Stan Stephen’s Cruise

Well as many of you know, my sister Katie works for Stan Stephen’s Cruises.  They take tourists out on large boats to look at the glaciers, and marine wild life.  Basically Katies job is to visit with the tourists on the boat, help point out the sights, and serve a lunch along the way. She was kind enough to use her free passes to take me and the rest of the family out for the day.

Here is a pictrue of Katie passing out a little cheat sheet of the animals we may see on the trip.

Here is a picture of her explaining to me what this coffee mug is.

Now when we got on the boat I was talking to Katie about her job.  We were talking about how lunch is served, and she told me that she carries out the bowls of clam chowder, bagles, and cups of juice to all the passengers in their seats.  Now having spent some time on boats like this I new that they could get a little rocky at times with the weather.  So I asked her if she had ever spilled before.  She told me that no she had never spilled, not even onece.  I told her I was impressed, that I was surprised she hadn’t.

Well any guesses what happened an hour later???

Thats right, thats minestroni all over the floor.  She was passing out the bowls of soup and other stuff, and though she had her tray, but there was one bowl of minestroni left on the back corner.  She went to hold the tray down by her side, and off went the bowl of soup.  Poor girl.  I must have jinxed her.

We saw some beautiful icebergs, as well as sea otters, sea lions, a micky whale, bald eagles, deer, and puffins.

I took the time to take a self portrait of me with the sea lions in the back ground.

It was a lot of fun, and nice to be out on the water.  Katie has a pretty cool summer job.  I will get her to post a bunch of her pictures on the gallery.  She has some pretty amazing photos.

Shrimping

Well we were back out to pull the shrimp pots today. Dad and I went out in the boat this afternoon. On the way out we discovered that the pot puller (and electric machine designed to pull pots up off the bottom) was missing. That meant we would be pulling in the pot by hand.

250 feet of rope later we had the pots on the boat. From the 2 pots we ended up with 21 ginormous shrimp.

They were both tasty…

And decorative…

Some of them were quite large…

Then we had to clean them before we headed back into the harbor. Here is a video of the procedure.

[QUICKTIME http://www.bbryson.com/movies/shrimp_cleaning.mov 320 258]

Out for a hike…

With Katie off at work my parrents and I took off for a hike on the Gold Creek trail.  It goes out along the ocean making for a very beautiful hike.

Here are my mom and dad on the trail.

Here is a little fireweed with the ocean and mountains in the background.

The mountains around Valdez are quite impressive.

One of the problems with hiking this trail is the abundence of stinging netles on the trail.  This is a terrible plant that when brushed up agains stings you like a bee.  The sting continues to throughout the day.  Here is a picture of one of those nasty plants.

We hiked out a ways until the trail became unkept and the stinging netles out numbered the other plants on the trial.  We headed back towards town and stopped off on the beach along the way to have a little snack of apples and cheese.  The dog was with, and was pretty thirsty.  We didn’t want him to drink the ocean water, so I constructed a makshift bowl out of some big leaves.  My mom posted some pictures of the bowl on her blog.

Back to AK

Well it seems as though the summer has flown by.  I can’t believe that I am on my way back to work already.  It seems like I didn’t get much of a break.
I uploaded some pictrues to the gallery of the last few days on the lake.  Feel free to check them out at your leisure.

Yesterday Erin and I got our haircut.  I don’t have a current picture of Erin, but here is one of me for those of you who forgot what I look like. 🙂

Since yesterday was my last full day on the lake, Erin declared it Bill’s Day of Fun. We went out first thing in the morning and showered up in the lake.  That has been a daily ritual for the last few weeks.  It basically consists of driving out into the middle of the lake and diving in after a bottle of shampoo and some soap.  Its a very refreshing way to start the day.

After that we went for the hair cuts and then it was back out to the lake for the remainder of the day.  Erin’s Aunt Tina, and her cousin Brennen came out for a visit.  We loaded up the boat with skis, and towels.  Brennen and Erin hopped on the tube, and we motored over to black bay.  We would whip Erin and Brennen around the lake for a while, and after Erin fell off a couple of times we had Erin join me in the boat and we gave Brennen a run for his money.

We unhooked the tube and changed its pull line out for the skiing rope.  Brennen was able to get up on two skis on his second try.  We took him around black bay a couple of times.  He even ventured outside of the wake, which was really good for his first time.

Erin and I each tried a few times to get up on one ski again.  We wanted to try without anyone else in the boat to see if it would have enough of a punch to yank us out of the water.  Neither of us were successful.

After spending another hour tubing and skiing we headed back to the house for some brats on the grill, garlic neu potatoes, sweet corn on the cob, and fruit pizza for dessert.  I was extremely stuffed by the end of the evening.

Then it was time to get all my stuff packed up, which turned into a scavenger hunt to find my things before they could be packed.  We’ll see what I missed in about two weeks.  Hopefully Erin will have room in her bags to bring up my forgotten items.

Well, I am sitting on the plane now waiting for the rest of the passengers to come aboard.  I will have to post this one when I get home.

Update on the skiing

Erin, Jim, and I went for a swim today off of the boat.  While we were out there Jim took a look in the compartment below the floor of the boat.  There happened to be a ton of water in there.  No wonder the boat didn’t have the punch requited to yank my big butt out of the water yesterday.  I am hoping we will get the chance to give it another try today.

Skiing and Swimmin

Today was a lot of fun. The sun was out and the water is warm. After some home made waffles care Erin, we Laura, Erin and I went out to do a little water skiing. Erin went first, and is quite a pro. Here are a couple pictures of here scooting outside the wake.

I wasn’t able to get up on one ski by itself, but was able to get up on two skis and drop one after a little bit.

We were out for probably an hour skiing around. It was a lot of fun. We headed back to the house to find a few of Erin’s relatives over for a visit. We loaded up the boats, and headed over to balck bay. It is really close to Erin’s house. The nice thing about the bay is there are a bunch of leaves that have sunk to the bottom making the lake a very dark color. Which means when its sunny out, the water is really warm. There is a public dock/camping area in one corner of the bay. We docked a couple boats there, and pulled people out on the tube while everyone else went swimming. After a couple hours of playing around in the water up there the clouds started to roll in and the there were a few drops falling out of the sky. So we headed back to the house. I am feeling some of the muscles in my back after Erin whipped me off of the tube.

It’s always nice to spend the day out on the lake. I fly back up to Alaska on Tuesday, so I am trying to spend as much time in the water as possible.

HOT HOT HOT!!!

Well, I am at a fast Internet connection for a little bit. Which allowed me to catch up on emails, and look at blogs and news feeds.  It is really nice when the Internet is fast. 

I am in Northern Minnesota right now where the average temperature has been in the 90s for the past week.  We spend as much time as possible in the lake. One of our favorite swimming areas is called black bay.  The problem is the weather has been so hot that the water up there is like swimming in a hot tub.  Not the greatest for cooling off, but its still really nice.  We have been out tubing quite a bit. 

We went to a twins game last Thursday…  We left cook at 2:30ish, drove the 3 + hours down to Minneapolis.  Watch the game.  It was fun buying dome dogs, and sitting in the cheap seats.  The game ended a little after 10:00 PM, and we were back on the road heading home.  We pulled into the driveway at 2:30 in the morning.  So it made for kind of a long trip.  It was fun though. 

I have uploaded a few pictures to the gallery.  You can check them out at http://www.bbryson.com/gallery/v/album_003/

Hope you all are doing well.  I’ll write more later.