Hiking and Fishing and Eagles - Oh My!

These last few weeks I've tried a little bit harder to not only learn about Alaska but experience it as well. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous and just the last few days Anchorage was breaking temperature records with 80 degrees. So a few of the highlights of the last little while have been my time spent hiking and fishing.

A few friends and I headed down to Alyeska - the largest ski resort here in Alaska and went for a 5 mile hike which had this awesome hand tram at the middle and you had to pull yourself across the cable line over the creek (or you can just bring some strong and energetic boys who get so excited they pull you across too)! It was so beautiful and definitely an evening well spent.

Then this last weekend we went down to Homer, Alaska and went fishing for Halibut in the Cook Inlet - it was awesome we could actually see Mt. Redoubt the whole time (the volcano that "hiccuped" earlier this year. The fish were biting like crazy and they were down on this mound about 120 ft. below us so it was a nice workout to reel them in. The biggest one we caught was 33 lbs. mine was probably just 20 lbs. but that's ok because those are better meat to eat anyway. We caught our limit of 2 fish each quickly and were back to the cabin to clean and filet them then package them. 70 bags of Halibut! It was quite the day and we just had our first cookout tonight - so good, we cooked the Halibut cheeks in sprite and they call it "poor man's lobster" so that was fun too!

But the crazy story was the night before we went fishing in Homer we were down on the beach skipping rocks (the boy's favorite past time here in Alaska - I really like it too though!) and this duck was out in the water beyond us. Naturally the boys tried to hit it with their rocks but couldn't but then from behind us this bald eagle swoops down over the water and the duck has no chance it clutch's it out of the water and swoops back over us then proceeds to fly to the light post just behind us and pluck it's feathers and eat it! It was like animal planet right in front of us - super gross but we all couldn't look away, we watched him for like 30 min before we finally drove home. We saw tons of moose and eagles this weekend and it was such an amazing drive - seriously if you haven't been to Alaska yet, and the interior of Alaska, it needs to be added to the bucket list!