Continuing on with the fun times with all of our visitors, Sarah & Nick were up here the week of the 4th. One of the top things Nick wanted to do while up here was go on a charter fishing trip. One of the most popular places to go is out of Seward; so once they figured out when they were coming up we got a company booked back in March. There is an option to only go for one type of fish but we knew we wanted to try for each type [salmon, halibut, rockfish and lingcod] so we booked it for the entire day.
We quickly learned that the 4th is a huge affair down in Seward - the population grows from 2,500 to nearly 30,000!! They have a parade, fireworks, little food vendors set up, etc. The 4 of us headed down to Seward on the 3rd to take in some of the festivities and explore the town. We stayed at this little
bed & breakfast that was tucked back in the trees and has a hot tub looking out over a salmon spawning creek. On the actual day of the 4th there is a race called Mt Marathon. It begins and ends downtown and they race to the top of this mountain. They literally run up & down this mountain [3 miles] with it taking about 35 minutes to get to the top and only 10 to get down! I had heard about it but it was something else to witness in person. We actually witnessed a new record - this guy completed it in 42:55 shattering the previous record that stood for 3 decades. You could actually see them flying down the mountain through the camera. It's nothing I would ever want to or could do but it was thrilling to watch :) We also went to explore Exit Glacier which is just a few miles outside of Seward. It's another glacier that you can just walk up to but you can't actually walk on this one.
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| Runners going up the mountain |
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| At Exit Glacier |
The next morning we got up bright and early [5 AM] to go out on the boat. The other three had all been deep sea fishing down in Florida but it was a whole new experience for me. It was just us, the captain and his deck hand so we could kind of do what we wanted which was really nice. I thought I was going to be sea sick once we finally got to our first spot but I managed to pull it together for the rest of the day. That would have been a LONG day otherwise... The fishing line went down about 200 feet for halibut and let me tell you it was hard work reeling it back in. I even thought just the sinker was heavy and Sarah reeled in a 50 pounder!! The captain cruised around to different spots and they were both really helpful. They even stopped the boat to watch a group of whales playing in the water. We caught our limit on everything but the lingcod - it had already been a long day and I was ready to head back to shore. There was a ton of meat - over 100 pounds - once they filleted it all for us. Nick & Sarah shipped half of it home and our freezer is still stocked full! I'm hoping we don't get sick of fish anytime soon...
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| Our catch |
While they were here we also did some hiking and drove up to Eklutna Lake. Since Alex & I were working they took off and explored/shopped downtown and also drove up to Hatcher Pass which is an old mining area amongst the mountains. One of their last nights here, we did a round of sunset golfing. Since the sun doesn't set until around 11:30 [and it truly never gets completely dark] we thought it would be fun to say we golfed at night. We finished the round at 10:30 but it looked as if it was maybe 5:00.
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| At Eklutna Lake |
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| Sarah golfing |
It was a busy week and we were sad to see them go back to Iowa. They're already planning things to do the next time they come up though! :) See more pictures at
shutterfly!
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