Reflecting on a vacation of a lifetime!!

(by Russ) We fly out tomorrow morning at 930 am to begin our long trip home. It seems like we just got here! Kayla, Brett and Oren were patient hosts and the only reason we are here. We entertained ourselves with days of the most phenomenal fishing I have ever seen. I learned Kayla's "just back up"method of landing salmon (back up rather than reel) which is very effective to land them quicker. We have met very friendly people here. We have seen how the adults and kids in the community react with excitement when they see Kayla, Brett and Oren coming. We have seen Arctic Alaska by plane, boat, canoe, 4 wheeler and on foot. This is a place I could live in a heart beat. Kayla, Brett and Oren's life here is a good one and will be good for many years if they so choose. I can only imagine how Troy, Carson, Brant and Tucker would react to the fishing. We got here 8/30/11 and leave the village 9/9/11. We had a few days of some rain, 4 warm sunny wind free days in a row, and several days of a cold north wind. Temperatures ranged from the 20's some nights to as high as 60's during the day. Grandpa got to see Arctic Alaska and meet some interesting people. We put on about 250 4 wheeler miles going to and from different parts of the river riding 3 or 4 on the wheeler!! Gas costs $10 a gallon. Groceries are super expensive at the store. Family and salmon, trout, whitefish and grayling fishing in Alaska- certainly a trip I will never forget!!! If Kayla, Brett and Oren come back, we can do it again!!!!!

No sooner did I get done with writing this post when the phone rang with a neighbor calling that he had a front half of a caribou for Kayla, Brett and Oren. Stan and Doris were over at the time and said they also had some moose left over from Brett's moose from last spring that Brett had shared with them. Brett and I went to pick up the moose from Stan's freezer and we stopped to pick up the unskinned front half on the caribou from a neighbor. We spent the next several hours taking care of the caribou. Everyone shares hunting success with others in the village. It is a unique place! We are taking fish, caribou and moose meat home!!