[grey_whiskers]

Thanks to all the Freepers who encouraged us to go to Alaska.

To all, if anyone wants to know more, just Freepmail me. After 5 parts, I still feel it only scratched the surface.

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

*Ping* to final installment.

[Lokibob]

A little more about "Buttwackers":

All the charter boats will clean and package your halibut for you, after they display the days catch and have all the pictures taken.

You then can take the packaged catch to Buttwhackers and do a pound for pound swap with them for halibut flash frozen and vacuum packed(for a price, of course). they packed mine in dry ice and in air shippable containers (waterproof, plastic lined, and well insulated. They copied my fishing license, and put it in plastic on the outside of the box. Nobody checked it, but that may be because it was there and they new it was ok, my opinion.

The B&B I stayed in had a freezer, and the owner grciously stored it for me for 2 days. A week later I opened the box to find all the dry ice gone, but the fish meat still frozen rock solid.

BTW, I smoked over 50 lbs of it, and GAD WAS IT GOOD!!! All this was 15 years ago, so I can't guarantee it is the same way today.
,,,,,,,Bob

[angkor]

"Thanks to all the Freepers who encouraged us to go to Alaska."

This is the first installment I've seen, so I'll bookmark it and get to the rest later. Thanks for taking the time to write it all down.

It's been 10 years since I drove to the Alcan and back, spent a month in AK and was just amazed at how beautiful and *big* it is.

Highlights for me were several days at Denali NP (including the auroras and grizzlies); doing the Denali airplane tour out of Talkeetna; salmon fishing for a few days at Russian River on Kenai; and a few days hanging out at Valdez. I tried to drive up to the Arctic Circle from Fairbanks, but the tundra and truckers beat me back, and I just never found the time to do the Alaska Railroad from Anchorage to Fairbanks and back. Well, next time.

Alaska is a great place to visit, especially if you have kids. But I'd say a month is the bare minimum visit, and next time I'll rent a camper rather than tent camping and sleeping in the back of an SUV (which you'll do when grizzlies are in the campground).

Again, thanks for the writeups.

[Tax-chick]

bump for later reading. I have a friend in the Kenai Peninsula.

[B-bone]

Thanks for the updates.

No vacations yet this summer, but now I feel like I've already been back to Alaska.