PREVIEWS FOR

CAMPING IN ALASKA

Camping in Alaska is a humorous book among other Online e-Books in this lineup of books by Leonard Hogue; is a book for my e-Book Readers. It is a book about my personal experiences in Alaska and other humorous things that happened both in Alaska and outside, as we refer to the lower 48 states; about my truck and snowmachine breaking through the ice on a lake and many other experiences. This book, along with  Mysterious Emily and Hair Affair are all available as e-Book Downloads The free text below is only scattered excerpts from the book. CAMPING IN ALASKA

PORTIONS OF CHAPTER 1

            As I write the rough draft for this article we are roughing it in the wilds of Alaska. Not really in the wilds, but in a State of Alaska campground at Lake Louise, which is two hundred and something miles that is supposed to be north but is probably more east of Anchorage. Not really writing it well because my grammar is atrocious, but I have been studying, trying to improve it lately. I began by trying to learn who’s who but I learned that who is not who, but whom; If who is whom then whom is who? Then there’s whoever/whomever. After so many who-who’s, I’m beginning to sound like a hoot/whoot owl.

             My spelling also leaves a lot to be desired. They invited me to a spelling bee once and I toiled and studied until I learned to spell bee, then lo and behold they threw some other words at me. I tore those words apart like a bull tears things up in a china closet. I could have looked them up in a “dikshionery” if I could spell it so I could find it.

            Not really roughing it but temporarily residing in a camp trailer. Not really an enormous or elaborate trailer, nor a dinky little one; just adequate. But large enough to have its very own bathroom facilities; not really elaborate facilities but almost comfortable. But me, not lazy but wanting to conserve all of the energy possible by not dumping the holding tank any more often than is completely necessary, usually use the outhouse supplied by the state. State outhouses are not so bad, usually having a pumper truck clean them out and replace the chemicals two or three times each week during the busiest summer months; at the more popular campgrounds. And there are very few unpopular campgrounds alongside or even near a main highway during the summer months.

            That’s not nearly as bad as when I was a kid on the farm; having to use a smelly outhouse or sometimes making a mad dash to get behind the barn in time; then sometimes putting up with the inclement weather.

            My wife just fed me some of my very own lake trout cooked over our camp stove; not really a camp stove but a propane range right alongside the microwave that works when I fire up the portable generator. There is nothing that quite compares to a lake trout raised in the cold waters of Alaska, cooked to a turn with a dash of butter; or more affordable; margarine, especially in the early morning as soon as the frost has left the pun’kin.

            The home away from home is pulled by an old Dodge pickup truck; not really old by our standards, but definitely not new, just adequate for our purposes. Not really my own trout but my own since the campground host felt sorry for me because I had no boat and could not get out or cast far enough out to catch anything, and gave it to me. All in all it couldn’t have been better if I had caught it myself. Of course he didn’t have to force it on me; I am not adverse to taking a fish now and then and if it wasn’t the best and largest that I ever had, I wouldn’t have said anything because my old granddad told me never to look a gift horse in the mouth; to see how old he was.

            Of course if the situation were reversed I would have been more than happy to have shared my fish with the campground host.

            I really did try fishing this trip. Not that I really put myself out but I must have fished “about an hour.” Not really a whole hour because the wind came up and I couldn’t cast out far enough to catch anything. I really did try fishing though; I got behind some brush and small willows and tried for awhile but the water was too shallow there so I soon gave up on fishing. I didn’t really give up because there is always tomorrow, or the day after or the day after that; we will be here for another week and a half and I may still catch something if I don’t get carried away with the writing. I am so slow at writing that I sometimes think that I read writin’ better than I write readin’.

            Fishing is really not one of my good traits; if anyone gets skunked, it’s usually me. In fact I sometimes think that I keep the whole gang from catching fish, but with the help of a good friend and his boat I managed to catch a king salmon a few weeks ago. King salmon! The one I caught weighed only twenty something pounds, not even half the size of some, but to me it was enormous. I wouldn’t have been happier if it had weighed fifty something pounds. Of course I am always happy if something jerks my line once in a while and it doesn’t have to jerk very hard.

            Exciting? Of course! Although my luck is usually bad, with my “unusual” good luck that day we were trolling out from the beach near the mouth of Deep Creek when my line jerked so hard that I thought I had snagged something. As I reeled it in it felt as though I had caught my usual limb; like dragging dead weight to the boat until it was at the top of the water and we were eyeball to eyeball. Then it went wild; can’t say that I blame it because I wouldn’t want to suddenly find myself face to face with something like me.

            With the help of that friend and another good friend, using their boats at Seward and later at Homer I managed to catch some black bass, a red snapper, two kinds of cod, a flounder and the first two halibut that I had ever caught. I thought the two halibut were large fish; those weighed maybe twenty something pounds, but when I pulled up the first one my at that moment “un-friend” said, “You caught a chicken.” It seems that’s what a halibut weighing less than twenty five pounds is called.

            When I pulled up a multi-colored fish with fins all over it I was told, “That fish is royalty. It’s called an Irish Lord. You should throw it back; it’s no good for anything.” It was just as well that I threw it back because no one would have believed that I caught it anyway; they would have thought that I painted it that color.

            Seward and Homer! They are only a few miles apart as the crow; excuse me; the raven flies, but they are like entering two different worlds. They each have airports and shopping facilities for the needs of the average tourist, even us, and they each have camping facilities. Not the general run of camping facilities, but rock piles that you can park on for six dollars per night. Not really rock piles as such because the rocks have been somewhat spread around, but no less, rocks. We haven’t actually camped at Homer, mainly I suppose, because we have good friends at Anchor Point only about twelve miles distant and we usually stay there or at the state campground right on the bank of the  river near their place. Although we haven’t actually camped at Homer, we have at Seward on several occasions.

            Seward; it’s just a little old port town backed up along the base of mountains and hemmed in by the bay with few people? Right? Wrong! During the summer any time you wish to go there, but more-so on weekends, there are so many people that you would think there would be standing only room, but they all seem to have places to go and things to do so they exist in harmony with little or no problems and they all seem to have room to camp, with every type of rig imaginable. I have seen forty or more foot long motor homes, fifth wheelers, large and small pull trailers, truck campers and camper shells, tent trailers and one person even had a canvas tied to the side of his car.

          What comes to mind immediately when I think of camping at Seward is the efficiency of the people who work there; not merely when it comes time to clean and maintain the facilities but when it’s time to pay. Don’t even think about drifting in there and spending the night and drifting out without paying. They will be on you like ugly on an Ape. I’m not complaining, mind you, because being able to camp right alongside Resurrection Bay is well worth the price. The bay is so convenient that if it wasn’t for the rocks you could, at high tide, sleep with your feet in the water.

            The toilet facilities leave a lot to be desired. They are like bowed legs; few and far between. The shower facilities are very nice and are normally kept adequately clean, even during the busy mid-summer season; clean enough for the most particular people, if you make it in among the first hundred and something after they have been cleaned.

            Resurrection Bay! Now that would be many stories built into one! I consider it one of the other prettiest places in the world, or was before so many commercial enterprises were added; but to make it the prettiest place you just look down the bay, not up. I have sat on the rocks right down by the water and watched the seals and sea otter, and I imagine that it’s done just for me, put on a show right alongside the camp.

 I was standing on the dock of the Seward small boat harbor watching a seal that appeared to be doing his aerobic exercises; diving, surfacing and rolling over time and time again when a fellow admirer stopped alongside me to watch the show.

  “Is that a harbor seal,” he asked?         

            From the look that I received I don’t think that he appreciated my bit of humor when I answered, “I don’t know if it was, but it is now that it is in the harbor.”

            Every time we were at Seward, with no exceptions that I can remember, we saw eagles, either flying near shore or sitting on old piling only forty something feet or less from shore; just sitting there posing for the many cameras that can seem to magically appear as if from nowhere at the first sign of anything “odd or unusual” that appears. They seem to know that they are protected by Uncle Sam and also by me for that matter. I would be on! Maybe not on but after! Maybe not after but batting my gums at; someone in an instant if I should see them making an attempt even, to harm the wildlife! Or is it sea life that I like to watch so well?                

            Threatening to get onto someone reminds me of the young man that was asked by his father why he was so messy and skinned up when he came home late one night.

            “I whipped old man Jones tonight,” he said.

            “Why would you do that? Old man Jones is fifty something years old.”

            “Yes I know, but I think I could have whipped him if he was a hundred and something.”

            Old man! I am not very old by some standards, but I have gotten so old, only during the last few years that the old folks have begun calling me old. I told my brother once that since the old folks are all gone that we “are” the old folks and there’s more truth to that than poetry.

  From the small boat harbor at Seward you can go twenty something miles through mountains, around islands and by one glacier before you are in the open waters of the Pacific Ocean. Even though an island is an island, is an island; that’s and old saying that I just made up; at every twist and turn of the way you will see something completely different. Then there’s the prettiest sky blue water that you could imagine all around you and has been for the last twenty something miles; or are those knots?  Then if you’re lucky you will see the whales; what the different types are I haven’t a clue, but they are pretty as they dive then surface then dive again. Those alone make the whole trip worthwhile.

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