Posts tagged as:

alaska

Alaska Pictures, Part 4

by Jeff on October 28, 2011

Unfortunately, this is going to be the last post of my pictures from alaska.  Even though I took north of 375 pictures, I didnt want to spend weeks and weeks on this series, so I broke my events down into days and selected some of my favorite pictures from each activity.  Hopefully this made you want to go to alaska a just a little bit.  I enjoyed my time up there and will hopefully be going back soon!   If you missed the first three groups, you can find here and here and here.

This group of pictures was because of a bartender that  I was talking to over dinner.  I asked him for some nearby trails and he sent me over here.  It was about a mile walk out of town (I didnt have  a car) just to the trailhead, and I was on the trail for about 2 miles 1 way. It was quite a bit of walking that day and it was tiring, but it was a great hike.

The hike was mostly along the coast south of seward, so there were quite a few rivers and other bodies of water flowing into resurrection bay.   This was one of them.  One of the best parts about this hike was that I saw 2 other people and 2 dogs throughout my hike.  It’s nice when you can get out there and truly be by yourself.

I took this picture because I thought this was funny – this is supposed to be a bridge over this shallow creek.  It wasnt really sturdy or anything like that, and it didnt really work.

I thought this was a pretty nifty tree, it looks like it had been cut down at one point and is regrowing as a new tree.

This is a ghost forest.  I wrote about them last time, but I think they are really cool!

This bird scared the crap out of me.  All of the sudden something broke the silence that I had enjoyed for the past 2 or so hours and made all this noise as I was standing on the bridge.  I was taking pictures of the fish in the water, but I got an ok shot of this guy considering.  There was also an eagle flying around, but I was unable to get a good picture of it.

You can see a bit of seward and the mountains behind it in this picture, but my favorite thing is the very well defined snow line on the mountain.

This is one from the walk back to town on the road.  I thought the boats looked neat in front of the mountain.

{ 8 comments }

Is Getting Your Own Food Cheaper

by Jeff on October 21, 2011

For the last few years, I’ve made it a point to try and obtain some of my own food.  For a lot of people this means a garden.  Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to do that quite yet because I’m afraid the dog will tear it up, and along with that, I dont want to do anything to the back yard (I rent).  So this leaves me to trying other ways to get my own food.  I’ve done some of this (though I’m not sure if it would count) by canning apples, and I’ve also done some elk hunting and antelope hunting.  Unfortunately I havent gotten an elk yet, but antelope are plentiful here to the point of becoming a huge nuisance, so I’ve gotten one of those two years in a row.  One thing that I’ve been wanting to do more of is fish.  Usually it’s pretty cheap, and there’s good fishing close to where I live (mostly trout).  So I decided to book a charter fishing trip when I was in Alaska - it was one of two “big” (read: spendy) things that I decided to do while there.  Here’s what it cost – and I’ll leave out the flight and the room and food, I would have needed those anyway.

  • Charter trip (Late season) $220
  • Out of State fishing license $20 (1 day)
  •  Safeway $15 – Ziplock bags, foil and saran wrap.  There were no processors of fish left open in town ( I probably wouldnt have used one anyway) so that I could portion, pack and freeze my catch.
  • Cooler $23 I needed something to take the fish home with me so that they wouldn’t de-thaw on the plane.  This worked really, really well, but it was because the cooler was packed very, very full.  It also didnt fit everything in it – 1 serving had to be packed alone.  I’ll have to see how this one fared.
  • Check bag fee $20 – to check the cooler to take home.
So in total, I spent approximate $298 to catch and take home this fish.  I didnt get any very large halibut, but I got some fair sized ones.  According to my count, I got about 12 two person servings for dinner, for an average cost of $12.50 per serving.  Now I dont typically buy halibut too much at the store but if I recall, I’ve seen it go for 16.99 per pound, and I took home approximately 15 lbs.  While this is high cost, I took this estimate from a nearby whole foods and though the store is expensive, what I caught is what they market.  ”Organic, wild caught, bla bla bla”.
Fish Caught by Everyone in the Boat – We each got 2.

All in all, I got less than $90 dollars worth of fish from the fishing trip, bringing my cost per pound of halibut to a level that I dont even care to calculate.  However, the trip wasnt just about taking home enough fish to feel me and H for the winter.  I wanted to experience something new (I’d never been halibut fishing, or on a boat that small in the open ocean), and I wanted to have fun.  Both of those things I accomplished, and like I’ve been learning quite a bit lately, it’s not always going to be about the money.

Of course, there are  plenty of ways that you can make getting your own food cheaper.  Hunting or fishing in your own state would probably be the first one that comes to mind.  You’ll get cheaper prices for tags because you pay state taxes, and you wont have to travel too far.  This would also eliminate the need to check a bag to take back home.  (sidebar: One guy on the boat from my state shipped a moose home from Alaska.  I dont even want to know how much that cost).  Doing the processing at home would be free as well, as just about everyone has foil/saran wrap already.  Some of my hunting trips over the last 3 years have cost about $75 ($50 for an antelope tag and another $20 or so to have it ground into sausages/hamburger, and 5 bucks for a beer or 2 to celebrate with my hunting buddies).
I also got some killer pictures from the fishing trip, and alaska.  To see part 1 of my alaska pictures, head here.

Readers: Do you ever get your own meat, or do you stick to gardening?  If you do get your own meat, have you thought about cost effectiveness, or are you just interested in where you food comes from and going out and having some fun?

{ 13 comments }

Alaska Pictures Part 3

October 19, 2011

I’ve got some more pictures from alaska to share.  The first two groups (which you can find here and here) is from my week in Anchorage, and the ones where I’m on a boat are taken from a harbor wildlife cruse I took that was based out of Seward, AK on the Kenai Peninsula.  For all of these pictures, [...]

Read the full article →

Alaska Pictures Part 2

October 12, 2011

I’ve got some more pictures from alaska to share.  The first group (which you can find here) is from my week in Anchorage, and the ones where I’m on a boat are taken from a harbor wildlife cruse I took that was based out of Seward, AK on the Kenai Peninsula.  For all of these [...]

Read the full article →

Alaska Pictures Part 1

October 5, 2011

As you all know, I was fortunate enough to have my job send me to Alaska.  I was arrived on a sunday (around 6pm, after traveling for 12 hours) and was on the job until that friday at around 1pm.  After that, I decided to stay and use that as a bit of my vacation. [...]

Related Posts with Thumbnails
Read the full article →