A Wondrous Place

Last night while watching all the action on the docks, we came up with a plan for today. In the morning, while it’s raining, go to the Sealife Center and then when the skies clear go on a hike.

Let me pause a moment and say it’s hard to sleep in the land of the midnight sun! Although the places we’ve stayed all have blackout shades, there is a lot of light that still gets through!

We woke up to bring sunny skies. It was time for a new plan – good thing our middle name is flexible 🙂 But it would require some coffee. Lucky for us there’s a coffee shop next door.

Who knows when it will rain. We are in the middle of a rain forest after all. Hiking while we had blues skies seemed like the perfect idea! It was a short drive to Lowell Point, and depending on who you ask, an easy or moderate hike to Tonsina Point. Apparently the easy hike is if you hike to Lowell Beach. The barista told Jon it was a wonderful hike along the shore – that’s what he thought we were doing. My hike, even more wonderful, was 4 miles (round trip) through the rain forest and ended at a black sand beach along the shore of Resurrection Bay. Isn’t that the same thing?

(Jon’s note-it was largely downhill switch backs on the way there, which meant uphill switch backs on the way back!)

The switch backs and “hey bear” were worth it. The payoff over delivered! We didn’t want to leave!

Another stunning view is right out the windows of our AirBnB. Last night, although our dinner was good, we felt like we were wasting time sitting in a restaurant. Jon came up with a brilliant idea on the hike back to our car… let’s go grocery shopping and make our own dinner. By the time we got to our car we ditched the idea of the Sealife Center. It was still sunny, why waste it inside!

While prepping dinner we watched a show right outside our window. A number of fishing charters were returning and they had a good day out on the water! We watched as they cleaned all the fish they caught – mostly salmon and halibut. And with a slip of the knife one guy cut his finger. We saw a few really good size halibut – the biggest one was ~4 feet.

This is the fish cleaning dock right outside our window. The guy in the green waders had a halibut so big he couldn’t lift it. And the guy in the gray jacket (two to green guy’s left) is the one who cut his middle finger but never stopped. It was a production line-green wader guy did the rough work, then the black jacket guy moved the filets over to the gray jacket guy who finished the filets by removing the skin. Then the filets went into a huge garbage bag to go to local restaurants. Fresh halibut. Nom nom!

We had to go on a quick walk to our car to get warm clothes for tomorrow’s whale and glacier boat tour. We stopped by the cleaning dock to see the fish a group was getting ready to clean. They maxed out their limit on Alaskan Red Salmon, 6 each for a total of 48! They noticed us standing by and started talking to us for the next 15-20 minutes. Alaska might just be the friendliest place we’ve ever been! All the locals we’ve met have be so friendly and willing to share what they love about their state.