Today brought mixed emotions. We started off fine. In fact kinda happy because the storm had finally lifted. The sun was shining and surprisingly the leaks in the bunk house had calmed to a small drip maybe every 5 seconds. Haha
Once we got outside we realized the beauty that we had be missing. It was nearly breath taking to see the smooth sea out ahead and to look up the shoreline and see the sun breaking through the small clouds and over taking the Bluffs. It was amazing. Unfortunately, my pictures didn't do justice to the real thing.
Brett asked if I would join him in panning for gold. He wanted me to take a picture. I think the fever had hit him in a very small way because once we got down to where Bill had been teaching Brett to pan he wasn't moving :(.
Meanwhile, my dad, Aaron, and Brian started helping Randy break apart his equipment. I guess that when they leave camp at the end of the summer the have to dismantle everything. They do this so that when people come through on snow they don't have the ability to still the equipment. The take the tires off and everything and hide all of it in the hills. Maybe they put it in a Conex I'll have to ask one of the guys.
At one point, actually before they started working, my dad said that it was a good idea to pack up and head out, especially while it was not raining. I was so thrilled. At first I thought I would wait for Brett to finish up and then we could go clean up. An hour and a half later I was ticked.
I was so suck and tired of being there. I wanted to have a place to vi pee that I didn't feel like I was going through a haunted house to get to. I craved a clean kitchen and a garbage can. I was crawling in my skin to think that there were rodents all around me and mold on everything and I couldn't wrap my brain around how someone in their right mind could live like that... Even if it was for just the summer.
I was furious that Brett asked me if I wanted to pan and as soon as he walked back to his pan he didn't even look back at me. Like he had forgotten I was there and that he was going to give me a pan too. ( he later explained that once he started at it again he remembered that Bill had told him to stay over the bucket... Why he couldn't explain that to me I don't know and why I sat there waiting for him for 45 min. I don't know that either.) I had finally had enough and Brett could sense that I wasn't happy. He asked me a question and I snapped at him and said I was done. I wanted to leave and go back to Nome.
I guess I finally threw a little tantrum. :{ I went in the bunk house, unpacked my sleeping gear and took a nap.
Turns out I wasn't the only one that was fed up with the place. My dad, Aaron and Brian had been roped into helping Randy get all his gear taken care of. And by the time we were actually ready to leave we had like 5 generators and all sorts of other equipment that Randy wanted us to haul out. Tension was a little high.
We FiNaLlY got on our bikes and took off. It was about 4 o'clock or so. As we got going we realized the trip back was going to be horrendous with all this extra stuff.
After traveling about 3 miles and nearly tipping the trailer again and again Aaron thought maybe it would be a good idea for someone to rub alongside the trailer while someone else drove the 4-wheeler. We were only going 5 miles an hour anyway. It worked out great. Brett got his exercise and the trailer didn't tip any more. He was liking it too... Every once in a while he would crouch down and scope up some blueberries and plop them in his mouth. It was all fun and picking though :) he did have to push and hold down the trailer in the muddy bogs. And then when the road was somewhat decent he would jump back on the 4-wheeler with me. If the trailer bounced around too much he would jump off again and do it all over again.
After going through a really tough bog we decided maybe we should say a family prayer. Just to remind you we had only been traveling for about 7 miles at this point and we had at least 13 more to go. 13 more miles got us back to Randy's truck where we were going to dump his gear.
Aaron was teasing with Brett to pray that we could harvest our tags and complete our journey. Brett did just that. He asked for safety, comfort and Inspiration and then asked that we might be able to harvest the animals that we came there to harvest. I'm not kidding you not a half hour later we were doing our thing and Aaron, Brian, and Brett noticed some birds flying over a spot. It looked suspicious to them so they thought they would go see if an animal had been killed and then hopefully a better animal would be on it.
When they discovered that it was nothing they could see they all started picking berries haha I joined in.
My dad decided to ride up the way a bit as he peered over the river and out through the willows.
All of a sudden, I saw him waving us over. Was it a bear or some other animal. I got Aaron and Brian's attention and we all head over.
Aaron arrived first and frantically waves Brian over.
Brett and I started to pick berries again. We didn't want to disturb whatever they were looking at. But then my dad waved us over just as frantically. Once we reached their side, my dad pointed to the willows. There laying in the tall willows was a big huge honkin moose. Not just any ol' moose... One with big fat shovels on his head. We hadn't seen one of those yet. All we had seen to this point was cow moose and calves. It was the biggest animal I'd seen out there.
As I settled in I pulled out my camera. Just as I had focused on the big guy I heard Brian discussing where he was going to shoot. Then he shot just like that. Time stood still forever I swear... But really it was just seconds. One shot and it was a hit. Big Papa reared his head and started to run off. Aaron then shot and and hit again. But he did not want to give up. Brian then shot again. I'm not sure where that one hit.
Turns out the 1st shot hit in the nose and the second was up the bum. Haha
Trick thing about this moose was that he was bedded down across the river. So in order to harvest it, now the guys had to get to it. That meant they had to go down in the willows and cross the river and then bring out the moose. :) and not so funny thing is that the time of death was about 9 o'clock pm. So it was getting dark and the process was projected to last well into the night. It was getting cold and since my visibility was going to be impaired by darkness I wouldn't be able to watch for bears very well or whatever animal decided to check things out. We felt extremely vulnerable.
Well we set to work right away. I was on "bear watch". That meant that I sat on higher ground with a gun (yeah right haha. I didn't want to shoot this gun) and scanned the river beds for anything that moved besides the guys. Holy Crap that was an undaunting task. I was scared that not only would I need to get the guys alerted but if I saw a bear I would have to shoot this gun to scare it off. Ahhh
Well my dad decided that he needed to be as loud as he could and I was trying. To yell conversations back at him so that the noise might deter an curious fellow. My dads singing got louder as the night went on and my edginess became was the darker it got. It seemed as though everything was moving (although the wind wasn't blowing and everything besides us was relatively calm). But my nerves made eyeballs appear and water splash and rocks tumble.
Aaron and Brian went to work taking care of the moose by cutting off the meat and saving the cape and the horns. My dads job was to walk the meat from the moose to the river where Brett had set up a pulley system with a rope.
He had stretched a rope across the river, around a willow bush and then back again. My dad would hook the bag of meat on the rope and then scoot it across the river where Brett would take it off. Brett would then take the meat from the river and bring it up the hill to a tarp that he had layer out next to the other 4-wheelers. Yeah I was not only sitting all by myself on a hill but now with raw meat. Grand idea guys... Anything else you could do to make a bear want to skip on over to see me? How about a call? Is there a bear call that would bring him in ? Haha
Brett first started out dumping the meat at the river an then he decided that was dumb, he should just bring it up to camp. And before he really started to walk it up he thought that is stupid he should get the 4-wheeler and drive it up. He get into a pretty go system of driving a bag of meat up, dumping it and then as soon as he saw my dads light moving across the willows he would go back down to the river an do it all again. That was better for me because then I wasn't by myself the whole time.
This process actually didn't take as long as we had thought it would.
Once everything was up by the 4-wheelers we really set up camp. It was then about 1 o'clock or so. It was getting really cold for me. My toes where damp which made them freezing in the cold. Other then that I was pretty well off. The guys on the other hand... Not so much. They had been wading through the river at least there and back once if not more times. Brian's feet were so cold he frantically went about trying to warm them up. he was then only one that didn't have waders on. My dad got busy making sure the meat was cooling down and wrapping up the cape. I tried to get dinner going. Brett and Aaron worked on getting all out stuff gathered close and actually setting up a camp. They were all cold and wet. Not a great combination.
Eventually, we layer down a tarp, got the sleeping bags out, took off all our wet clothes and crawled in to bed.
Unfortunately, someone had to stay on bear watch. My dad decided that he would do that and Aaron ended up staying up all night too. They finished packing up the meat and putting it on the bikes. They also put the horns and cape on Brian's bike. At about 4, Brett nudged me to look up in the sky. It was the first time the sky had been clear at all let alone enough to see the stars. So here we were freezing in the middle of nowhere and there was a huge display of twinkling lights up above us. That was truly breath taking. My dad pointed out the North Star. It was pretty much dead center of the sky. All the usual constellations were nowhere to be found but a whole new set were laying blanketed across the sky.
If that wasn't enough the Most amazing thing happened. All of a sudden it was as though someone was painting the sky. The Aurora Borealis graced us with it's presence. WOW! That just topped our trip. It was pretty light in color but the way it danced across the sky was like someone was orchestrating the entire display. This was one of the things I wanted to see in Alaska. The Great northern Lights as they danced across the sky. It was amazing.
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Location:The Bluffs in Nome, AK
