salmon

Last thursday we thought it would be fun to make a quick trip down to Cooper's Landing and do some late night salmon fishing. (a perk of living in alaska is the long day light hours) We thought it would be fun to make it a family outing. Eric got home from work, we loaded up and headed out. It was a lot of fun! There were mosquitoes all over the place (bummer...and the stores around here are sold out) but the weather was awesome! 

 This is the place we fished. We rode bikes for a couple miles up a trail and then veered off to another trial that we hiked down for another mile or two and it ended up here. It was beautiful!

 Doesn't she look thrilled to be in there :)

 If you look close at this picture Aubree is smiling (with a binki in her mouth) and trying to poke my face-it was the game we were playing that made her laugh for like 10 minutes. 

 "family shot"

 When we pulled into the parking lot i asked the guy who took us if there were bears around this place. He said that he has never seen a bear before, but he brought a shot gun with slugs just in case. I was feeling pretty good about it until a couple walked down the trail into the parking lot and said they just saw a black bear  with her 2 cubs right along the trail. My heart was pumping and i was a little nervous. As we rode down the trail we yelled, sang, whistled, basically did everything we could to make noise to scare it away. The last thing you want to do is startle a momma bear with her cubs! Luckily we didn't see it! Phew! 

After we dropped off our bikes and hiked down the last part of the trail we talked with a few men that were just leaving. They said "are you the guys with the shot gun? Good because we have seen 4 brown bears wandering around us and all over the river getting the fish." And my heart started pumping even harder and faster. Brown bears scare me to death! We did see one brown bear (pictured above. He is the brown thing on the shore behind the people in the picture) he was like a football field distance away from us. He was just there to catch a fish and then he turned around and left. Well i can check "see a brown bear" off of my alaskan to do list now :) and i don't care to see one ever again! 

Eric ended up getting 2 salmon that night. We were told the limit is 3 salmon per person per day. We were also just informed that they raised it to 6 salmon per person per day-but you can end up bagging (or bringing home) 12 salmon if you caught your first 6 before midnight and you caught 6 more after midnight. That is a LOT of fish! I don't even like fish. So-if we go again and we get more-let me know if you like salmon and we will send it down your way!

A HUGE thanks to this guy for hooking us up with all the gear and instructions. 

. 

This was our "end of trip" family photo. I just have to brag for a moment about our little girl. She is such a good baby-she always has been. We didn't get back to the truck until after one in the morning and she did great! We felt bad for keeping her up so late-but we are glad we have this memory together. She is amazing! 

We didn't get home until 3 in the morning-luckily Aubree was super tired so i was able to get a good catch up on sleep, but eric was up bright and early to work the next morning. I think we are all back on schedule now. This is already such a fun memory for us. We are hoping for a summer filled with fun alaskan adventures :)