bearly something

Today I saw a brown bear. My Alaskan experience may be complete. Mark and I went on a trip to the post office and to take a peek at the weir where salmon swim up the river to die. When we were headed home, looking both ways to cross an intersection, we spotted the bear crossing the road a few hundred feet from us. We raced to see him up close and discovered not only was he humungous but he only had 3 legs!! Mark immediately hollers “That’s the same bear that tried to maul my dad!” Apparently 5 years ago Mark was fly fishing up here with his dad and his buddy. They each were carrying a gun just incase but his dad’s gun was only a 22- a bee sting to a bear. After a few hours of fishing Mark looks up and sees this bear 50 feet across the river staring down his dad. He yells at his dad to watch out and just about that time the bear starts charging across the river. All three men have their guns up and ready to kill this thing… and he slows down and literally brushes past Mark’s dad. Five years later he’s running around Kasilof chasing butterflies. Or something. It was pretty cool to see- his head was bigger than half my body, and he got around pretty well for only having 3 legs. I wouldn’t get too close to him though- I’d be pretty grumpy if I only had 3 legs and humans were staring at me. I guess if I had 3 legs humans would be staring at me. Anyway… the moral of this story is I need to start carrying my camera with me everywhere I go.

Half way there, oooooooo living on a prayer

Emily just left me a few days ago and I’ve been pretty lonely. She was so helpful and it was nice to have someone to talk to while you work, now I’m back to talking to myself I guess. We went hiking on Skyline which is 2200 feet straight up in ¾ of a mile. It’s pretty tough but the views are totally worth it. Before we got on the trail and were still in the parking lot a lady walking swiftly back from the trail entrance warned us she had just seen a bear. We talked to each other the whole way up (which is way #1 to avoid bear encounters) and had no run-ins with the grizzlies or dangerous momma moose protecting babies. I need to find out how to put pictures up because the pictures are worth more than any words I could use to describe the scenery. Unfortunately I don’t think that will happen until I’m back in Virginia.

We ate at Jersey Subs a lot this past week and a half. It’s a little shack on the corner, the only food in Kasilof besides the T (which has a menu of 6 items- basically 6 different plates of big pieces of meat). For a shack however, Jersey Subs is really good. The guys that work there are pretty funny. Emily and I called in to pick up some sandwiches on the way to the airport to drop her off and this is how the conversation went:

Me: Hi, until what time are you all open?

Chris: Til 6:30. Unless you wanna place an order and I can hide it somewhere for ya

Me: umm… that’s ok we’ll just come by now.

Only in Alaska can you order a sandwich and have them hide it in the bushes for you so you don’t have to be there by the time they close.

Emily and I also went out to the beach to check out the subsistence fishing. All of the Alaskan residents can fish from the beach here in Kasilof using nets- limit of 70 fish per family or something crazy like that. We hung out with the Maltby’s friends, Kelly and Jennifer and their kids, while they were subsistence fishing. It was my first time peeing under a tarp on a bluff. Jenn and Kelly’s kids are crazy backwoods country children and as soon as I said I had to go to the bathroom they were like, “oh yea just climb up this vertical bluff 50 feet and we’ll hold a tarp over you so nobody can see.” So that’s what I did. Although no one could see me, I’m sure the voices of 4 little kids holding down 4 tarp corners saying “ EWWW I CAN HEAR HER PEE!” “WHOA, THAT’S A LOT OF PEE!” “ARE YOU GOING TO POOP TOO?!?!” weren’t pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes. Thanks kids for keeping it on the down low. But hey, if you’re gonna live in Alaska you have to acclimate to all their ways.

This morning I went Halibut fishing with a fishing guide I met at the pullout. It was me, 2 fishing guides, and 5 old men. Talk about a recipe for fun. You can only keep 2 fish per person- I reeled in 3 and kept the biggest two. The second one I caught (about 35 pounds and at least half my body in length… no fish story I promise) was the biggest one caught on the boat today. I can’t imagine trying to reel up a 70 pound fish, which isn’t too big for a halibut- because my arms were spent just on the 3 that I pulled up. When they get to be really big they have to shoot it in the head once they get it up to the boat. Anyway, I was dragging a little from the solstice party on the river last night so that didn’t help my seasickness any, but it was still fun. And halibut are delicious, so I’ll have good fish meat for the rest of the summer. Hopefully Emily will write a blog about her time here and you all can get perspective #2 on Alaskan life.

a pause for touristic activities

Wow, so I haven’t had much time at all to write on here, much less even respond to calls and emails (for which I apologize immensely, and responses are coming I promise J ) I went on a day cruise (Kenai Fjords Tour) a couple of days ago in Seward and saw sea otters, puffins, sea lions, orca whales, humpback whales, humungous mountains and glaciers. It was amazing, definitely a must-see if you come to Alaska. In 6 short hours I saw it all. I was also a bit distracted as I stole away from the Lodge for a good whole day- paranoid the whole time that something catastrophic was going to happen while I was gone. Now I know how parents feel- that sucks. It was definitely worth it though. After 8 long 14 hour days, I needed a break and some glacier-caving whale-jumping action seemed like just the thing. I also went fishing with Mark, the sports fisherman that lives in the Lodge, and I got a king salmon. It was only about 13-15 pounds but I thought I was going to fall out of the boat trying to reel it in. Mark kept yellin at me to get the rod tip up so he could get the fish in the net, just about then the sucker would dart underneath the boat and I’d trip a couple steps to keep up. Especially after hours and hours of manual labor moving dirt and boards (another job description I was not aware of when I got into this gig) my arms were killing me and this two foot fish was close to having ME for dinner. It all ended well… him on the grill. Seriously the best fish I’ve ever eaten in my life- which, to be honest, isn’t much to compete with, thanks mom J. Just kidding. It tasted like steak, so if Rachelle Shendow ever came to Alaska I think I could convert her to a fish lover. Or at least a non fish hater.

Overall most of the projects I’ve been managing are complete- besides Cabin 2 renovation- so things are calming down a bit. Although there are new things being added to “the list” everyday. Always something to fix/repair/change/improve. That’s life I suppose. Emily is visiting me right now so it's really nice to have people helping out and familiar faces hanging around. I’ll try not to wait so long for the next blog entry as I’m sure I left out some juiciness.

a mad flurry

Jeanne and Steve just left in a crazed flurry back to their home in St. Croix, and unloaded the dump truck on me. It’s all up to me now- everything from cleaning, cooking, managing the boat ramp and buying materials for it, heading up and supervising projects of construction and renovation around the lodge/cabins and boat pull-out, doing all the bookkeeping/finances, dealing with reservations and event planning for guests, and a ton of ‘smaller’ tasks such as hooking up the satellite/cable for all the TVs here… the list goes on. It’s sink or swim at this point. I’m fairly confident that I can not only hold this place together but improve some operations also- we’ll see. It’s definitely an adventure and I’m gaining skills left and right.

I went fishing for salmon finally, was freezing cold the entire time, thought hypothermia was a possibility, was for sure my right big toe was a goner, and didn’t catch a single thing. Hopefully I’ll get to go again when it’s peak salmon fishing time (mid june and end of july) and get myself a 30 pounder.

We had our big open season house party on Saturday night and all of Saturday was mayhem. We had to clean and move furniture into all the cabins (they were completely in disarray from renovation), prep and cook food, and run the boat pull-out (which was the craziest day of fishing so far this season). I haven’t really explained what a boat pull-out is and what exactly I’m doing up here with that; I’ll explain in the next paragraph. Anyway the party was fun and the food was delicious and it was all worth it in the end. I don’t know how Steve and Jeanne do so much in so little time- I’d be way stressed out- I WAS way stressed out. But yea, it was good.

So although I’m running a bed and breakfast, we don’t have a whole lot of reservations this year. The lodge is situated on the Kasilof River and we have a ramp that people use to pull their boats out of the river. We charge them everytime they use our ramp and it’s called a pull-out. There were 3 boat pull-outs on the Kasilof River until this year- one of the ramps shut down and thus we are getting all of their business. This sounds good and dandy, but we didn’t have the space to go from 10 trailers pulling boats out to 50 boats pulling out everyday. I will be calling excavators to clear land this week so we can accommodate 40 more trucks and trailers. The owner of the pull-out that shut down wanted the state to buy his property for a few million. The state owns the land where fishing guides put their boats into the river and this guy wanted the state to buy the pull-out also. Sarah Palin said no, Alaska is not going to spend its money on that. It’s nice for Jeanne and Steve because they’ll be making more money on this gig than just running the cabins alone. However it’s up to me to make sure the pull-out runs smoothly or else- if enough people complain about the river being backed up and not being able to pull their boats out within a reasonable amount of time etc. then the state may have to buy out the other guy and we’ll lose all the revenue from this in the future. It’s kind of a big deal.

Although there hasn’t been much fun and games lately with the timer ticking and so much to do but hopefully it’ll calm down a little bit after the next 2 weeks and I can get back into some Alaskan things