We lead a sheltered life in Minnesota. We see the same people every day at our jobs, our churches, our doing business in our communities, etc. Because of that, I can't help but notice the variety of people that come in here to the B & B - and I realize how much I enjoy talking to everybody - it's so interesting.
For example, this morning I had breakfast with a "Rose" from Austria. Her husband is "Helmut", and he doesn't speak english, so he was not as sociable - but Rose was the exact opposite. Probably in her fifties, when she heard horror stories about people from Europe being taken advantage of in Alaska, or, people from Europe not enjoying all that AK has to offer because of language and culture barriers, she decided to take the bull by the horns and do something about it. She became a pilot, a travel agent, and a tour guide. Now she takes care of the whole process for people who have the money and the time to come here, but just don't have the wherewithall to make it happen.
On the other side of me was a pathologist who works at one of the major hospitals in Anchorage. She admitted to working too much, and was just getting away. You could tell she was really enjoying her down time. Across me was a couple from Japan - who spoke broken english, and were all smiles. It's just amazing to see how people from all over the world have always dreamed about coming to Alaska.
I've met multiple people from California, Texas, Florida, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, New York, and Michigan - those seem to be the trends for some reason. There's also been two tour guides with groups from Germany and Austria. Everybody thinks I have a funny accent, and they really overdo it when they mimick me, especially with the word "minnesota". Down at the fish cleaning tables - literally everyday, there is somebody there from Minnesota. If they are not from MN, they have a close family relative who lives there. I randomly met up with a guy to go fishing, and he was from Duluth. That really seems to be a theme I have noticed - people from MN winding up here.
Today, Maria has the afternoon off, so we are going to go check on "China Poot" - a small glacial stream across the bay that has a natural sockeye salmon run. It is getting to be the time of year when they come in to spawn, and residents of Alaska can dipnet them ( I can't, but I can assist Maria - so I'm interested to see what that's all about). I've seen the sockeye's come in thick up at my brother Tom's place in British Columbia - so I imagine wading into that wall of fish and netting them. Sounds like fun to me...
Yesterday I took "Jake" from Arizona out fishing with me. My halibut hole off McDonald Spit seems to have dried up, so we went exploring way out into the farthest reaches of the bay on the edge of the Pacific - since it was so calm. The water was 200+ feet deep all around, but I found a hump that topped out at 140 feet, so we anchored up to give it a whirl. It was one halibut after another and we brought in a limit of 20-30 pounders. Lost a couple of big ones too. Jake might join me again tomorrow.
There's some kind of a bug going around the place as everybody has been under the weather. It came on me yesterday in the afternoon. Nausea, weak, no appetite, and super achy. There was a parade in town - but I had the chills so bad, I just really didn't want to go. Maria and her zumba crew danced around a float for the parade. I would have liked to see that. Not much else going on for the fourth. Homer has banned fireworks of all things - surprising for a bunch of liberal hippies :-) I guess it doesn't matter much. It never gets dark here anyway - so fireworks would be no big deal.
The camper is sold! Ken and Deb drove down from Anchorage yesterday to look at it. Judging from my post on cragislist, there is a lot of demand for campers up here. I must have had 30 inquiries, and a half dozen people wanting to buy it sight unseen - but the logistics of Alaska are often limiting because it's so big. Driving from Anchorage to here to look at a camper is kind of like driving from Deerwood to Rochester - it's an all day affair. I bought the camper three years ago for 2800 bucks, and used it really hard. I had one accident with it - jack knifed my boat trailer and ripped off one of the support poles and punched out the access door to the propane tank. That's the point where I realized that all of the wood underneath the metal was ROTTEN. It is also all rusty. I figured if I could sell if for two grand, I'd be making out fine. Deb tried to talk me down a number of times, but when Ken saw that I wasn't going to have any of it, he offered to pay full price. The deal is, I drop it off at their house in Palmer (45 minutes north of Anchorage - on the way home) - that way I can continue to live in it until I leave. They gave me 500 bucks down, a gentleman's handshake, and will pay the rest when I drop it off. Now I just have to find a good light box freezer to haul all of my fish home...
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