Sunny in Seattle

Saterday and Sunday were two of the best days we had on the entire trip. After we picked up a canoe (just one canoe, for 4 people... sketchy) we headed out to Hope Island, a little island in the Puget Sound that was out away from the city. Once we got to the put-in, we all (Heidi, her boyfriend Berry, Shell and me) packed in the canoe and headed across the bay to the island. I'd say we were about 300 lbs over the limit for our little canoe but we managed to make it. I would have taken a picture of it because it was oober comical, but i think the excess movement would definatley have caused some flippage. The island was rad and there were only a few other people picknicking on it (no one lives there). We hiked all around the island, saw some neat-oh wildlife, got a freakin awesome view of Mt. Reiner, and then just chilled on the beach for a while. When we left we stopped off at a blackberry patch and picked enough berries to make a cobbler,,, and it was a steller cobbler. We woke up sunday, packed up, and headed out to Seattle. Berry is a life long Seattlite so he gave us a fast and furious tour of the city. We went to a bunch of places (i don't remember all the names), including the original REI and the original Starbuks, but the coolest places were Center for Wooden Boats, and Pike Place Market. The entire time we spent in Seattle was so fun, the weather was perfect, the company was awesome, we had a blast. Alaska, Seattle, everywhere we went we had great hosts and fantastical vacationings. Just wish the next one was a bit closer.

Ok, so I have a bit of catching up to do. Well, we headed out to Homer on Tuesday morning. Some of my patients from the school, Allen and Judy, were going to let us stay in there cabin which was just a few miles outside of Homer. Once we got there we hit a little snag in the plan, the key we had did not open the door. Luckily, I had their number and gave em a call. Apparently a guy who takes care of the cabin during the winter had already shut the water off and changed the locks. So, no worries, Judy told us that we were going to stay in one of her brothers cabins. His cabin was right in Homer on a hill overlooking the bay and the mountains. It was amazing!Bryan (Judy’s brother) had taken an old railway car and turned it into a little cabin, called the Moose Caboose. After we got settled in we just hung out in Homer the rest of the day. The following day I spent the better part of the day giving my best attempt at convincing fish to bite my lure and allow me to pull its flopping body from its watery home and up into my net. I was quite optimistic at first, after all, this was alaska, home of the worlds best fishing (or some such crap) The fish did not seem to like that plan (I don’t really understand why, I was just was going to throw him back anyway). Shelli was going to go for a run but decided that the thought of a bear joining her for a run/chase was not a risk she wanted to take, so she just hung out and watched me aimlessly throw my rig out, and reel it back in, over, and over, and over again. Complete waste of time. Anyway, the next day we packed up and headed out. On the way back to Anchorage we stopped in Soldotna and met up with Gerald Paul, one of my friends who lives up here now and works as a bush pilot. Shelli dropped the two of us off and we tried some more fishing in a new river, but to the same outcome as the day before, no dice. That officially ended my first Alaskan fishing adventure. Booooooo. Anyway, we headed back to Anchorage and picked up Jared and headed out to get some food. We got back, packed up and headed to the airport to leave at 1 am. It wouldn’t have been that bad a trip, but the stupid airplane was had some lame warning light pop up about one of the engines. My car engine warning light is pretty much constantly on and I never really seem to have any real problems, but they decided that we had to take care of it before we left. So, three hrs later we left anchorage. We got to our friend Heidi’s here in the Seattle area this morning and then we slept… for a while. Once we got up, the clouds had all cleared and we realized just how beautiful this place really was. The view from her little house was awesome. We hiked down by the Puget Sound for a bit, and then hiked over to a little park, saw some seals playing in the ocean, played in the grass a bit, and then of course, shelli went for a run. That was pretty much it, Heidi got off work and we hung out with her for the rest of the evening.

More bears!!!!!

Today when i awoke from my slumber and tried to get up to go to the bathroom, i realized that i was about thrice as sore as i was yesterday. As soon as i got to my feet my quads comletley collapsed and i fell back to the bed where i stayed for another hr before i got the courage to get up again. Shelli decided that she didn't want to hike by herself, so she would just have to not hike today. We went to a really cool little breakfast joint that was right down on the water in downtown Anchorage. Our food was really tasty, shelli had tofu, and i had reigndeer.... So, if santa is late getting to you house this year, you can blame me, and Alsaska. Did i mention that Blitzen was really tasty? mmmmmm..... Anyway, after than we spent the rest of the day tootling around downtown Anchorage and some other places. Jared got out of school in the afternoon and when we picked him up he and shelil decided to get some excersize in, since they had not burnt their usual 40,000 calories for the day. So we went to a some road that led up to a old ski hill. I dropped them off at the bottom and then drove the 6 miles to the top. I went to the top and took some pics and they ran up the hill like idiots,,, i told them they could have ridden in the car but they thought it would be more fun to run. Once they got to the top we headed back down. Just as we came around a corner Jared pointed out that we could just barely see Denali, which was over 200 miles away (and the highest peak in the US at 20320 ft). Just as he said that I noticed a small black thing on the side of the road and i realized that it was a black bear cub. He headed directly into the woods as we slid to a halt and backed up to try and find him. We got out and as we looked for him we heard something up on the other side of the road. As I turned around I saw that it was his mother and her other cub on the opposite side of the road, and we were now in between a Moma bear and a cub!!!! I'm sure it looked like an episode of Dukes of Hazard as we slid, scrambled and dove our way back into the car as fast as we could. As soon as we were back inside, the little guy headed across the road to his mom. Once they were reunited, they didn't seem to be in any hurry to head out and they just sort of sat there in the woods and watched us watch them for a bit. When they headed out, so did we. Four bears in 2 days..... AWESOME!!! Jared thinks that we are somekind of good luck token due to the fact that we have seen a grizz, a black bear with cubs, and Denali (which is pretty rare from what he told us) all in a few days. I hope the rest of our trip is this lucky

We saw a GRIZZLY BEAR!!!

This morning once we got going, we talked about several places we could go and hike. Shelli originally wanted to do another death hike, but since i could not even walk a straight line without flinching in pain due to our last quad burner, she agreed to go on a hike with a little less elevation change. Jared had to study today, so he told us of a place called Eagle River where we could go on a really cool hike. We dropped him off to study and then we headed out. The drive was beautiful and the weather was quite good. From what we have been told, drizzly with a few rays of sunshine is Alaskan equivalent to "not a cloud in the sky". Once we got to the trailhead, we realized that we couldn't go because the trail we wanted to go on because it was shut down due to the grizzlies feeding on the salmon in the river. So we headed out on another trail which turned out to be an awesome choice. We hiked between two huge mtn ranges for about three miles and on the way out we noticed that pretty much everyone we passed was carrying bear mace. I had some three day old gatorade in my bottle so i figured if we were confronted with a bear, that would have to do. We reached the turn around point and headed back. Apparently, up here, they don't get the full range of fall colors, but they do get yellow, and it is the absolute brightest yellow I have ever seen on trees. When we got close to being back, we stopped off to take a picture by the part of the river that you were allowed to hike by. We walked up and were looking around when we heard something splashing in the river. We looked over and probably 50 feet away from us was a HUGE grizzly bear going after a fish. Once he got his meal, he quickly headed out of sight and back into the brush. Even though i had a camera in my hand through the entire 7 second ordeal, I was so mesmorized the giant that i didn't even think to pick it up and shoot. Once the bear had left, and shelli had let go of her death grip on my arm, i breathed again. I didn't think it would be that cool to see one for just a second or two, but IT WAS TOTALLY AWESOME. We finished hiking out and left for home. We picked up Jared from studying and told him about out little adventure. He told us he had been in alaska for 5 years and never seen a grizz, which made us even more stoked about our sighting.

Alaskan Adventure: day uno (thats Spanish for one)

So after a wonderfully exciting week of finals, patients, and a substantially small amount of sleep I decided it would be a good idea to procrastinate packing until the last night,,, good choice Jesse... not! So after heading to bed at 2 AM I woke up at 6 to head out to the airport. Friday was a long, long day. We left Loma Linda at 7 and arrived in Anchorage at 11 PM! Airports and planes; cool. Screaming babies; NOT COOL!!! Things rapidly improved once we were picked up by Shelli's cousin Jared and he took us to the Moose's Tooth restaurant. The reason for the improvement was due to the enormous size of the pizza pie which was placed directly in front of me shortly after I ordered it :) Saturday morning we woke up and went and grabbed some coffee and breakfast and then headed out for our Day 1 adventure. On an interesting side note, I discovered that FedEx has developed some special techniques for bringing in extra money up here in the far North. Jared decided to take us to Flat Top, which is a quick several mile jaunt straight up the side of a mtn until you reach,,, you guessed it, a flat top. I quickly realized that the fun level of this hike was going to be directly proportional to the weight of the hiker, and also to the condition of his feet. Shelli and Jared are thin and have feet that could walk over hot coals and not blister. Me on the other hand, I tend to run a bit on the,,,, um,,, Campbell's-chunky-chicken-noodle-soup side of things, and as for my feet, well, my feet will blister if i so much as let a ceiling fan blow directly on them for longer than a few minutes. After several stops to attend to my footie wounds I reached the top (the 'flat top') a mere half an hour after Shelli and Jared. I was ecstatic. Once we took our pics at the top and rested up a bit, i figured that we would head back like the rest of the crowd did.... I was mistaken. No, we were going to continue on to Peak 2 and Peak 3, which, I assume were named so because they were pointy instead of flat, and because they were lined up in a linear fashion... Alaskan names are so cleverly creative. Anyway, after several more straight ups and straight downs along some impressively thinly edged ridges, we arrived at P2, and then a bit later P3. Shelli and I were both quite excited once we reached the final peak, Shelli, of course, was elated to be getting such a 'great workout' and i was pleasantly pleased that i had not fallen off any cliffs. The views were majestic, and short lived because the clouds rolled in and out really fast. Then we turned around and headed out. All said and done, it was about 4 hrs of hiking a lot of vertical in the rain. Shelli had a lot of fun and I had shortness of breath, and got some cool pics so it was all good. We went back to the house and Jared had a bunch of people over and we made pizza, which was so good. The people were rad and the pizza tasty. It was a good way to finish off the day.