berry picking

Berry picking with Miles seems to be entertaining as I listen to Dianna say over and over ‘No Miles I Found these First, or These Are Mine’ Miles seems to eat the berries instead of putting them into a bucket to save.  He does love to eat the berries and has done a good job so far keeping the bears away.

Miles usually sticks with me for a couple reasons when picking berries, both me and Miles eat the berries and I carry the gun.

After a 1/2 gallon of berries and two full tummys its nap time on the tundra!

After the nap its time to head back to the boats so we can paddle home.

paddling with miles

On Monday we took Miles for his first paddle. We paddled a mile or so through the slough to get to the berry patch. Two things made this a failed trip. The first being the berries weren’t ripe and the second being we forgot a camera to get pictures of Miles on his first paddle. Needless to say on Thursday we tried again thinking everything would go well, the berries were ripe and I had my camera. Miles had a different idea. This time he thought it would be more fun to ride on the top of the kayak either in back or front he didn’t care and was willing to try either. Every time I would try to put him in the cockpit he would jump out. I decided he could run along side of us. This didn’t work either because every time he would get close to me he would try to jump on the back of my boat. Needless to say after awhile he realized he would either get left on a beach with crazy seagulls or would have to ride in the cockpit with me, he chose the later of the two options. After picking berries allday he was exhausted and very nicely jumped int he kayak and laid down between my legs and slept the whole way home.

You can see the progress we made from standing on back, jumping to the front, standing on front wondering why Dianna is laughing, trying to climb on back, chasing me, and finally sitting in the cockpit staring at me.

dry fish

Well its been a great summer of fishing, I have caught a king, 2 chums and close to a 100 pinks or humpys.  The humpys aren’t as good to eat so I learned from one of the elders how to cut fish and hang them to dry.  This makes for good salmon jerky.  Some people think its crazy that you have to go out and check for magets and worms everyday, but hey thats just a part of life in the bush.  I have made a couple changes to my fish rack, by adding 2 more logs across the top I can hold about 36 fish instead of roughly 12.  In order to get my fish to dry when its raining I had to build a roof, which is made of an old piece of tin and old logs.

Look at all of those beautifully cut fish hanging.  When I first started cutting fish everyone laughed at me because I was slow and funny looking.  I guess they haven’t seen a lot of kuss’iks trying to cut fish.  Now I am speeding up I am cutting about 12 fish and hour and can do even more when I use an ULU (an curved blade, the Eskimos use, I guess it actually means womens knife….sometimes you have to give them credit). An ulu is so much easier then a fillet knife.

on the water

Well if the boat done, and summer in full swing we had 2 weeks where the sun was out the temps were mid 70’s and the fish were starting to run.  With all of those things falling into place it only meant that it was time to get out on the water and enjoy life.

Not only have I had the chance to enjoy my new boat, several of the high schools have seen us out and asked if they could try out the boats.  Here are a couple of the kids out playing around.

Since it was his first time in a kayak I didn’t see the need to tell him his paddle was upside down!

kayaking ‘alaska style’

When you take a boat out in Alaska you need three thing: a pistol (located right in front of the cockpit) and it has to be in an arms reach in case you turn a bend and see that a bear has decided to go fishing. Secondly you need a fishing pole (located on the back of the boat), because the fishing is amazing…its ALASKA and the salmon don’t seem to stop running until freeze up. Lastly you need a can of bug dope, because the mosquiotes are so thick that they can pretty much carry you away.

Now there isn’t anything more relaxing then paddling to a small beach up river, starting a fire and catching fish.  If you look closely you can see the beach is starting to fill up with fish, and then you can see Dianna’s kayak in the corner as I wade knee deep into the river to fish.

king salmon

Well today I awoke at 11am to more rain and after sitting around for 2 hours I decided to take my kayak up river and maybe see if I can catch some fish.  After an hour of paddling upstream, I reached a little beach and realized I couldn’t see the bottom of the river because there were to many fish.  So I stopped and started fishing.  My first fish was a humpy, then I hooked the 2nd one and it took off.  My rod bent and my line took off up stream, then down stream, towards the beach then towards the other side of the river.  I spent 10 -15 minutes doing this and everyone once in awhile the fish would jump, I knew right away it was a king.  I finally got it on to the beach but couldn’t find a stick to hit it with, after a couple minutes of running around I found a waterlogged stick, picked it up went to hit the king, and my stick broke, back on the search again, I finally found that worked.  I was so excited to have finally caught my first King.  After an hour and half I had 20 humpys, 2 chums, and 1 king so I decided to see if they would fit in my kayak, they did but with not much extra room.  My King was over 30 inches, and my two chums were 28 and 29 inches.

Here are all my fish lined up next to my kayak

Here are a couple of my larger humpys (can you see why they are called humpys)

Here is my king on top of my kayak, just trying to give you an idea of how BIG it is

Here I am holding my king, I had to take this picture in Dianna’s house, since I was fishing by myself, and it was raining I couldn’t take the picture at the river.  As I was trying to set the camera up I ended up dripping blood all over her floor, maybe I will have it cleaned up before she gets back from ME!

Here is a close up of me and my fish, see the black spots that how you know its a king.

teacher or carpenter

Well if bad weather again today I decided once again to get the tools out and search for left over scrap wood to start my next project.  After several hours of cutting and nailing and fitting together I was finished then my project started to smoke.   Yeah it smoked a lot and thats when I knew i had completed my own little salmon smoker.  Its pretty small but if it works well it will be easy to take the same plan I have now and build a larger box for for fish.

The only thing I needed to purchase was the 4″ stove pipe.  The wood I found in the closet or yard, and the oil drum I found in back of the house.  SMOKE AWAY!!

july 4th

My July 4th was a little different this year. First off since the sun doesn’t go down during the summer it doesn’t get dark so there are no fireworks. Elim has a big picnic at Moses Pt (10 miles outside of town). Along with the picnic they have several events a 10 mile run, sprints, bike races, raft races, and the biggest splash contest. I participated in the 10 mile run and won in 67.45. The record for this race was 65 minutes, which I could have broken had I not stopped to help Mo and Lo with their boat. Dianna also ran and won the womens division.

As far as the picnic went they had 4 grills to grill the hamburgers and hot dogs, so being the grill master that I am I jumped in and help run 2 of the 4 grills. This wasn’t just any grilling though instead of using propane or charcoal we used driftwood. It is tough to maintain a consistent heat while using driftwood, but it sure was fun.

I hope everyone had as good a holiday as I did in Elim

Here are pictures of Dianna and I before the race, then the younger kids racing in the sprints.

Here are a couple of the older people in the community racing. Above is the 60-69 year olds, and below is the 70+ category.

The bike races were fun, but not quiet as exciting as the sprints.

When they finally gave the nod to line up and eat it was a mad dash, the lined formed quickly and didn’t move fast. The nice thing about working the grill, I was eating food hot off the grill.