Lee Loader

Hi Guys...

Well into the Busy Season here... alaskan summers are a hectic mess. spring bears,. salmon, then more salmon, shrimp, then mushrooms, deer and a few more salmon, then berries, more salmon and then stop everything, cuz its duck and goose season, and the last of the salmon, then colapse into hibernation to heal up...

With deer season starting on Wednesday, i figured we better wind up our shrimp pots as we had 4 of them out still... went out and pulled the last of my shrimp pots..

Me hamming it up with the Shrimp


tried to get my fishing buddy bob to bite one's head off... and he said...


this was the first pot..


we took a pretty large bag of shrimp home.. about a 5 gal bucket full of only tails..

opps, forgot to mention harvest veggies from the garden in the fall... always something demanding time..
a subsistance lifestyle is a heck of a lot of work, one day being pure joy, the next could be complete heartbreak. but i love the lifestyle, both the highs and the lows.

AG

Those shrimp look so good.

That's awesome !

They look tasty!

it was a rare rainless day too... whales everywhere.. salmon jumping.. a perfect day

if I was to leave Stumpwater, Texas right now in my 03 Nissan pickup, I bet I could be there in Alaska in time for a breakfast of shrimp and eggs .... it's just a few miles North of the Red River if I remember.

My wife and I made our once in a lifetime trip up there in 2013, right at my 60th birthday at the end of July. It was a little strange sitting in that restraunt on the old abandoned river bridge (Anchorage) over Ship Creek .... at 10:30 pm watching folks catch salmon and play in the water ... and the sun still visible.

With only 5-6 days available we only got a tiny touch, but it was outstanding. Given we could afford it, I could live there easily for part of June, July and maybe August. Once that foul white stuff starts covering everything, I'd be as useless as a cheap t.v. dinner.

I do remember how massive the veggies and flowers grow up there, due to the water and the sunlight during "growing season". Wow! And, a whole lot of "nature" is edible ... if you know what to look for.

Yep, trip of a lifetime for an East Texas redneck.


jd

yea... i have seen folks take them trips.. its good to get a taste.. even big citys like anchorage have a certain taste of alaska flair. i try to never go up there due to the crowds, but you never know who you might meet... some genuine alaskan folks live there and are tied to the city due to circumstances...

I think we spent only a couple of nights in Anchorage, the rest of the time was in the Denali area, a couple of glacier areas and a couple other places. We didn't take one of the usual "tourist tours", since that's not our thing. I don't like being part of a flock. My wife spent a couple of months researching how to best stretch the limited budget to get the most sight seeing we could. Unfortunately, we couldn't get much farther North than Denali. I did bring back 300-400 pictures to hang on to.

Of all things, I think "Fireweed" was the thing that really stood out. I'd imagine that stuff locally is considered to be more of a nuisance than anything else ... we have our own versions of "weeds" that look great (from a distance).

I guess that for the first time in my life I learned the difference between a "grizzly" and a "brown" - genetically no difference - mainly environment/diet. Oh, also brought back a Ulu knife from the factory and it's been one of my favorite "food tools" since. My memory is finally coming back

jd

Nice looking shrimp