Fairbanks, Alaska

After finishing our awesome hike up and down Mount Healy, it was time to continue our drive to Fairbanks, Alana's hometown! But first, we dominated some Subway and then went tacky souvenir shopping haha!


Fairbanks is awesome! Alana lives up on a hill (more like a mountain) and on clear days you can Mt. McKinley! Alana's home is beautiful! Her dad built it! They have a huge yard, a massive garage, a big garden that my mom would just love, a big freezer for all of their meat (yay for halibut fishing!), and a pet goose! Hah the goose's name is "Alvin, the goose that won't die". they also have their moose heads, bear hides, and stuffed fish hanging in the hallway. So Alaska :)

Alana drove me around town and showed me the University of Alaska Fairbanks (beautiful!), her high school, and the Alaskan Pipeline (my engineering mind LOVED it).  We also stopped by the Great Alaskan Bowl Company and I bought a serving bowl carved out of Alaskan birch hardwood. 






We also drove to North Pole, Alaska! Yes, there is a city in Alaska named North Pole (and Alaskans refer to it as "North Pole", not " The North Pole"). North Pole lives up to it's name though, with candy cane striped light poles lining the streets, a reindeer farm, a huge Santa statue, and of course, Santa's house! Alana and I may or may not have sat on Santa's lap and talked about our big girl jobs. It was kind of awkward. 


For dinner, Mrs. Clooten cooked up our shrimp! We boiled some and then battered and fried others. It was delicious! The shrimp sure didn't last long! Mr. Clooten helped me pack up some frozen halibut to take back home to Atlanta, and he was super generous and offered me moose meat and bear meat too. Yes please! Then we all played a few rounds of pinochle. It was intense, and it's a difficult game to learn, but oh so fun!

I had a four hour delay at the airport in Fairbanks trying to get back to Atlanta. BUT I met the daughter of Dr. Joseph Mayo Pettit, who was the 8th President of Georgia Tech from 1972-1986. He was the President when the President's Scholarship Program was started!  I love traveling in Georgia Tech gear, you meet the most incredible people!

Must I say that my trip to Alaska with Alana was incredible? Many many thanks to Alana and her family for having me to their home, and for so much more!

Mount Healy Summit

So here's where the trip gets really fun. We pulled our last shrimp pots, spent a few hours trying to get the boat out of the water and back on the trailer, then Alana and I ran to quickly shower before catching a tunnel out of Whittier. The only public shower in Whittier was in the middle of a grocery store, in a closet with a mop and bucket in front of it. What an adventure. 

Then we had a 12 hour drive ahead of us to Fairbanks. We decided to brea up the trip by spending the night outside of Denali National Park and doing some hiking the next day, then finishing the trip to Fairbanks. Alana and I rode with Nate in his truck, followed by Lucas and Chip pulling the boat (and consequently going much slower). We drove until 1 am and then pulled over at a Chevron gas station in a super small town to sleep. Alana and I fell asleep in the front seats of Nate's truck with Nate in the back, and then 2 hours later Lucas arrived with the boat. Alana and I groggily climbed into the boat and finished sleeping there. We all woke up at 7 am to give Lucas enough time to get his rented truck back to Fairbanks. It was a crazy night with little sleep, but Alana, Nate, and I were still planning on summiting Mount Healy today at Denali National Park!

Denali is actually the name of Mount McKinley, which is the highest point in North America. Denali means "the great one", and Dnali National Park is famous not only for Mt. McKinley, but also for having abundant wildlife like grizzly bears, moose, caribou, and mountain sheep.


We chose to do the Mount Healy Overlook Trail, which is an official trail maintained by the park. After doing more research, Alana and I discovered that there is a "social" trail that continues to the summit after the official end of the Overlook Trail. We are definitely planning on attempting the summit trail, depending on weather conditions and how clearly defined the social trail is.

So the actual Mount Healy Overlook Trail is a gorgeous 4.5 miles roundtrip, with a 1700 ft elevation change within 2.5 miles, and up to 25% grade. The social trail is an additional 2 miles to the summit and back. (wow I wish I had had all this information about hikes in New Zealand... those were far more vague. But hey, it's not an adventure if you know too much about what you're getting yourself into). 

The Overlook Trail was fantastic and rewarding! It offered gorgeous views over the Nenana River valley and Healy Ridge. I look back at my pictures and think that some of them could be paintings! Diverse landscape, an abundant mix of colors, and defined ridge lines... amazing.



When you begin on the Overlook Trail, you cross a bridge over Horseshoe Creek, after which there's a moderately steep climb through a forest of spruce mixed with aspen and alder. After a mile you reach a scenic viewpoint where you can see Mt. Fellows to the east and the Alaska Range to the south. At this point, the trail moves from stunted spruce into thickets of alder, and at the base of a ridge begins a series of switchbacks. You reach Halfway Rock, a 12ft boulder, at 1.2 miles. 


The steep climb continues, with the switchbacks becoming shorter, and at 1.6 miles you move from a taiga zone of alder to the alpine tundra: a world of moss, lichen, wildflowers and incredible views. Here you can start seeing large hoary marmots, a northern cousin of the groundhog, and the pika, a small relative of the rabbit. We saw a lot of pesky squirrel/groundhog liking guys who tried to steal our food and eat through our bags if we left our bags alone too long (haha we were complaining to Mr. Clooten about these marmots, and his response was, "Why didn't you shoot them?" Love it!).


In the final 0.4 miles the trail emerges below Mt. Healy Overlook. You then curve steeply around the ridge to emerge at the rocky bench that is the overlook. Views from here are excellent! Sugar Loaf Mountain, at 4450ft, dominates the eastern horizon, and if the weather had been clearer, we could have seen the Mt. McKinley massif, some 80 miles away. We were hoping to see Dallas sheep on the slopes, but we weren't that lucky. We saw lots of sheep droppings though! 

Above the overlook to the northwest is the actual summit of Mt. Healy. From the overlook (3425ft), we climbed another mile to the high point of Healy Ridge (4217ft). We sure reached a high point on the trail, but we're not sure if we reached the actual summit (5700ft).  It felt like we were on a ridge, but the trail had disappeared, so we stopped and admired the incredible views instead :) What an awesome hike! I love climbing mountains!

The Art of Shrimping

The gear:

- Pots to drop and catch the shrimp.



- Bait to attract the shrimp. We got quite a bit of advice from other shrimpers, most of which was to use food with really oily fishy smells, like tuna cat food or salmon carcasses. We used shrimp pellets and cat food. Friskies!



- Weights to keep the pots from getting carried away in the current. We used plastic coated rebar. 

- 600 feet of leaded (weighted) line per pot. You need 20-30% more line than the depth you are planning on fishing at (so with our 600 ft of line, we could fish at a max of around 450 ft). The current can drag your pot, and if it gets dragged deeper than the amount of line you have, then your buoy will get pulled underwater and you'll lose your pot. The line must be weighted because by law, all line attached to the pot must be below the surface of the water so boats do not run over it.



- Buoys to mark where you dropped your pots. Buoys must be labeled with the shrimper's name, address, and boat license number.



- A GPS, a depth finder, and an underwater terrain mapper and fish finder. Yeah right! We didn't have any of these fancy gadgets. 

- An automatic crank and reels for pulling in the pots and collect the 600 feet of leaded line. Yeah we didn't have this rigging system either. We had our hands though!

- Money... to buy the gear, get a fishing license, a shrimping permit, to launch the boat, and to rent a slip at the marina.

The strategy:

- Deep and steep is the shrimper's mantra. You want to drop the pot in deep, cold water, and have it land on a steep, rocky cliff.

- Shrimp travel in columns. If you attract one, you'll most likely attract the whole bunch of them. If you don't attract just one, you won't get any.

- We learned from local shrimpers that you can drop pots at the base of waterfalls, since the shrimp feed of the nutrients that the waterfalls dump into the ocean.



- Most shrimpers drop lines of pots, but since we only had two pots, we didn't have this luxury. So, we picked two separate waterfalls to drop each pot. We planned to let the pots sit overnight and "soak" for 13 hours. Then we would go pull the pots. Whichever pot had more shrimp would be where we would rebait the pots and drop both of the them back down to let them soak for a few more hours before pulling them and heading back to Fairbanks.

The results:

The first two pots soaked for 13 hours overnight. The next morning I pulled up the first pot. 600 feet of wet, leaded line by hand, with a shrimp-filled pot on the end (hopefully). And our first pot was........ empty :( waa waaaa.



Even though our first pot was empty, all of our bait was gone. My conclusion was that the bait shifted to the corner of the pot, so the shrimp ate it from the outside and didn't have to swim into the pot to get it. I rigged some bait baskets by emptying Coke cans, filling them with shrimp pellets, and then poking holes into the sides of the cans, and then had Nate suspend the Coke cans in the middle of the pot to attract the shrimp inside.



Alana pulled up our second 13-hr soaker pot. And... we had shrimp!! About 14 of them! Whoop! We got spotted shrimp and striped shrimp. The spotted are the largest species in the Passage Canal, so we were pumped about catching these guys. They were as long as my hand! Once you catch shrimp, you have to keep them fresh, but they don't keep well when they are alive, so you immediately need to separate their heads from their tails. You wrap one hand around the head, one around the tail, and then press your finger into the neck to separate the shrimp. Toss the head, put the tail on ice, yum! Breaking the live shrimp in half was kind of crazy though. Ugh I did it with bare hands and really wished I'd had gloves because right when you're separating the head,the tail clinches in your hand! Ah! I almost dropped a few of them because it felt so crazy!



So after our shrimp catching excitement, we rebaited the two pots and dropped them again. We would let them soak for about 4 hours before pulling them up again. During the 4-hour soak, we went back into harbor and had fish and chips and battered shrimp for lunch, then we jumped back out on the boat to cruise around for a few hours.

The weather today was AMAZING! I think we got one of the four days a year that there is no rain. And that wasn't even the best part! Today there were no clouds, no fog, and no wind! Sunshine and blue skies, beautifully calm turquoise ocean water, and clear green mountains with huge glaciers at the tops melting into incredible cascades down into the Passage Canal. It was incredibly picturesque. I love comparing the pictures I took from this day to yesterday's rainy day. The difference is insane! Alana and I just hung out on the top of the boat, took pictures, and enjoyed the sunshine and warmer weather. We even found four sea otters hanging out at the surface of the water, so we cruised around them for a while and got awesome pictures!







So then we went back to pull up our pots! Chip pulled one and got about 15 shrimp, and then Nate pulled the last one (our rigged Coke can one) and got over 20 shrimp! Our best pot! Whoop! 

It was so surprising that our pots that soaked for less time had much more shrimp, and it was fun talking about why that could've happened (placement, bait, time of day, etc.). I'll tell you one thing, shrimping is ADDICTING! There is so much anticipation when pulling up the pots! And when you pull one up and it's full of shrimp, all you want to do is rebait it and drop it down again. And when you pull one up and it's empty, then all you want to do is rebait and try again! Haha I loved the rush of getting shrimp and separating them and then strategizing where to drop the next pot. It's kind of sad though because once you drop all of your pots, then all you can do is wait. I guess that's when we would go fish for more halibut!

On To Whittier

During our last day in Ninilchik we woke up early in the morning to go out fishing. After catching our quota of halibut for the day, we headed back to shore, filleted the halibut, and then started packing up camp. I cannot explain how identical Mr. Clooten and my dad are! Mr. Clooten had his whole process for packing ironed out to a tee! He basically emptied the U-Haul and we all stood by with the gear waiting for what he would call next to pack into the U-Haul. Hilarious!

After packing up camp, we all headed to Whittier, a small town known best for it's shrimping out in the Passage Canal, the gateway to the Gulf of Alaska. Mr. and Mrs. Clooten drove in the motorhome; Alana and I rode with Nate in his truck; and Chip rode with Lucas who drove his boat. The goal is to stay in Whittier for a few nights and go out on Lucas's boat to try our hands at shrimping!

Whittier is a super small town with a population of 170! That's less than my small high school graduation class of 200! The majority of Whittier's residents live in a high-rise condominium at the back of the town, right up against the mountains, with waterfalls all around it. Quite beautiful! Most of those who live in Whittier are shrimpers or fisherman, and the rest operate small businesses, like restaurants, cafes, and gifts shops for the small number of tourists willing to make the trip to Whittier. 



Whittier is further isolated by a five-mile long tunnel through a mountain. The tunnel is one-way, and also includes railroad tracks! Hence, the use of this tunnel is highly regulated, and of course, comes with a price. The tunnel releases once an hour from either side, and when you drive through, there are rocks walls right next to both sides of the car, and the car is straddling railroad tracks. Pretty cool, but it was somewhat annoying to deal with "catching a tunnel" into Whittier, but really only because it was an unexpected delay in our plans.

So we had read that Whittier was beautiful, but that is not quite the impression we got when we arrived. We emerged from the tunnel around 11pm, but there was no campground in Whittier to camp with the motorhome, or even to park the cars. After caravanning through the small sleeping city for a while, a policeman (probably the only one in Wittier) allowed us to park in an empty parking lot on the other side of town. Nice. 


The next morning we woke up to rain. And clouds. And rain. And wind. And fog. And rain. And rain. And horizontal rain. And cold. Welcome to Whittier, where the weather couldn't get shittier! Did you know that Whittier gets an average of 190 inches of rainfall a year?!?! To put this in perspective, Seattle, our perceived nation's rainiest city, gets a mere 65 inches of rainfall a year. Whittier gets triple this amount!

We spent almost our entire first day in Whittier working on the boat. Lucas bought it about a year ago, and it still needs some fixing up in terms of the engine, steering, etc. So the boys stood outside in the rain and watched Lucas and Mr. Clooten argue about the boat, while Alana, Mrs, Clooten, and I sat inside the motorhome and talked about how we should've just stayed in Ninilchik and caught more halibut. Alana and I still had some hopes that we would get the boat out and catch some shrimp, but even our enthusiasm was dwindling.

That evening, Mr. and Mrs. Clooten headed back to Fairbanks while Alana and I stayed with Lucas, Chip, and Nate to do some shrimping. By 6 pm we were finally taking the boat to the ramp to put it into the water. By this point, the rain was off and on, whereas in the morning it was a constant horizontal menace. We were relatively dry during the launch, and then huddled inside the boat's cabin to wait out the rain and determine our shrimping strategy. 

Deadliest Catch: Clooten Edition

I've been out halibut fishing with the Clooten family for two days now. It is a riot! We caught 102 pounds of halibut filet on the first day, and 126 pounds of halibut filet on the second day. We've been reeling in way more than this, but by law there is a limit of 2 halibut per person per day, so the goal is to catch the biggest halibut and throw back the little ones, the "chickens". Alana is the reigning champ so far, catching a 60-pound, 5-foot long halibut! Imagine pulling that sucker into a raft!


So this is how the Clooten's  fish, it's brilliant: two inflatable rafts, one motor each, and a couple paddles. We load the rafts on the beach with fishing poles, hooks, sinkers, tackle boxes, anchors, ropes, makeshift chairs, some snacks, and frozen herring for bait. We dress in warm layers and multiple wool socks, then boots, rain pants, lifejackets, hats, and gloves. We wheel the rafts to the water, remove the wheels, attach the motor, jump in the raft, paddle over the waves, start the motor, and then cruise for about 30 minutes and four miles out into the 50-mile wide Cook Inlet.


And then we drop anchor and fish! When the fish are biting, there is lots of activity on the raft- reeling fish in, pulling them into the raft where they flop violently all over the floor, then there's unhooking, rebooking, baiting, and changing out sinker weights, all the while rocking in the ocean waves and trying not to get lines tangled. It is so entertaining :) Soon enough, the floor of the raft is full of slimy slippery fish. 

When the fish are not biting, well... that hasn't really happened yet! We hit a two-hour dry spell on day two, but other than that there's been quite lot of action.

We've also been catching cod too. Some of the cod we keep for meat and some we use for bait. Since halibut are bottom feeders, sometimes you end up catching skate instead- and you know immediately when you've got a skate. One almost pulled me out of the raft! It stinks to pull up a skate though, which is a large stingray that spreads out its wings and spirals to pull against you. It's like pulling up a barn door from the bottom of the ocean! The skates also have barbs that could pop the raft if you're not careful in unhooking it and keeping it away from the boat. We let Mr. Clooten handle these guys.

Our second day of fishing was also my 23rd birthday! It was really fun being in Alaska on my birthday. The Cooten's went above and beyond and made it really special. Of course, being in Alaska is special enough :) We went out fishing for five hours with two rafts, then we had an amazing dinner of broccoli salad, moose meat lasagna, and halibut lasagna. This is the best meal I've had while camping, ever! 


Then I went on a drive to Homer, the Halibut Capital of the World, with Alana, her brother Nate, and her cousin Chip. It was about 8pm, and the sun was beginning to drop in the sky, which gave us some great views of the Cook Inlet, surrounding snow-capped mountains, and Homer Spit. We wandered around the marina and walked along the docks. A sea otter surfaced right near us and played around for a while before disappearing again. We then went over the Salty Dawg Saloon for a birthday drink, met some very colorful Alaskans,  played some songs on the juke box, took some shots with local fishermen, and left our business cards on the wall among the other treasures left behind by previous salty dawgs. We returned to camp in Ninilcik at 11pm, had surprise cake and ice cream for Alana's family, and watched the sun set behind the volcanos and paint vivid colors across Cook Inlet.

Land of the Midnight Sun

Alaska is grand! I love being here! It reminds me a lot of New Zealand actually, especially with its sharp, tall mountains plunging into the ocean water. The difference is that Alaska is so much bigger and has incredible natural wildlife- moose, grizzlies, eagles, etc.



Alana and I were picked up from the Anchorage airport at midnight by her older brother Ben and his fiancé Tanya. We drove for four hours from Anchorage to Ninilchik. Even though we drove through the night and into the early morning, it was light outside. In the Alaskan summer, the sun never sets! (The trade-off? In the winter, the sun never rises). Summer skies in Alaska get a bit dusky, but never dark. Hence, the name Land of the Midnight Sun.

We enjoyed a beautiful drive along the Turnagain Arm, staring out the windows in awe at the snow-covered mountains illuminated by the moon and lightened night, reflecting in the calm water below. As the sun started to "rise" around 3am, we saw lots of moose grazing alongside the road! 

We pulled into Ninilchik around 4am and went to sleep in the Clooten's camper van for a few hours. We woke up around 6:30 (mainly because it was so bright outside) and started getting things ready to go fishing, including dressing in layers and layers of warm clothes. I went to the general store in town to purchase a fishing license and frozen herring to use as bait, and then we prepped and loaded the Clooten's raft. Never had I ever been deep sea fishing on a little raft... this was bound to be a great experience!


Alana, myself, Mr. Clooten, Tanya, and Tyler took the raft four miles off shore into the Cook Inlet. Backed by the snow-covered volcanoes of the Alaskan Range and under a brilliant blue sky, we put down the anchor, baited our lines, and waited... or not!! The fish were biting like crazy! I literally put my line down on the bottom, got immediate nibbles, and then snagged a fish! Catch, after catch, after catch! We literally didn't have any time to breathe as there was always someone reeling in a fish, removing a fish from a line, or baiting a line for the next go. It was so fun! Before long, the entire floor of the raft was covered with flopping  halibut and cod. Yuuummmmm!


During our fishing trip, the sea was incredibly calm and peaceful. We had two whales come close to our raft, and we saw sea otters and a mama with her little cub sea otter. When we returned to shore for lunch with our catch, we immediately filleted the fish (10 halibut, 2/person by law, and 12 cod). Sea gulls and, get this, BALD EAGLES, swarmed the beach around us, waiting to feast on the fish remains. It was amazing seeing the bald eagles up close- they're such big birds and absolutely beautiful and so intense!


We enjoyed a large and rewarded lunch of french toast made by Mr. Clooten and were joined at the campsite by Alana's other brothers, Nate and Lucas, as well as her second cousin Chip, who actually lives in Atlanta too! It's a family affair at Ninilchik, and I'm so fortunate to be a part of it! 

Alaska Bound!

I cannot express how excited I am about this trip! I am heading to Alaska today with my good friend and fellow athlete and Industrial Engineer from Georgia Tech, Alana! Alana was born and raised in Alaska, and her family continues to live in Fairbanks. Alana is heading home for two weeks of vacation and invited me to join her. I am so pumped!


But first, I took my last flight as a Delta kid this morning to Seattle. I lose my standby privileges on Friday when I turn 23... sad times. It was a beautiful and smooth flight though. We flew into Seattle over the snow-covered Northern Rocky Mountains and you could see the tall snow-covered Mount Rainier looming in the distance. Because Mount Rainier is so tall, it is usually covered by clouds. It was the same case today, but since we were flying above the clouds, we got an awesome view of the summit!


I had a 12-hour layover  in Seattle though before meeting up with Alana and flying to Alaska. Having never been to Washington state before, I took the metro from the airport to the Seattle city center and spent the afternoon seeing the sights. I went to Pike's Place Market per Mom's recommendation, and it was awesome! There were fisher's markets, fruit stands, cafes, bars, delis, bakeries, restaurants, smoothie stands, ice cream huts, nut stands, and artisans selling their handmade jewelry, leather goods, and paintings. There were free samples and amazing smells everywhere! Within one block I sampled cheddar potato soup, chocolate fudge, mangos, golden raspberries, orange glazed pecans, and the best... smoked salmon! I also bought a big package of freshly-made granola mix for the Alaska trip.


After spending time in the markets, I walked along the waterfront, through the Olympic Structures Park (of course), and then up to the Science and Technology park and the famous Space Needle. I really liked Seattle. I had no idea that it was right on the water. There are so many inlets and larks and green space around the city. The people were incredibly friendly too. 

Now back to Alaska... so far on the agenda- flying into Anchorage, driving to Ninilchik, going Halibut fishing and shrimping, doing some hiking and camping. It's all so incredible, and I feel so blessed to be joining Alana and her family in Alaska. I can't wait, especially for the mountains, the wildlife, and the cool weather (it's been beastly hot and humid in Atlanta this summer). 

I'm not sure how often I'll be able to post updates. I'll probably get more writing time since there's 24-hr sun there in the summertime. But who knows, I'll probably be so tired by the end of the "day" that I won't have time to write... that's kind of the goal. 

Catch ya' later! ALASKA BOUND!