Tales of a Lady Lost

Flying from Pittsburgh to Anchorage was no big deal. Lots of flying and waiting and more flying. Found an amazing Indiana Jones Pinball machine while stuck in the Minneapolis airport during a 4 hour layover. Wasn’t much to see on the flight into Anchorage due to lots of cloud cover, so the pilot would say

something like this: “…and if you look out the left side of the plane there is Glacier Bay…” and everyone would rush to look out the window and then the pilot would continue, “oh! but there isn’t much to see today, is there? ::chucklechuckle::…”
After I arrived in Anchorage I went to see if my bags made it to the baggage claim area and, while waiting, accidentally dropped my cell phone and watched in horror as it broke into two pieces. This was perfect since I won’t have cell phone service for the next 5 months. Thanks gravity!
I used a crazy looking payphone to call Dale, the guy whose couch I was going to sleep on, and then just kind of blindly headed out into Anchorage with a couple of hours to kill.
The short sum up of Anchorage would be: very little sleep, tons of shopping, delicious beer and pizza, and, well, craziness.

Soon it was time to fly out to King Salmon. It wasn’t until I was on a little plane (which is actually pretty big compared to the plane I would fly out to Brooks Camp on) flying over an ice covered landscape complete with a smoking volcano that it hit me—What am I doing?!?! >< Clearly much too late to turn back, I put in some complimentary ear plugs and ate some pretzels.

King Salmon is...well...quaint? no, not quite. Think tiny Alaskan town with two bars, small grocery store, an airport, visitor center, “moth-balled” army base, and a couple other buildings. Here we stayed for 2 weeks while we went through training and kept our fingers crossed that the lakes and rivers would thaw.
We watched beluga whales as they moved up and down the Naknek River with the tides; their presence heralded by flocks of horary seagulls (specifically glaucaous-winged, mew, and bonaparte gulls). We went out and counted birds for the Annual Bird Count Day (my group saw 45 different species! Wow!).
We went out and picked large containers of lingonberries, which I baked

into some pretty badass bread.

But mostly we filled our brains with as much information as we possibly could and spent pretty much every waking hour hanging out (mostly playing cards) with one another in a tiny dorm space. There were some priceless musical jam sessions in which we turned the write-ups on

the back of VHS tapes (yes, VHS tapes)and books like “Catamount” into amazingly orchestrated songs that brought tears to any listener (from the beauty and shear genius, I’m sure).

Oh! and I can’t forget to mention the amazing “King Ko de Ocho” party at one of the bars. It involved playing pool and shuffleboard (which I totally kicked ass at, btw), drinking $7 beers ($21 pitchers)—welcome to Alaska!--, listening to an awesome live band, and, of course, dancing around like a fool).
We also went through a “Dunker Training” course where we learned how to get out of a float plane if it flips over. The final day of training involved being strapped into a PVC pipe cage wearing a flight helmet and PFD and then the cage was pushed, flipped, and shaken underwater in a swimming pool and you had to get out. Each person did this three times. It was intense!!! But now I know what to do…
My last weekend in King Salmon I went to Naknek for some last minute shopping. There is an Alaskan Penins

ula highway which is two lanes and only 17 miles long that takes you to the cannery town of Naknek, which is an Alaskan fishing/cannery town where the population goes from very few to thousands (mostly of men) when it is time to catch some salmon.
I also jumped into the Naknek River. All I can say is: it was extremely cold, but awesome. ^_^