We’ve been hanging out with friends here in Juneau for a few days (and getting a bunch of work done with reliable internet, woohoo!)
The night we arrived, we went out to dinner with our friend Steve (from Nordic Tug Charters) and the guys from Calgary who are on the sailboat behind us here on the dock (a Beneteau called Good Fortune) … I mentioned this in an earlier post, but here they all are before Good Fortune headed out. Really great group of guys!
On Tuesday night, Steve invited us to join him and his friends for a barbeque out at Eagle Beach. We grabbed some stuff to bring (hot dogs, veggies and hummus, chips and salsa, watermelon) and headed down there (about 20 miles north of Juneau). When we were here last summer and had a rental car for a day or two, one of the things we did with it was to drive from one end of Glacier Highway to the other, and we stopped and hiked around a bit near Eagle Beach during that time. So gorgeous! I didn’t take any photos of the scenery the other day because it seemed there was no real good way to capture it, but I did snap a quick photo of Steve holding a 5 wood, a hot dog on a stick, and a cocktail (pretty mountains in the background, so you get the idea):
Several people went out onto the mud flats after dinner to hit golf balls (while dogs retrieved the balls). It was a fun evening!
Yesterday, Steve loaned us the Nordic Tug Charters van and Kevin, Sam, and I took it out to gather some stuff. We stopped at Costco (wine and bourbon), Western Auto Marine (a fish scale, some new non-cable downrigger line, and a harpoon!) and then around the corner to Jerry’s Meats & Seafoods to pick up some smoked salmon, some double-smoked bacon (so smoky!), a carton of their delicious house-made salsa, and three 5-gallon buckets of salmon heads and parts left over after Jerry’s cuts up the fish for filets….Steve uses it for crab bait. We put the (open) buckets of fish parts in the back of the van and as we drove away I said “Okay gang, we’re really in Alaska NOW!”
Last night we went out to dinner with the folks we met in Ketchikan, Wendy and Jeff (M/V Daybreak, a beautiful 58′ Fleming). Across on Douglas Island there’s a place called the Island Pub that has “the only gourmet pizza in Juneau.” Wendy and Jeff are heading out again in the morning and invited us to join them for dinner there. Every year, the Island Pub has a pizza contest, and the contest winners’ recipes go on the menu (for the year? for good? I’m not sure how that works, but it seems like the popular ones might stay on the menu until they’re knocked off by new ones…). From the contest winner menu, we tried one called Fatty Pants (Alfredo sauce, house and parmesan cheeses, crumbled bacon, Canadian bacon, pineapple, and pulled smoked pork) and another one with a pesto base that was super good, but I don’t remember the name of it. (It was from 2016 and not on the linked menu.) Anyway, great pizza…thin crust, good flavors. It’s so much fun to meet people cruising around up here, and then run into them again and again in different ports and anchorages. SE Alaska is so big and there’s so much to explore, but running into new and old friends along the way makes it seem just a little bit smaller and more connected.
This morning we’re going to head down to Tracy Arm/Endicott Arm and try for another halibut (because, HARPOON!). We’ll stay in Tracy Arm Cove tonight, then in the morning we’ll head into Endicott Arm and check out Dawes Glacier and probably fish a bit while we wait to go into Ford’s Terror. High slack in Juneau tomorrow is about 5:45pm, so we should be going into Ford’s Terror between 6 and 6:15pm. We’ll probably stay there for a few nights, kayak around, relax, read (hopefully cook up some halibut!) and then head back to Juneau on Tuesday or so.
We went out into Gastineau Channel with Steve a couple days ago to pull his crab traps and set ours, so we’ll pick those up on the way out this morning. He checked his last night (on his jet ski, wearing shorts and a tank top!!) and brought back 8 or 9 big Dungies, so chances are good that we’ll have some too!
The weather has been SO NICE! Here are a couple of photos from the same(ish) spot here on Steve’s dock in Aurora Basin:
Back in a couple days!
Enjoy the pleasant weather, Seattle has been in rain for the last week