After finishing the hike the night before, we went out and took my Dad out for Father’s day at the Windbreak Café in Wasilla. Sufficiently satisfied from this and much needed showers, we got a healthy 6 hours of sleep and awoke early to begin the next portion of our adventure.

DAY 3: Glacier River Crossing, mild hikes, and far more bear scat than I ever hoped to see IRL

We awake to find the group of Hawaiians long gone and Mr. Quiet stoking a small breakfast fire.

After a quick meal of Cliff Bars and 5-hour energy guzzled by those of us on a heavy caffeine addiction, we break down camp and I take a last minute respite to act like a bear (and shit in the woods)

Day 2: Snow, Fog, and Near Death Experience #1

An early morning breakfast followed by a trip to the local Alaskan Walmart (framed nicely by mountains jutting up behind its grey and blue trademark) and we were on our way towards the first of our epic adventures for the week.

My Alaskan Adventure - Travel and Day 1

I’m writing this entry on the way back from my epic adventure to Alaska. It’s been one hell of a ride. I was in Alaska for roughly 10 days and am now quite thoroughly on Alaska time – apparent by the fact that I’m wide awake at 1am Alaska Time (5am Eastern) with no sense of sleep in my future despite being an impeccable airline sleeper.

All in all, I was able to accomplish everything that I wanted to while in Alaska and a tremendous amount more than I anticipated. I get ahead of myself.

Random thoughts from ‘The Alaskan’

I’ve started a new quest. Much like my quest for 185, I’m on a quest to drop a few more lbs for summer. I started this week off at a hefty 189 lbs and have set my 3 month goal at 175 lbs. I have until August 4th to drop the weight and I’m pretty confident that I can do so without vastly changing much aside from adding in a few workouts and eating a little healthier. I dropped down to 184 after my run this evening and a late lunch, so that’s already 5 lbs. Granted, most of that weight was water and pizza, but a gain is a gain (or would it be a loss is a gain?) and I’m happy about it.

Ice Road tale from Home

My Alaskan Uncle is back at it with his awesome Alaskan life. This time he’s building an ice road

Whale tale from home

My family (as is apparent by my ‘nickname’) is from Alaska. My grandfather was a superintendent who commercial fished in the summers as augmentation to the wallet to feed his family of 7. At any rate, most of my aunts and uncles went on to different things, but one never lost the desire to fish commercially. I get random email messages from this particular uncle from time to time, telling a great story of a good fishing day, or tales of ‘the one that got away’.

Well, I got one the other day from him that I just had to put up for y’all.

Check out his (unedited) email before scrolling down and looking at the photo.

Well.. while out fishing the other day we say a couple of whales

rolling, finning and occasionally jumping out of the water. We stopped to

watch and while watching the whale surfaced about 15′ … yep that’s feet,

from the boat, the big guy went completely airborne blotting out my

whole windshield view from the boat. He landed about ten feet off the bow

of the boat, sending a wave of water over the whole boat, the wave

washed completely over the boat and up into the cab getting me soaked in

the process. One of my customers with a knee jerk reaction happened to

take this picture as the whale was beginning his leap…

Needless to say I slammed the vessel into high gear and hauled ass….

I belive that this was his way of warning us to keep clear…. so …

we did.

Quite the shot, It would have turned out better, but the gal (an older

woman) while showing the picture on her digital camera accidentally

deleted it….. we were all pretty bummed out, but the gal had the

picture re-claimed from her trash can, so the remake is not the quality that

was originally shot. Still all in all a great picture and a pretty cool

story to boot.

You can just see the railing of the boat, it’s about 7 feet off the

water so I belive he cleared at Least 8 feet horizontally when he was

completely out of the water, pretty awesome stuff.

All for now

Pat:

How cool is that?