Sitka, Alaska 2008 - Day Four - Saturday, July 26th

More to Come

Sitka, Alaska 2008 - Day Three - Friday, July 25th

The alarm went of again at 4:00 am. We proceeded to get ready for our day and went over to Level II for breakfast. Today Ali and I shared a breakfast, there was plenty of breakfast for both of us with one order. She wanted Biscuit's and Gravy. After breakfast we went back to the hotel to wait for the van's to drive us to the harbor. We were also waiting to see if we had another person with us today, since they fish 4 people to a boat there was a high chance we would have a stranger with us. Which is just fine usually because you don't stay strangers for long being together for 10 hours at a time. They did have a single person and today was his first day to fish. His name was Jarod and we met him on our drive to the harbor.

Jarod Sapp - being silly with Ali.

When we booked our trip 2 years ago we scheduled our whole trip to be with Tim (captain). Octobre called us back in January and asked us if we would fish one day with Roman (captain) because she had a party of 6 that wanted to do a crab and shrimp day. Tim's boat is the only boat they have that can accommodate that many people at the same time. So we told her we would switch for a day.

So we were with Captain Roman and his deckhand's name is Dan. On our way out of the harbor and while we were headed to where we were going to fish for the day, Roman told us stories and was quite the little tour guide. Everything we passed he would tell us about. It was great. He also told us how he proposed to his wife, which was an awesome story. They were married in December last year. He took her scuba diving and had a giant sign that he had sunk and a plastic ring in a little treasure chest.

The weather today was really bad. They were announcing on the radio that we would need to be prepared for gail force winds. Roman was taking us to a protected area so we wouldn't be out in the high seas and bad wind. We fished for a while and didn't catch much.

Ali wanted me to ask Roman about her giant muffin....so I did. He said, I don't do muffins, I said ok that is fine, Ali just wanted me to ask you. I think that made him feel a little bad cause he pulled out his pound cake that his wife Rachel made and sent with him for the day. He let her eat most of it. The muffins must be a treat that Tim does for those who fish with him. Anyway, Ali had me ask Rachel for the recipe, she loved it so much.

He decided to switch from salmon fishing to rock fish. Ali caught a rock fish, they usually aren't very hard to reel in. Well Ali was having a hard time with that thing. I thought, wow what did she catch. Dan helped her by holding her pole and she reeled. When we finally saw the fish it had what they call a chaser on it. While she was reeling up the rock fish a Ling Cod latched onto the the Rock Fish and was trying to eat it. It was a nice size Ling Cod. It was so cool. She was amazed to see that. They actually had to nudge the Ling Cod off the Rock fish cause he wouldn't let go. If the Ling Cod would have been in season we could have kept it too but you can't keep those right now. We caught our limits of rock fish fairly quick.

Afterwards we tried to fish for Yellow Eye. We had these giant grubs with a piece of meat on them and Roman would keep going over the cliffs under the water beneath us. The rocks were so jagged that you had to be careful as you drifted that your grub didn't get stuck in the rocks. We drifted really fast because of the wind. Yellow Eye dwell within and around cliffy rocks like that and you had to keep your bait bouncing on the bottom. Well mine got stuck in the rocks so there was a scramble to get it free before the line broke and they lost their gear. Jarod caught one Yellow Eye, but nobody else did.

Roman called one of the other captains that works for Tim to see where he was at and how they were doing. They happened to be out in the unprotected area fishing. They were catching salmon here and there and the seas were 8 foot swells. Roman asked me if Dave and I were alright going out there, especially since we had Ali. I said yes (we would just watch her good).
It was a bit of a rough ride out there, not terrible but the water was rough. Roman sai

d he only wanted 2 people out on the deck at a time because it was rough weather. Ali and I stayed inside the cabin and Dave and Jerod went out first. After Dave caught one I went out and Dave came in etc. When it was Ali's turn I stood behind her and held onto her life jacket. We did catch some salmon and then it just died. No fish, we had a hard finding them again. While we were waiting and waiting we saw a Hump Back Whale again. Dave went into the cabin to check on Ali and she was feeling sick. Dave and I think it was because it was hot in there and of course the up and down motion of the boat and rocking back and forth. She needed some air so Dave pulled the drink cooler over in front of the door and held her on his lap. It was raining (it really never stopped raining the whole trip). Well she crashed. It was really cute, dad just sat there and held her until she decided to wake up.

Just as we started catching fish again Roman called it quits and had us bring our lines in. We headed back to the harbor to be done for the day.

When we returned to our hotel room I called my mom's cell phone to talk with Zach. My mom handed the phone right to Zach. He said, mom, "I am in San Diego" he can't say Diego it sounds more like "eago". I said you are in San Diego! He said yeah, I am walking on the beach and I see some seals. WOW! I was so happy he was able to do something fun and go on a little trip. My sister Hilerie works for Jet Blue and she took her kids, my mom and Zach to San Diego for the day. My mom told me that when they landed in San Diego they went to get a rental car. When they drove away, Zach said, "Hilerie, Why are you stealing this car?" They all laughed. Hilerie said, I am not stealing it Zach I am just borrowing it. About 5 minutes later he asked her again..."Hilerie, why are you stealing this car?" I think he asked her about 4 or 5 times, and she tried to explain that she paid the man money to use it and they are going to return it. I still don't think he understood. He thought they were highjacking a car to go to the beach. LOL!!! that made me laugh! What a great sister and mom I have, make sure my little guy is having some fun too since he was missing out. Man we sure all missed him REALLY BAD!!

For dinner we went to Roma's. It is a little Italian joint run by Chinese people right across the street from the hotel. The last time we were in Sitka I had vegetarian lasagna and it was the best lasagna that I had ever had. I was looking forward to that again. Well they didn't have that on the menu anymore. Ali had a kid's pasta dish that I think you could have fed the entire Foothills Primary with. It was huge. I ordered a pasta with artichoke hearts and asparagus. Dave had a seafood pasta. It was a really nice dinner. I felt sad to leave all that food sitting there to be thrown away. There was no way for us to take left overs, no fridge or microwave and we certainly couldn't take it home. LOL! I am silly.

We went straight back to our hotel room, watched a few minutes of TV and we all passed out. I am sure we were in bed by 6:30 or 7:00 again.

Rock Fish

Sitka, Alaska 2008 - Day Two - Thursday, July 24th

The alarm went off at 4:00 am, we had a wake up call that morning also just in case we didn't figure out the alarm clock correctly. Ali woke up really well and we all got ready to leave with our rubber boots on. You wear rubber boots because they are constantly washing off the deck of the boat.

We decided to go to the restaurant Level II for breakfast. It is called Level II because it is on the second level. lol...We had our vouchers and headed across the street. It was light outside, just like it is at 8:00 in the morning in Utah. It was a little darker though, cause it was raining and cloudy. Ali decided to get a side of bacon for breakfast, that was $4.50 and a coke. She never gets to have a coke, I am not sure why I let her this time but that is what she ate for breakfast. I also gave her some toast and hashbrowns of mine. I had scrambled eggs, hashbrowns, toast and ham for $11.00 plus my $3.00 drink. Dave had eggs, hashbrowns, toast bacon for the same price.

Ater breakfast it was 5:15 am, time to go back to the hotel and wait for the van to take us to the harbor. Today it was just Dave, Ali and I with our Captain Tim and Deckhand Dave. Normally they have 4 people in the boat, but we wanted to do a crab and shrimp day which you have to travel a lot farther to the crab and shrimp grounds. So we had to buy the boat for the day and purchase the 4th persons slot on the boat. I must say...."IT WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT"! We had a spectacular day and I will explain why we thought so.

I had told Ali about Tim and how great he is. I also told her that he always had a nice big muffin on his boat in case you got hungry. She was looking forward to that muffin for 2 weeks. Talked about it every time she told someone where she was going for vacation. Well she finally got her muffin. Today she had a chocolate chip muffin (didn't take a picture of the chocolate one).

We headed out of the harbor and we didn't get to far and saw a young sea lion up on a rock. It had a flasher hanging out of it's mouth which meant that it had a hook inside caught. He probably tried to eat a fish that someone was reeling in. We could see that it was hurting. Tim got on his radio and called his wife, Octobre. He gave her the coordinates off his GPS and also the name of the island so that they would be able to come out and help him. We don't know what ever happened because when we came back 10 hours later he was gone.

The first thing we saw on our trip to the crab grounds were Hump Back Whales. WOW it was incredible. They were breaching and slapping the water. So exciting to see and I have always wanted to see that with my own eyes, not just on the Discovery Channel. You could hear them when they would blow out of their blow holes, sounded so cool. My camera shutter speed isn't fast enough so we couldn't get great shots, we captured the splash and never could get a tail shot. I hope I was able to capture it all on our video recorder, which we haven't had time to watch yet.

We also had an awesome opportunity with Dahl Porpoises, which are smaller than dolphins and are black and white. Tim set the boat to the right speed that they like, and they were jumping and crossing in front of our boat. We were able to go out on the bow of the boat and watch them. It was fantastic....again...shutter on the camera not fast enough to capture those fast little critters. I am sure the video will make us all sick when we watch it cause I couldn't find them in the view finder a few times.

We also saw a lot of sea lions, seals and bald eagles.

When we arrived at the location for the shrimp pots, we had to write our names on the buoy's that connect to the pots as part of the law. Here is a photo of Ali writing her name on her pots.

When we arrived at the crab grounds we were pulling in and way off in the distance you could see two little dots. You couldn't even tell what they were, but Tim could. He said, there are two bears up there on the beach and drove up there for us to take a look. It was great!

The whole trip up we also saw Sitka Black Tail Deer. They looked like the size of a large dog under the giant pine trees. They would be reaching up and eating the branches and stop for a few minutes to look at us.

Dave had to bait our crab pots. I was happy that he was there, cause I sure didn't want to do it. For bait they use salmon carcasses and heads, usually poking the wire through the salmon eye socket to hold it there....not my cup of tea.

Ali wouldn't hold a large crab but she did hold some babies that we had to throw back. Our limit of dungeness (snow) crab was 15 and we caught 13, so not to bad.

Then it was off to the shrimp area to check our pots. As we brought them up they didn't look like they had very much in them. By the time we pulled up 5 strings of pots, we had a large barrel full. On our way back to town, Dave and deckhand Dave pulled the heads off . I tried to help but they squirmed in your hand and I didn't do it fast so some goo would come out. I quit...they had so much to do, I felt a little guilty. Ali was even braver than me and did some. We ended up with 40 pounds of shrimp tails. After all the shrimp heads were pulled off and tails deveined our captain cooked us up some. They were delish and fresh!

Ali was so pooped before dinner that she took a little cat nap. When I snapped the picture she woke up. Dave and I weren't hungry but Ali was, so Dave ran across the street and got her a BLT sandwich at Subway, I think we were in bed by 7:00.
It was a great, fantastic day!

Sitka, Alaska 2008 - Day One - Wednesday, July 23rd

Dave set the alarm for 5:00 am...and it came fast since we couldn't fall asleep.

Ali woke up so easily and was pretty happy for it being so early. We put our bags in the truck and did one final check of the house. Cat had plenty of food and water, I wrote about 3 notes for my sister and left them on the counter...then we were off.

We arrived at the airport and parked in the long term parking, caught the shuttle and went to our gate. When we got to our gate we looked at the clock and we had an hour and 25 minutes still to wait. We decided to walk back and get some breakfast. After Breakfast, Ali wanted to snap a few pictures of us while we were waiting. She was so excited!!



We flew to Seattle, our plane left at 8:20am. We landed in Seattle at 10:30am (9:30 Seattle Time) we were at terminal A and we needed to find our next gate with Alaska Airlines which was in terminal C.

Ali loved pulling her suitcase through the airport with Clarence (the horse) strapped to her luggage.

She also loved riding the train underground in between the terminals.

We found our gate so we would know where we had to be, but had almost 3 hours to kill in the airport.

Two years ago when Dave and I went to Sitka, we at at Anthony's in the airport. The clam chowder was fabulous! We also shared an order of halibut fish and chips...YUM! Dave and I wanted to eat there again and it was about lunch time for us. We weren't sure about Ali, as she doesn't like fish...or at least if she knows it is fish...she won't eat it. We found Anthony's and asked her if she wanted some chowder, told her it had potatoes and that she had eaten that soup before. She said yes, I love that soup. So we ordered three chowders. Ali practically licked the cup clean. She loved it. By the way...it is refered to as chowder.

Ali called Zach to check on him, he was doing just fine and happy. Told us all that he missed us...we of course told him the same thing. He was just playing transformers with grandma and watching Batman Returns.

After we ate we waked back to our gate for some more waiting.

Ali kept her self pretty entertained on the plane. She didn't do to bad for sitting on a long flight. She did open and close the window about 100 times but other than that...she did great.

We arrived in Sitka at 1:45 pm which would be 3:45 Utah time. Octobre picked us up at the airport and said to Ali... "How ya doin Midget?" Ali loved that right off. Octobre is the owner of the charter business that we booked with. Ali thinks that she should be called midget all the time now. Tim (Octobre's Husband) and our captain for most of the time we were there, started to call her midget too. She liked that. Octobre took us to our hotel, gave us our food vouchers and made sure we were all checked in etc. As she left she said, see you at 5:30 out front. Our food vouchers are $10 each for breakfast, and $25 each for dinner. There were about 6 to 10 restaurants we could go to and use our voucher. If you go over the voucher amount you pay the difference. You think, wow, $25 for dinner..that's a lot, even $10 for breakfast is plenty here. Not in Sitka...(more later) We went up to our room and called Zach. All was well still.

After we called Zach we walked around town a bit. We went to Castle Hill to show Ali. Castle Hill is the location where the Russian flag was lowered, and the American flag was raised, in 1867, marking the transfer of Alaska to the United States. Also, in 1959, after Alaska was admitted as the 49th U.S. state, it is the location where the first 49-star U.S. flag was officially raised. The United States purchased Alaska from Russia while Russia was in financial trouble. The president of Russia feared that Russia would lose the territory without compensation in a future conflict, (with the British) so they decided to go into negotiations with the United States regarding the purchase of the territory. The negotiations concluded after an all-night session with the signing of the treaty at 4 o'clock in the morning of March 30, with the purchase price set at $7,200,000 (about 1.9¢ per acre). It is amazingly beautiful on Castle Hill with a great over look of the town and the ocean. There are also wild raspberries growing everywhere you walk. They weren't ripe and tasted sour, but that didn't stop us from trying them here and there in hopes of having a good one. LOL!

We walked down by the pier also and mailed a post card to Zach that we bought in Seattle. We ate dinner at Kenny's, a Chinese food restaurant...it was delicious. It could have been that we were all starving by the time we walked around town and found it, anyway it was great. Then it was back to the hotel for some shut eye. The alarm was set for 4:00 am.

Sitka, Alaska 2008 - Preparation Day

Evening of Tuesday, July 22nd:

We packed our bags and gathered all our things to get ready to leave. I had Zach all packed to go to grandma's house. I typed up a letter with our medical cards for my mom just in case she needed to take Zach to the doctor while we were gone, I also gave her sole custody if something were to happen to us while we were gone. Dave told me not to think like that but...WHAT IF??? I am not sure if the letter would have done any good or not but it gave me a little peace of mind. I think that got Dave thinking more and worried about leaving him too. For about a 1/2 hour we hugged him and told him bye. It was really hard to take him to my mom's and we all cried.

Zach was bawling in the car as I backed out of the driveway. He was especially sad to leave Ali. I drove down the street and turned the corner, as I did so I realized that I forgot to get the cash that we had gotten out for him to take so he could do something fun. So I turned around and went back. Dave came out and handed him his money. Well that made him have to say goodbye again to dad and they both had tears as Zach waved bye out the window.

As I was leaving the subdivision my mom called me and told me she was at Wal-Mart with my dad, they were getting truck key copies for his new truck. I told her I would just meet her there.

Zach had me pretty emotional and sad to be leaving him home by himself. I was so torn up inside about the whole thing. I knew he wouldn't be able to handle the vacation. He is just to little for what we were going to be doing. Yet it was stil really hard for me to not take him.

At Wal-Mart, I was only going to get some blueberry cream cheese for him to have on his bagels that he just can't live without lately....so I didn't get a shopping cart. As we passed things he just started to pick them up like he had to have them. He grabbed a blue Gatorade, fruit snacks....transformer/carebear and my little pony (1 box of each) and I got the cream cheese. When I turned around and he was juggling all these things with those red eyes...i just couldn't tell him he had to put them back. So we found a cart to put our loot in.

The automotive section was at the other end of the store and that is where we needed to go to find grandma and grandpa. Guess what? I made the mistake of walking past the toys on the way there. He saw a batman figurine right off and a transformer that turns into a truck. Yes, I let him get those too. I guess that is what happens when you feel guilty. So my little trip in to Wal-Mart cost me $30 instead of the $2.00 that it would have been if I were just getting the cream cheese. By the time I left Zach at my mom's house, he had two new toys, his bagels and fruit snacks. He was so pleased. It was a lot easier to leave him there knowing that he was so happy. My mom always makes lemonade out of lemons too. She makes everyone feel happy, even when you are being left behind for 7 nights without your mom.

When I returned home, I was so grateful that Dave had put Ali to bed. We needed to wake up early and I knew that with what we had coming she was going to be tired and needed her rest. I finished packing a few more things and talked with Dave a bit. I walked in to check on Ali and she was still awake! She said that she was to excited to sleep (just like the Disneyland commercial) LOL! She also said that she had a tummy ache. I think it might have been a little because of nerves and excitement. I gave her some pepto. Dave and I stayed up talking and doing odds and ends until 1:30 am. Ali finally fell asleep, but I am sure it was after midnight.

I had been awake since 3:00 in the morning doing work things and house chores, so I was pooped but just laid in bed talking to Dave until we both fell asleep.