Home Mark Stopha,Alaska

Life just above zero

It’s been hanging around zero degrees here.   If you don’t live on the coast, that might not seem that cold.  But trust me.  RIght on the ocean, it’s cold.  Especially with gusty winds in some places.  It’s even colder – below zero – out in the valley north of town.
I continue to be impressed and amazed at the miracle of a heat pump.  Even at zero degrees, the unit is still putting out warm air.  I still don’t know how it can take zero degree air and make it warm.  We’re fairing fine in our little house with the heat pump going full blast and the wood stove helping keep things warm.  
Been hard to get my butt away from the recliner right next to the toasty wood stove.   Today, I finally got my act together and went skiing.  It wasn’t bad at all.  I only got in a couple miles and the snow is squeaky and doesn’t give much glide but beautiful in the sun lit woods.  
I should have been skiing more since I got out of covid isolation, but procrastinated and did some projects on my 2nd generation Dodge Ram 3500.  You Tube is man (and woman’s) best friend. First, I replaced the solenoid that powers the engine preheater.  I then repaired the 4wd that wasn’t working by bypassing the vacuum system and permanently locking in the front axle.  The solenoid job took about 45 minutes and the front axle job about 30 minutes, so I didn’t get cold before I got them done and could scramble back to my chair by the wood stove.   The two jobs took not much more time that it took me to watch the you tubes on them.
Before these two jobs, I was looking at putting in a plug-in engine heater, and when I you tubed that, I found out my truck had one already installed as a stock item.  Which I didn’t know.  I popped the hood and sure enough, there was the plug.  The truck starts up at 2 degrees in an instant when it’s plugged in.
Only one little vacuum item left to make the brake light go off, and will probably have to find the part in a junk yard.   Sure is nice having the 4wd back and knowing it shouldn’t be a problem again.
I conducted further procrastination last evening to avoid skiing by finally getting the brown bananas out of the freezer and making a bunch of small loaves of  banana bread.
So, with only one other job left – to shovel off the roof before rain comes later in the week – I went skiing to avoid that today.  After the 2 measly miles, I got back and started in on the roof.  I finished half today and will finish the other tomorrow.  The last part will entail throwing snow in the driveway, but now that I have a plow on the truck that I installed during isolation, I won’t have to move it by hand twice.

Winter Tales

Went skiing today.  Saw a whale in Fritz Cove on the way there.  On the trail, I saw deer tracks, marten tracks that wandered around on one side of the trail disappeared through a culvert under the trail, and reappeared again on the other end of the culvert.  I also saw mouse tracks  near the trail, at the end of which was the mouse, apparently dead in the snow.  Could not see other tracks of anything that would have killed it.   While skiing back to the road, a friend from my former work place skied up towing a small sled, with some extra clothes and a cased rifle strapped in.  He said he was going to the end  of the trail, then drop down for a 10 minute walk to the beach to see if he might see any deer.   He said he’d gone to the same spot recently and camped over night in the snow, and had a pair of wolves walk 20 yards away from him during the night.   Tomorrow is our last day of deer season.

God on our side

We have the sister of one of my best friends who I met at graduate school who passed away too young in December, along with her husband, in town.  They are both Methodist pastors from Mississippi. And they seem to have put God on our side, if God chooses sides.  When we got to the harbor to take a trip to Haines with Larry on Wednesday, we got the parking spot right next to the ramp we had to descend with our day packs of food and clothes.  Yesterday, the fishing was as hot as I’ve seen it.  We had several instances where we had coho on both rods, and we did not lose any fish that got hooked.  On the way home, we saw a group of orcas – 2 cows, a bull and an itsy bitsy calf  and shared the viewing with just one other boat.  We got to watch them as they cruised up the shoreline towards Pt Retreat Lighthouse.   We had fresh salmon for dinner.  While I was butchering the catch, I called to the new neighbor kids to ask their dad if they wanted a fish for dinner.  He and the kids then came over, and the youngest picked out their fish from the cleaned fish in the tub.  It was our first time meeting the dad and we’re glad to have such personable new neighbors like our good friends who moved were.   And nice to have more kid chatter in the neighborhood.

Whales and Salmon

Took Andrea, Christopher and Odessa whale watching and sea lion watching today after leaving for the cabin yesterday afternoon, catching a coho, and spending the night at the cabin.  After the watching, we put the gear out for coho fishing.  We caught 4 or 5 coho in an hour or two.  The kids are a well oiled machine now.  I butchered the fish, and the kids rinsed and bagged and vac packed while I ran to find a new fridge as our old fridge acted up again.  We had white king salmon for dinner with corn Andrea brought, and then I took off the doors to the new fridge to get it into the house, swapped the way the door opened at Sara’s request, then plugged in the new fridge.  We had rhubarb crisp for dessert while the new fridge was cooling. 

I wish I was 13 years old again

I’ve had 13 year old boy (Christopher) and girl (Odessa) twins here for the week.  We went fishing the day they got in, caught a coho, had it for dinner, and they were hooked on fishing.  Are we going fishing tomorrow is the question each evening.  We stayed at our cabin a few days, and the day it was too windy to fish, we picked berries.  Most years, the island is covered in blueberries and blue huckleberries, with red huckleberries here and there.  This year, red huckleberries are the only game in town, and we picked for a couple hours til we had enough for a batch of jam.  We caught 4 big coho the next day and butchered and vac packed those back at the house.    We also caught some huge dungeness crab – my first decent catch of the season – and had those for dinner.  These kids are lucky.
The next 3 days we went to Chatham Strait.  There’s a new ADNR cabin there I’d rented from Mon to Wed.  We got an early start as the kids wanted to get fishing.  We arrived at my spot at about high tide at 8 am or so.  I put the first rod out, and as I was rigging the second rod, we got a coho on.   Odessa reeled it in, and I put that rod back out.  As I was getting the second rod ready to go, the first rod hit again.  This happened at least a third time.  The rest of the fish were shaker kings, though, so we were still on the first coho when I finally got the second rod out.  The kids got to fighting over who was driving and who was fishing as we got on fish after fish.  We caught a dozen cohos and a nice white king, over the next several hours.  By early afternoon, I’d filled one of the coolers with dressed coho and ice,  and we were ready to go find our cabin across the strait.   I texted their mom.  Time to get a freezer, which she did the next day.
We found the cabin and got ourselves settled in.  The kids love salmon so we had fried salmon and venison pepper pieces for dinner with instant potatoes and beach asparagus.  It was supposed to blow the next day, so we were sort of expecting a cabin day on Tuesday.  We did try to fish for about 30 minutes, but it was too rough, so back to the cabin.  Odessa was tormenting her brother, and then me, and I put my rain gear on and went looking for some berries to pick.  The weather picked up as predicted, and I had to move the boat twice over the next 12 hours.  The kids made dinner with bagels and cream cheese and jarred smoked salmon.  
Today, we slept in and packed up as the winds laid down.  We headed back to our fishing hole, and the crossing was a little lumpy.  Both kids were a little sea sick, so I said we’ll just fish the drag from one end to the other and pick up and go and they agreed to that.  We got 3 more nice coho, and headed for home.
The kids are constantly bickering over 13 year old things, but the twins sure do make a good work team.  I filleted and sectioned the fish, Odessa rinsed the pieces, Christopher put the fish into bags, and when I was done butchering, I started vac packing.  When Odessa was done with the rinsing, she took over vac packing.  They are good workers.  And good fishing companions.  Mom gets here tomorrow for the next three days then they will all leave together.

Mark’s Alaska Blog

Back to the good.
We had to call off the scout boat trip to an island cabin because the weather is just too marginal, so we’re going to camp at a local camp ground.  And we’re gonna get wet.  Again.  Real wet.
There was a lull between lows and I already had the boat hooked up to the truck from when I drove out the road today to check on the weather, so I ran down the road to the boat launch and headed to a spot in sight of the ramp.   I caught a small coho in the first 15 minutes and thought – I’m in to them.  Then the wind slowly rebounded as forecast, and I didn’t get another strike for an hour.  Porpoises were slashing around me.  They didn’t look like Dall’s porpoise, but were the color of harbor porpoises.  Only they looked a little big for harbor porpoises, so not sure what they were.  I pulled up the line once and the flasher and hootchie were gone and I wondered if one of the porpoises cut it.
I put on new gear as the wind continued to increase.  I got a larger bright coho on this time.  When I got it to the surface there were other big coho with it.  I thought.  Now I’m really into them.  When I conked the fish with the gaff, I knocked it off the leader.  As it floated away, I gaffed it right in the middle of the body and brought it aboard.  I staggered in the chop to got more new gear on, but thought- I can’t fish too well in this wind, so I turned toward the dock and fished into the cove til I was out of the wind.  Then I cleaned the fish and pulled my gear in.  Fish for dinner tonight, and some for the freezer.   Felt good to be fishing.  Like it almost always does.