Goin to the Big Waters

I have been getting all sorts of grief for the delay in posting these photos. Never mind the fact that I've been out of town without much in the way of internet access, that the person giving me the grief took the photos but can't post them himself, nor has he composed any sort of commentary to explain what the heck you're looking at. Well, here ya go. My part of the job is done! So there!

Ok, knowing that you probably won't get that commentary any time soon, I suppose I can tell you that these pictures are from John's trip to the outer coast a few weeks ago. Although Juneau is on the coast, we're set on the inside of the, wait for it... "Inside Passage," aka the Alexander Archipelago. This trip is, to me, the epitome of why we will probably never move from Juneau. John has lived here for somewhere around 15 years (I will not mention that I was only mid-way through high school 15 years ago) and this was his first fishing trip out to the coast. I'm sure it will not be the last and I think he was considering it an exploratory mission for next time. I find that the longer we're here, and the more new places we visit, the longer our "To Do" list becomes. I honestly don't think that we'll ever be able to do and see everything we'd like. But we can try!!

4th of July

When we last checked in, we were getting ready to head out on a 4th of July adventure. And oh what an adventure it was!

To digress just a little, last year we were the lucky recipients of several gift certificates for one of the local small airlines with float plane service all over Southeast Alaska. I think Andrew had heard me complain enough about the guys always flying to cool places without me, so now John had no excuse to not take me!! We asked Dave and Colleen, a couple of teachers with very flexible summer schedules, to join us. Last year we flew out to Young's Lake on Admiralty Island (the closest USFS cabin that we could get to by air only, so as to maximize our flight moola) on Thursday evening after work and proceeded to do just about nothing for 4 days. Somehow the fireworks fairies even managed to leave us a nice stash of toys to light up the skies for a few minutes on the 4th.

Our plan to maximize our gift certificates definitely paid off because we still had some credit left over after last summer's trip, although not much so we chose to return to Young's Lake. I think I probably asked Colleen if they were game for Round 2 sometime back in December because I couldn't stop thinking about how much fun we had on the first trip. This time, my normal Friday off fell on the 3rd which was also the State holiday, so I got to take Thursday as well. This meant we could leave right after work on Wednesday and really make the most of our time away.


Last year, the first evening we arrived, Colleen and I stayed awake until a respectable midnight or so. The guys, on the other hand, finally drew themselves away from the camp fire and stumbled into the cabin as the sun was coming up around 3am. The last thing I remember hearing before heading to bed the first night on this year's trip was Dave saying, "There's no way I'm making it til 3 am this year." But Dave is no quitter. Not only did he make it to 3 am, he and John found the energy to take the boat out at about 3am for some early morning fishing. They came back and fell into bed around 730 am. New record!! Of course, that also meant that they spent most of the following day sleeping, but considering we had no agenda and the nighttime hours are more like constant dusk than dark, I'm not really certain it mattered too much.


The rest of our weekend was filled with hot weather (hot enough that I went swimming, but only in the shallowest part of the lake!), blazing campfires, too much food, great company, a bit of spin casting and a bit more fly fishing. Oh yeah, we also had an awesome 4th celebration. Dave and Colleen just returned from a 3 week camping trip up north. On the way home they stopped in Haines and picked up a huge box of fireworks (which you can't buy in Juneau). This year's show was even better than lasts. And John only lit his shirt on fire once.


It was tough to leave when the float plane showed up on Sunday afternoon, but all in all, it was again one of the best weekends of the summer. I think next year we'll aim for a new locale but other than that, I hope very little changes.