Sarah, Joe's plane. Took us around...and around. On Monday, we started the day going for a hike in the mountains, it took an hour and a half to get up, and about 15 minutes to get down. There still is a lot of snow in the mountains, so we able to ski down the snow filled gulleys, some on our feet some on our rear ends. We then spent from 3:00 till 11:00 flying around in the mountains, in Nick's friend's Joe bush plane. We landed on the top of a mountain about an hour out of Anchorage on an flat spot created by the deposits from ancient glaciers and fly ash from a volcano. The area was so small we had to take of in a couple of trips, because the plane wouldn't make it in one. Rick and I stayed behind to wait for the second trip. I was an erie feeling knowing that you were hundreds of miles from civilization on the top of a mountain, totally dependent on the plane coming back. Pay no attention to those bear tracks that are all over, because they have all moved to lower elevations by this time of the year! We had lunch there and then continued on over glaciers, valleys and mountain after mountain. Truly unbelievable views. Most of the trip was spend about 20' about the surface so it was easy to spot bears and moose. WE got back yo the condo at about midnight, but everybody was too geaked to sleep
Hope Alaska was founded by gold miners, and is vastly remains the same today. It is a town of just a few people, but is a great place to visit. Nick and Maddy discovered a hotel that is actually old wood cabins. There are only four cabins and they are vastly booked for the entire summer, and gets quite a bit of use in the winter. The Owners live right on site in their own cabin. One building set aside from the rest is the common bathrooms, that even the owners use. Is is in a beautiful setting with a graet pond and a glacier runoff river that runs through the property, just behind the cabins. Each cabin has it's own wood burning stove and electric lights, and, that's it. Nick and Rick spent the evening in a row boat telling stories and doing serious damage to a couple of six packs, later to be joined by Paul. The girls played board games and Yahtzee with the warmth of a bottle of wine. All in all, great fun.
Wednesday we went fishing and site seeing out of Seward. We spent about a quarter of the day doing site seeing, including mountains, sea lions, puffins, glaciers and a whole bunch of whales. The rest of the day was spent fishing as we tried all different styles of fishing for different types of fish. We caught Rock Fish, Yellow Eye, Ling Cod and Halibut. We ended up with 95 pounds of fish fillets that we all split up and look forward to enjoying for the year to come.
