FISH ON!

 If you know me, or the rest of my family - we really aren't big fisherman. People refer to me as an "outdoorsy" person but honestly I disagree. Yeah I like being outside. I like hiking and mountain biking and trail running, but no. I don't fish. I don't camp. I don't backpack. and thats because my family doesn't either. Could we? yes. and have we every so often? yes. but those activities aren't really on our list of hobbies. SO as you can imagine a week of fishing doesn't seem too appealing to me, but I was greatly mistaken. I was still stoked to visit a new state and see some bears and stuff, but man, fishing was actually definitely the highlight. So to begin... I met the family in anchorage. They picked me up from the airport Friday evening. They had flown in not too soon before I did with enough time to rent the car and check in to the hotel. We grabbed some dominos for dinner and hit the hay that night. The next morning we slept in and headed to a noon endowment session at the anchorage temple!

We had joked about seeing our neighbor, Izzy west, since she is serving in the Alaska mission. It really was just a joke though because the last time I had talked to her mom (she gives me massages) she had mentioned izzy was up in Fairbanks which is quite far from anchorage. Well as we were pulling in to the temple parking lot we seem some sister missionaries and then dad says "thats izzy west" and it really was. Crazy. 

She had flown in that morning to do baptisms with a new convert and was literally just about to fly back to Fairbanks. Crazy that we ran into her within the short amount of time we were all in the temple foyer. The temple was great and then we had some lunch at a little greek place and made our way 3 hours southwest to Soldotna! Cute little town where we stayed at the Garr's lodge right on the Kenai river. By the time we got there we grocery shopped and then Seth and I hit the gym. 

Me and Seth became somewhat like locals going to the little gym in town every day. ALSO we saw three moose on our way to the gym. THREE! in the like 7 minute drive. We also saw a moose on our way to soldotna which made 4 moose just on Saturday. Pretty rad. When Seth saw his first moose he was certain it was a donkey. I guess he learned that not all moose have huge antlers, or antlers at all in this case. We actually learned quite a bit about wildlife this trip - I loved it. Sunday was our first full day in soldotna. We went to church and then Aaron Mcarthur took us on a hike called Russian river falls. It ended up being longer than I expected - about 6 miles round trip. We watched salmon jump up the falls for like an hour. It was pretty awesome. Salmon are tough little guys - I'll give them that. 

Seth and I had a photoshoot obviously. 

We laughed at this photo for way too long haha

The McArthur boys are what I would consider "outdoorsy". I mean just look at them. 

By the end of our hike we were tired and hungry - like I said I think it was a longer hike than any of us expected. Went to bed early that night because Monday we were up super early for halibut fishing. I think we were up at 430 am to then drive about an hour or so to ninilchik where we headed out to sea. 

Mom reeling up a sharkie. We actually all caught sharks. 

Seth also pulled up this thing. They call it a skate. We were kidding that Seth was going to reel in everything but a halibut. 

Seth then goes and catches our biggest halibut. Seth definitely brought in his share of fish this trip. 

Me on the other hand - I may not have brought in the biggest but technically I was the only one to bring in two halibut. One over and one under soooo...

A beautiful day on the water. I was still pretty cold and mom was seasick but we'll focus on the wins of the day. 

Here is what our boat brought in for the day. The biggest one was caught by a different dude on the boat, but for the most part those fish belong to the wells' woohoo. In total we shipped home 52 pounds of halibut and have already enjoyed eating quite a bit of it. Fun day. but I think mom has come to the conclusion that boats are no longer an option for her. And with that being said... we

 actually hopped on a sea plane the next morning to then go fishing on another boat. Luckily, this boat did not cause any sea sickness for anyone. Pretty sure we were just on a lake, but I actually don't know. We had a much bigger problem than seasickness though...

sea plane was pretty sick. 

we all got window seats baby

fished for red salmon. so these guys are the "old" salmon that aren't good to eat. It was a morning of catch and release, but it was some really fun fishing. It was our only day where we actually got to cast the line (is that the ring lingo? not sure) it was fun though. 

But let's get back to the problem we were talking about... and that you can easily notice while looking at all these pictures... we were wet and freezing all freaking morning. 

We were quite literally miserable all morning. From the moment we stepped off the sea plane at like 8 am till 2pm when we were picked back up. We sat down on the boat and our butts were immediately wet and it was game over. I surprisingly was warm the first few hours - my oversized coat allowed me to not sit right on the wet boat, but the last couple hours of the excursion were still pretty brutal for me. 

The best pic to exist from the trip. Like I said - fishing was still a blast. But it was just too long of an excursion for the weather we were having. 

After this picture mom says "I don't even know why we smiled for the picture" yeah you could say we were ready to call it a day.  

but then we saw the bears!

They were so cute! I felt like I could just go over and pet them while they were happily eating their salmon. 

We finally made it back on the sea plane and sped home to warm up. We got some takeout pizza and wings for dinner and it slapped. 

#gympic

Wednesday was still a pretty gloomy day. We slept in and fished out back on the dock. Didn't catch much, but the best catch of the day was this sculpin (Aaron told us thats what it's called). I called it a little guppy. 

Not pictured is the farmers market we went to in the afternoon. It was pretty cool. I got some homemade lotion and a car scent thing and some really good food. Best donuts ever and some really good chicken street corn stuff. 

Thursday morning was also a good chill sleep-in morning. I listened to Seth snore till 11am while I was reading my book. 

we drove down to Homer on Thursday and the sun came out to play finally! Windy day, but we'll take the sun!

We had to go down and check out the beach and feel the ocean. 

Captain Patties for Linner. Dad got the king crab and I don't think he would appreciate me putting the price of his lunch on the inter-web, but it was a lot. We all died laughing after our very high guesses were actually only half what the cost actually was. 

Mom got some fish tacos - delicious. 

sethy got some fish and chips - didn't get the chance to try because he ate it in 2.3 seconds plus he wouldn't have shared anyway. And my grilled halibut filet was delicious as well. 

The pistachio gelato was also a 10/10 surprisingly. I mean ive had gelato all over the world and I will say Homer has some of the best Ive ever had sooo

gelato plus a pretty view. We did some shopping around the little town. I got the hat I'm wearing plus bought a cute spit up bib for baby wells. I literally don't know if ive even mentioned it on here but dremma  is pregnant and we actually found out it's A BOY as of this day. 

stopped on the side of the road to enjoy more views

and finishing off the night checking out the action down at the dock. Still a few here and there but not much. The reason we came to Alaska this particular week was because last year the three biggest days of fishing were during this week. Doesn't guarantee anything this year, but we were hopeful the fish would decide to swim up stream soon. 

and obviously another gym pic. 

Now lets talk Friday morning - Around 8am mom yells to wake up Seth and I saying "get outside there's a bunch of fish" so we jumped up and ran out to the dock. Well the fish finally decided to make their journey I guess... the number jumped from like 11k to 15k to then on Friday 171K fish in the river. so we had quite the day of fishing. It was epic. 

Plus it was a BEAUTIFUL day so we were stoked. Even us st Georgians were down to t-shirts by the afternoon. 

Our morning load. Between all the families on the dock that day I think we caught 150 fish. I caught my limit at 6 and Seth caught his limit plus finished off mom and dad's limits too. 

Dad learned to be a highkey fisherman. He was re-hooking all the lines in the afternoon plus gutting out all our fish. 

I caught my own guppy!! I was stoked. 

And this fish finished out my limit - not that anyone was actually keeping track especially because we had already turned in all our fish for the morning to be processed and shipped. Spent the rest of the evening watching the mcarthurs reel in something every minute and helping all the newcomers (some young men from our ward had just arrived Friday evening) with the netting. It really was a blast of a day. Highlight of the trip for sure. And with that being said we brought home 90 something pounds of salmon. Pretty much all from this one day. Already want to go back... fishing is cool and fun and maybe I guess Im a little more "outdoorsy" than I was before this trip. I still don't think fishing would be fun at sand hollow (because who actually catches anything there??) but fishing is definitely fun in Alaska. That wraps up our summer alaskan trip. 

A very early morning to drive the three hours back to anchorage to catch an 8am flight. Yes that meant waking up at like 3:30am... yikes! but look at the view!

We shipped two of the three boxes home, but this 50 pound box came with us. Mom and dad literally bought a fifth freezer to fit all our fish in haha. I would say we are stocked up on fish for a good while, but also we have eaten more fish in the last two weeks than I think we have our entire lives. Alright thats it for Alaska! highly recommend. thx mom and dad for an epic time and sick memories.