"Rope is for Cowboys, This Here is a Line...."

Last year, our good friends Holly and Sever got married, moved to Sever's hometown of Ketchikan, Alaska and built a house. Home construction was complete in early August and they were more than excited to move in. Three weeks later, we arrived as their first visitors in their new home. This was Cody's second trip to Alaska (He went fishing in Ketchikan for Sever's Bachelor party in June of last year) and it was Chelsea's first. It was clear to everyone that we were not locals when we landed in Ketchikan...For starters, Chelsea was carrying her safari print luggage (which didn't exactly fit in with the statewide Camo theme) and Cody failed to wear xtratuf boots. So yeah, it was pretty obvious we were outsiders!

After a tour of the new home (which is absolutely beautiful!), we settled in at the Paulson's Wednesday night. Thursday morning we got up early to go explore Ketchikan. Holly and Sever both had to work but they gave us a truck and a map so we were set! First we went searching for bears and we spotted three of them! Then we headed to downtown, along with 8,000+ other tourists (4 cruise ships docked Thursday morning). We grabbed breakfast and did a little trinket shopping (Cody's least favorite thing to do but he hung in there until Chelsea pick out a painting for the house). Later we hiked Married Man's Trail, drove up to Ward Lake, and checked out the totem poles.



We got back to the house at just about the time Sever called it a day at work. So, we grabbed pizza and beer, and went out on the boat! The guys had a great time fishing...







The next day, we tried our hand at shrimping for the first time. Cody, Sever and Adam dropped 9 pots ranging in depth between 350ft and 500ft deep.



Saturday morning the four of us (and Moser) got up early, grabbed our backpacking gear, loaded up the boat, and headed to Pleanty Cuttroat Cabin on Orchard Lake. Before we buoyed up the boat in Shrimp Bay, surely we had to throw out some more shimp pots ("you know, there's a reason they call it Shrimp Bay!"). Then we started the hike from hell. The cabin website mislead us by stating it was a 1 mile hike from the Shrimp Bay Trailhead to the cabin. Terrain was listed as: old-growth cedar, Sitka spruce, and western hemlock rain forest trail. Sounds nice and easy, right? We are all in good shape and an easy 1 mile hike is nothing...so we packed WAY TOO MUCH STUFF!!!! This "trail" was hardly a trail! Holly and Chelsea took a wrong turn because it was so hard to tell what was the path and what was forest. We can't count how many times our boots got stuck in mud throughout the journey. Not to mention, the trail was steep and ALL UPHILL, and clearly more than 1 mile in distance!!! So, yeah, it took us 3 hours to pack in 4 backpacks, 2 fishing poles, a cooler, a tub of food and cookware, white gas, diesel, a motor, a lantern and a jug of water. Yes, you can call us amateurs!!!





When we finally got to the cabin, we were soaking wet...not from rain, but from sweat!! EWW...Gross, I know! So, we hung our stinky clothes up to dry.





The girls were so happy to be dry and warm in the cabin, that they decided to stay in and drink a few cocktails, while the guys went fishing. The cabin had a 14 inch skiff which was perfect to take out on the lake. A couple hours later Cody and Sever came back with plenty of fish for dinner.



The next morning, we all got up and did some more fishing. The bite was on and it was a beautiful morning.





Once we got back to the cabin, we made the hike back to the boat in Shrimp Bay to pull up our shrimp pots. (We hiked out with some of our "extra" gear to leave back at the boat in order to make the final hike back a little easier).







After much success with the shrimp pots, we hiked back to the cabin and the guys went out fishing again. They caught more trout but came back wasted..apparently they drank a little too much whisky out on the boat. We are not sure if Sever can handle his alcohol better than Cody or if Cody just maybe drank more than Sever...either way...Cody was a mess :o) Holly, Sever and Chelsea made a great shrimp ramen and lemon pepper trout dinner before calling it a night. Cody...well he skipped out on dinner and was up all night sick.





Cody had a rough night and the morning didn't get any easier for him. In fact, it got worse...we had to pack up and make our final hike back to the boat to head home. Lets just say, that Cody didn't really pull his weight on the hike back. He was too busy getting sick along the trail and wishing a bear would come take him out of his misery. Chelsea calmly reminded him he had a wife to live for :o) Not only did we have a flight to catch, but a storm was suppose to blow in so we needed to make sure we got out of there before we got stranded there! Cody managed to get it together enough to make it back to the boat.

Somewhere in the middle of the ocean during the 2 hour boat ride back to Ketchikan, the boat motor died!!!! Yes, with no warning it completely died. Sever managed to get the back up motor running and had Holly driving the boat at about 4 kph...which would have taken us forever to get home, thats is if we ever got home..considering the storm that was coming in! So, while Holly was Captain, Sever started working on the motor, and Cody and Chelsea sat back thinking...oh no, this has got to be our fault, we are such bad luck! Just about the time another boat started to come in our direction to check on us, the motor started back up. Before we made it safely to shore we watched a half dozen whales bubble netting! It was pretty amazing... but don't worry, we didn't get the boat too close to them...we were done with unexpected adventures!



We can't thank Holly and Sever enough for giving us a true Alaskan adventure! Cody will finally admit now that there is indeed wildlife in Alaska. We saw bears, a beaver, whales, and even a swimming deer (sorry, we were unable to post the video), eagles, etc.