Alaskan Adventure part 3

Last update for a while.

Also, I titled and added descriptions to the rest of the pictures in the gallery, linked in the post bellow.


Monday, June 16th
I got up a little before 7, I tried to put my contacts in, but couldn't. I tried a whole lot of times, but it never seemed to work, and then when I finally did get one in, it wasn't right. It's edge had folded up a little bit and it was very uncomfortable, so I took it back out and put it away. It had a small crease where it had been folded up, so I didn't try to put it back in, I figured that I'd just let it sit and get it's shape back.

The girls were going to go shopping for the day, so they left around 8, and David had to go work, so I was pretty much alone with Mr. Pherson. We talked for a while until Etta came and picked my up. We were going to go and pick up the nets for the boat, Rick had given them to a man to be fixed, and they were done now, so we had to pick them up. It was about a half an hour drive to pick up the nets, and then an hour and a half to get to the boat, and then once we got there, it took is a while to get the nets on the boat, but we got it eventually. Then we drove to Soldatna, which is at least 2 hours away from where we were. There, we bought supplies for the boat, food mostly. Then we had to drive all the way back. And by the time we did that, it was 6 p.m. already. Oh! And I got to drive the truck a little, not very much, but it was some, that was my first time driving a stick on the road, so it was something new for me.

Well, Etta had been invited over for dinner at the Pherson's, so we dropped in, and they were just finishing up cooking the moose steaks. Yum-my!

Dinner was quite good, the moose had a nice flavor to it, slightly different from anything else than I've had. I think that everyone had a great time; the Pherson's told a couple stories about stuff from South Africa, and then everyone shared his or her testimony. I think that that was a real blessing to me, I'm very glad that we did that.

After dinner, David, Etta, Mr. and Mrs. Pherson, and I played a game of Risk. I've never played real Risk before, I played a little on the computer, but it was a little bit different variation, and on the computer is not the same as in real life. The game got intense in a few places; it was very enjoyable, even though I didn't win either round. I'm sure that we all had great fun, I know I did.

It was 11 p.m. before we finished our second game, the time really snick up on us, so after the game we dismissed and went to bed.



Tuesday, 17th
Etta wasn't coming over until 11 a.m., so I helped out some be raking up some cut grass, and sticks and stuff. Then Etta picked me up, and we drove over, and delivered the food, that we bought the other day, to the boat. We organized it and put it away, so that hopefully we'll be able to find it later.

Then we drove ovenr to the library, where they have wireless internet, so we plugged our laptops in and got connected with the outside world. I sent and recived some E-mails, and uploaded my blog. (Sadly no pictures, I didn't have time.) I almost got everything done that I needed to do before we had to leave. We then drove over to save-U-more to get some pizza to bring back for Rick and the crew. Rick and the guys were coming back a day earlier than planned, because we had to get the boat in the water, and because of how the tides are, it had to be Wednesday morning. I was suppose to stay at the Pherson's place for Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, and Wednesday night, but I didn't end up spending Wednesday night there. Which I was/am pretty bummed about, because Mr. Pherson and David had planned on getting the guns out a little later, and letting me shoot them, and I was really looking forward to that. But because Rick came back early I didn't get a chance. Frowny face. :(

After breakfast I had tried to put my contacts in, but like yesterday, I didn't succeed. I got one contact in, but it wasn't in correctly, so I couldn't see clearly, and it felt like I had a piece of sand or something in my eye. I tried blinking, to see if that would get it to work its way into position, but it didn't. Then I tried rubbing my eye, that didn't help either. Since nothing was getting it into place, I had to take it out, but when I looked in the mirror, I couldn't see the contact. I looked, and stared, and looked some more. I held my uper eyelid open, I held my lower eyelid open, I even tried holding both eyelids open, but I just couldn't see it anywhere, I checkde the floor, maybe it fell out and I didn't notice it. I doubt it, but whe knows? Then I started trying to pull it out, thinking that maybe it's there, but I just couldn't see it. That failed to provide the solution as well. So I just said to myself, "I don't know." And just went on, I put my glasses on, and then just went about my business. It sure felt like it was somehow stick on the side of my eye, but when I looked I couldn't see anything there.

Back with the story, we (Being Etta and I) were at save-U-more getting pizza. Save-U-more has free wireless internet, which, by the way, I appreciate very much. I was able to finish up what I ran out of time doing at the library. I felt a slight pain in my eye, followed by a blinking frenzy, and then at the end of that I had the small sticky something attached to my eyelid. You guessed it; it was my contact. It looked like church clothes before they get ironed, all wrinkled. I opened it up, and straightened it out, it had all thees creases in it from being folded up for so long. I put the contacte in a place where it would stay safe from being crushed, or anything. I knew that it would probably dry out, but I couldnt think of a better solution, so I went with that, and sure enough, it was all dried up and hard when we got home, a couple of hours later, and when I tried to pull it off, because it was stuck to the container that I put it in. When attempting to pull it off, I broke a small hole in the middle, of the contact. I don't really care though, I thought, "Oh well. It that's what happens, then that's what happens. I've pretty much given up on contacts for this trip, I'll worry about them after this summer, once I get back to a place where I can know that I'm going to be there a while.

When the pizzas were ready we grabbed them and headed out to go meet Rick and the guys. We went up met up with Rick at his cabin, and ate the pizza there with the guys and him. Etta and I ran and got some water for the guys so that they could get showers and not run out of water. And then finally we went back to the Pherson's place so that I could get my stuff ready. That morning, I haddn't known that I was going to leave that day, I thought that I was leaving the next day, so my bag wasn't ready to go yet, so I had to get it ready.

Rick came and picked my up and we all drove to the Deacon. I met Brandon, the other deckhand, he came in on Monday morning, but I hadn't bet him yet because he had been down fishing with Rick.

We cleaned up the boat, and then pretty much waited around for the tide to come in so that they could put us in the water.

We met our captain that is going to take is to Bristol Bay, while Rick stays here and continues to fish in the Sound, and then he'll fly up before we start fishing at Bristol Bay. Our new captain is Shiloh, and his crew will be traveling with us to Bristol Bay; Tal and Hillary.

They put the boat in the water once the tide got high enough, and then we drove on over to the harbor where we parked for the night.



Wednesday, June 18th
Today we prepared the beat and got everything ready for the trip. Rick did a lot of tuning, and stuff, but there wasn't that much for us to do. Basically we helped Rick when he needed it, and did simple tasks, but Rick pretty much wanted to do thnigs himself.

Shiloh and his crew brought their stuff on board and put it away. The living quarters are pretty cramped, because right now we have 5 people in our cabin--we call it the galley--instead of 3 people like we will have later on when we go fishing.

Rick left us around 6 p.m., so we just hung out until Shiloh came at 11 p.m. I did some writing, and took a nap I think.

When Shiloh arrived we got the things ready and started out on our great adventure.

Sleeping 5 people in 3 bunks was a bit of a challenge, but we avoided it by haveing people sleep in shifts; one person would be awake and would stay up with Shiloh to help him keep awake.



Thursday, June 19th
Unfortunately, today I had my first encounter with sea sickness. During the night we were traveling through rough waters, although not really that rough, it was enough to make Richard, Hillary, and me sick. And Hillary had been drugged up with anti-seasickness pills. I hadn't taken any of the pills until now, but it was too little, too late. I took one pill when I wasn't feeling well, but about 30 seconds later I threw up, so the pill didn't have a chance to do anything.

We drove a lot. We drove all the way to the place where we get pulled out of the water, and taken across the mountain pass. Before getting there we had a tone of things go wrong. (1) We didn't have power, so the lights didn't work, and I couldn't charge my laptop. (2) Engine problems, the port (left) engine wouldn't stay in gear, so we were running on only one engine. (3) Our water didn't work haly the time, it would come out slowly, and then it would spay a high power blast, then nothing would come out. But we got by; doing dishes became a challenge though, but we managed.

Anyway, enough of the bad, after we got to where we were going to be pulled up out of the water, we parked it and waited for the next high tide. We arrived on a high tide, but there were other boats in front of us and we didn't get to go right then. The next high tide was about 12 hours away. While we were waiting there, Richard and I climbed a mountain that was close by. During low tide the water got low enough that the boat sat on the bottom, so Richard and I just walked across to the land. The mountain was really steep, but we climbed it, the trees and the vegetation helped because we could grab hold and pull ourselves up. Climbing up wasn't too hard, but it was very tiring. The view was spectacular, but I've seen many spectacular views before, what made this unique was the climb that it took to get there. So, the view was nice, but the satisfaction of climbing up the mountain was the more rewarding part. Climbing down wasn't quite so simple unfornunatly. We tried to climb down, but we got to a rock fack that had a straight down drop off, so we had to climb back up and find another way down. The next way we tried was the same way, it went for aways, and then all of a sudden it dropped straight down. So we climbed up again. Our third attempt at climbing down was successful, we found where we had climbed up, and so we just climbed down the same way. Our little adventure took about an hour and a half of strenuous exercise. I got lots of pictures. :)

A little bit after we got back on board, Shiloh got out his guns One was a pretty standard (for Alaska) hand gun, but the other one was none other than the .50 cal. Smith & Weson. The biggest, baddest hand gun currently available on the market. It was designed fro big game hunting, it could take down an elephant, no joke. Don't stand in the way, and hearing protection is mandatory. Standing about 10 feet away, I could feel the shock wave when he shot it. It was definitely cool. Each bullet costs over $2, so you wouldn't want to use it as a target pistol, but if you need to stop a charging bear, I can't think of any hand gun that would be better. After showing her how, Shiloh let Hillary shoot it too, I even got a video of it. Then he shot the smaller gun, which wasn't as cool, but it was still pretty cool.

After that excitement, we settled down and chilled out until 4 a.m. when they were going to pull up out of the water. Richard and Brandon played rummy, while Hillary and I wrote in our journals. We didn't have light in the cabin, because the power wasn't working, so I tapped my flashlight to the pole in the middle of the room, and that provided enough light for everyone to do his or her own thing.



Friday, June 20th
Wow, it's only been a month since my birthday, seems like much longer. Probably because I've been doing so much since my birthday, it makes it seem longer.

Anyway, we got up at 4 a.m. to got pulled out of the water. Then we drove over and across the mounains. I took lots of pictures hoping that some of them would come out in the dim light and bouncing truck.

After traveling through the pass, which took about an hour, we were put in a huge lake and continued on the way.

We didn't have too many problems, just the ones that we already had.

We exited the gigantic lake and entered a river. Then we continued down the river for the rest of the day, until we stopped at the fishing cabin. We didn't sleep in the cabins, but the owner knows Shiloh and the other captions in our group, and he is going to be our guide part of the way down the river. We're suppose to follow him and he'll lead us through without getting our boats, stuck.

Saturday, June 21st
We spent the night there, (on the boat not in the cabins) and then in the morning our guide lead the way. Once we got through the worst part, we bid farewell to our guide, and continued on our own.

Things, went well for the next couple of hours, but unfortunately, we got stuck. Shiloh did his best to "unstick" us, but to no avail. Brandon and Richard were throwing out lots of crazy ideas to get us unstuck, but the only thing that we could do was wait.

I wrote in my journal while I waited, Brandon and Richard played rummy, and Hillary and Tal watched a movie. They watched "40 Year Old Virgin" I came in in the middle of it and it only took about 30 seconds before I knew that the movie wasn't the kind of movie that could fit my standards, so I went back on deck and continued writing. A little bit later, I heard something that caught my ear, a song. A theme song from a TV show in the the 70's. And it starts with, "Believe it or not..." What is the TV show? My family would know, but I don't know about the rest of you. The TV show is "The Greatest American Hero." It's a funny show, they are constantly making fun of super hero steriotypes and stuff. There is another story about how we got introduced to that show, but I'll tell it some other time.

Anyway once the song finished I went back upstairs and continued writing. We finaally got unstuck after a couple more hours, when the tide came back up, so we were back on the read, so to speak.

The rest of the day was pretty much uneventful. Something was burning down in the engine room, but we put it out and fixed that. When we got close to where we were going, we again had to wait on the tide to come up, so that we could cross a shallow section, and enter into the harbor.

Sunday, June 22nd
We pulled anchor and parked in the harbor when the tide was high enough, which was at 4:30 a.m. Shiloh and his crow went to their boat, so we're pretty much just sitting around until Rick gets here.

We've been doing stuff like cleaning the boat and getting it ready and such. There isn't a lot to do so Brandon and Richard are playing rummy a lot, and I'm catching up and typing up my journal, so that I can send it off. There is a library in town, and they have wireless internet, so I am able to send stuff.



Rick got here on the 24th and we have been getting ready to go out and not comeback to shore for several weeks, I have no idea when my next update will be, so this is going to pretty much be it for a long time. Have fun everyone, I'll talk to you guys when I can.

Pray for me. :)
Timothy Petersen