Eagles, Salmon, & Bears - Oh My!

This last week definitely started as a lazy one for me. I was bored with the rain, I had organized everything in the house and just didn't know what to do anymore. I continued the hunt for my job search and with hardly any exciting possibilities, I thought maybe I should start looking for some part-time jobs just to give me something to do during the day. I decided to apply for a temporary receptionist position at a Chiropractor's office. The appeal was: part-time, temporary, my last day would be the day before Eric's parents come up, and with such a short gig it hopefully allows some more creative positions in Juneau to open up. Within a day, I applied, interviewed, and got the job. :) I'm not too excited, as I feel like I'm demeaning my degree by answering phone calls and making appointments, but it's only temporary. I start today.

We also started the process for our wedding album. It was no small task organizing the 1300+ pictures and cutting it back to the suggested 55 needed for the album. But we got that done and only have to wait 6 weeks (!) to see the first proof. We also, finally, got the claims process started for all the broken furniture. The guy came in last week to assess the furniture. We got our new grill and our twin bed built today. We're supposed to be getting a new bookcase, but the guy can't find one similar. Couch got fixed, dresser and bike to be fixed, and mattress to get cashed out. All other small items got cashed out too.

We had explored downtown some while it was raining. Downtown is an experience! Think: San Francisco hills on crack. There was one hill we went down that our safety lock seat belts were actually holding us into our seats! It's crazy - I love it!

Towards the end of the week, the rain finally stopped! And it even stayed clear over the entire weekend! On Saturday, after running some errands and attempting to buy crab again with no success, we decided to try Perseverance Trail which started downtown. We heard it was one of the most popular trails, so we checked it out. Shortly after the trail begun we came across this:


We thought that we had to go through this door-thing to continue on the trail and were slightly taken aback. Until we got a little closer and noticed the trail continued to the left. Perseverance Trail follows the old ore mines from the early 1900's. This was an old mine entrance. We walked a little inside until Eric saw the sign "High Voltage" and then left. But the temperature difference surrounding this doorway was pretty amazing. There was at least a 20 degree drop!

After continuing through the lush green forest, the trail opened up to a valley filled with waterfalls streaming down the mountains. There are 3 small ones leading into the larger one in this picture, hard to see in the small picture. (I think if you click on the picture it will expand in a new browser or tab.)
A little further down the trail, we came to an even larger waterfall! It was beautiful and powerful!


After that, the trail started getting forest-y again. We arrived to this bridge over the roaring waters and it was amazing! This picture does not do this area justice. The waters were so loud that Eric and I couldn't even hear each other speak! This was my favorite area on the trail.


Perseverance Trail itself is only about 2 miles long, we decided to continue on to the Glory Hole Overlook which from the map didn't look that far away. By the time we got there, I was pretty tired. It wound up being about a 3.5 mile trek with a 700 ft increase in elevation. While that doesn't sound too bad, it was a constant incline in trail. With all the rain the week before we hadn't gotten a lot of exercise, so I was huffing and puffing. Below is the glory hole.


Or the big hole they blasted out of the mountain - probably for gold. There was a whole town built in this area for the mining back around the 1920's and today there's not even a single trace of it. It's amazing how it hasn't even been 100 years and you would've never known a town ever existed there. The trail was loads of fun, and once we left Perseverance Trail there was not one other person on our trail or in sight. It felt like we were completely alone in the beauty of the mountains.

On Sunday we got invited to join another Pharmacist, his fiance, and their friends in from Sitka, on the West Glacier Trail - which obviously ran on the west side of Mendenhall Glacier. Sounded like fun, but I was afraid since we had hiked 7 miles the day before, that I wouldn't be able to hike too long with these guys who've lived in Alaska for months! I asked Eric if he could slack it up a little bit so I didn't look like the loser. :) Once Eric checked the stats on this trail, he found that it was another 7 mile round trip trail, but this one had an elevation increase of 1300 ft. - double yesterday's...

I agreed anyway because we had planned to do a hike that day and this way we got to socialize more. But since we were going in our own car, we could turn around at any point. The first mile or so of the trail was flat... which was great for my sore legs.. but made me worry about what was still to come. Now instead of 1300 ft. in 7 miles, it was now 1300 ft. in 5.5 ish. Until we reached this:


The hike turned more into a rock climb. But better a rock climb than a steep hill! It was fun, and shortly after that we arrived at this view:


That's the middle of the glacier, not the bottom nor the top. There were a few waterfalls around the glacier that were in fuller force than when we had visited in March. The mountain across the glacier apparently has mountain goats often. We took out our binoculars (Thanks Twan!) and searched... but found nothing. At this point, one of the girls seemed exhausted and wanted to turn back. WHAT? I wasn't even tired and we had hiked 7 miles the day before! I was ecstatic! :) We convinced her to go a little more, but that was it. I like hiking with these folks! I am not the first one to want to turn back. I guess that's because I usually hike with Eric, and back in the day his brother, who could hike 15 miles a day and still want to keep going. So this was a nice surprise!

After the hike we headed home for lunch and a little break before going out to attempt fishing again. Before fishing, we decided to stop along Salmon creek, where the day before we had seen tons of people and birds around this area. Perhaps the salmon were spawning? Yup! What a sight to see! I think this may be one of the best things we've seen/done in Juneau so far. This is definitely something to see in your lifetime. There were hundreds and hundreds of salmon in super shallow water swimming against the current to find their spawning spot. The water was so shallow in some areas that the fish were almost entirely out of the water, swimming on the water surface just to get closer to where they wanted to be.



Where the water was a little deeper, the water was so clear you could just see the groups of them holding their ground against the current. Eagles were everywhere, snatching fish from the water to eat. The fish were so pretty. They had tiger-like stripes of emerald green and maroon, which you can kind of see in the above picture. These are called Chum Salmon and are normally silver. They change colors when they're spawning.

Take a good look at this picture. It really doesn't do it's justice as to what we experienced. But if you notice every speck, splash and dot - each of them is a fish. You could just look up the stream and see the salmon everywhere! It was so cool, words can't really experience how awed I was by this spectacle.

After spending a good chunk of time at Salmon Creek, we headed down the road to attempt fishing. Shortly after we got there we noticed that everyone was pulling out fish. But, a bunch we're throwing them back. Hmm.. so now we needed to find out why. They were catching the Chum Salmon (or the spawning ones) and while we don't know for sure, I think it's illegal to kill them, but we've also heard that since they are full of fish eggs and on their way to die - that they don't taste very good. We met a woman who told us to put fish eggs on our hook and that we'd catch more (so since she killed one, maybe it isn't illegal?). She put them straight in my hand.. kinda slimy, kinda squishy, but not too bad. It was odd though...

After Eric attempting (I wasn't up to the fishing, but was happy to keep him company) a few times with no luck, he realized he had the wrong hook. So we went to the grocery store to get the ones we needed, headed home for dinner, and then back out to try the new hook. Once we got back we found the eagles swarming all over the area to eat up the scraps left behind by the earlier fisherman. Although a little blurry, I really like this picture. Since the sun was low, and since I'm still learning my new camera, I didn't have it on the best setting. But this guy is sitting on a fish head and was eating away at it until I approached him.

For those of you who don't know, this is a bald eagle. But bald eagles don't go 'bald' until about 5 years of age. You can see this guy's starting to go white.

The new hooks were a success! ...kind of...

Eric caught a fish!! Can you see it at the shore line? Can you also see the tiger-like stripes? Yup it's a Chum. Damn. Can't eat it. A few more like this before it got too dark to really see what we were catching. So we at least know that we can catch fish now! We just need to start catching fish we can actually eat. :)

In other news, we've seen 5 bears in 5 days!! All from the living room - we LOVE our house! We met a few people over the weekend who have been here for 8 months or so and still haven't seen one. We've seen 12 now? We've lost count. I've stopped naming them because most of the bears we only see for like 30 seconds, so I can't distinguish if they are new guys or oldies. It's taken me another 10 bears or so to be able to snap a picture because they move so fast and I even keep my camera on the windowsill. But this morning one sat out our window for a solid 5 minutes and I was able to finally get some good ones!


He (or She) was a big one! Did I mention how much we love our house?! :)

Gah! The rain won't stop!

All my posts mention rain - it won't stop raining here and it's starting to bug me. We managed to get a couple nice days last week, but when you get a taste of the good stuff it stings when it's gone. But when the sun comes out and the skies clear up, it reminds you just how beautiful this place is. So, once again, we didn't have too interesting of a week. So, this should be a short update. :)

The best part of last week was we booked the flights for our honeymoon! We will be spending 2 weeks on the South Island of New Zealand and 1 week on the beaches of the Cook Islands, in the South Pacific! We are super excited! It takes forever to fly anywhere good here, nor is it cheap, so we figured we might as well go somewhere that is far to get to from anywhere. So it will take us a horrible 22 hours in total to get to New Zealand, but to go to Central America, Caribbean, or Florida it would've taken us 18 - 24 hours. Where as anywhere else in this country you could get to those places within 10. Fortunately the price difference was minimal too, so the next step was Eric asking for all that time off. His boss didn't even blink when he asked, in fact she's going in February for a couple weeks! So now to plan the rest of it... We have some time though, we'll be going mid-October until the beginning of November. We hear the fall is the worst season in Juneau, so we figured that was the best time to get out. In New Zealand, it will be spring and in the Cook Islands it will be a warm summer temperature. And the fun part? Eric still has vacation days to play with! That's one very nice perk of the PHS.

Over the weekend, I got a little homesick. Like I said, the rain was really getting to me. We've been skyping with friends and family, which is great! But sometimes I think it's makes me miss them more. If anyone else is interested in Skyping, just let me know! You can find us as one of the 5 Metterhausen's on there. (The others are family.) Fortunately, Monday came with no rain and a care package from Meagan (my maid of honor at our wedding) which made all things better. :)

We checked out the Alaskan Brewing company with one of the guys Eric works with, where we had heard they just serve you as many beer samples as you want... for free! And these beer samples are about 6 oz., so it's a hefty, free serving! Alaskan makes some pretty delicious beers, and I am no beer fan. But there was one that stood out.. it tasted and smelled exactly like beef jerky. Ick! It was terrible! Eric and Grant liked it, but gross. :) Then there was another one that was like a sweet brandy beer... double ick. Tasted too syrupy, but again, the boys liked it. But it was fun, and we'll be bringing all friends there to taste the wonders of Alaskan beer.

We also checked out another harbor to see what they were selling. We had heard rumors of king salmon and shrimp. So we headed out to find that you buy king salmon fresh from the boat - can't beat that! The flaw? They sell it in one whole fish and at $8.50/lb. it's still not as cheap as we thought it we be. The bigger flaw? It's one whole fish! So you have to buy all 20 lbs. of it! Not only do we not know how to fillet a fish, we also don't know what we would do with 20 lbs of it! Haha... so until we start catching our own, invest in a freezer and a vacuum seal food saving system, we won't be buying king salmon fresh at the harbor. We tried to then go get crab, but we think we went too late because nobody was there.

So despite the fact that I'm not working, I'm meeting people on my errands. I'm always interested to hear if people are from Juneau or where they're from and what brought them here. Well, through this quest, I'm learning that nobody is from Juneau. I think the only person I've met who's from Juneau is our realtor. Everyone else is from everywhere else. Pennsylvania, Arizona, Oregon, Wyoming, California, Washington, Idaho - that seems to be the most popular. It seems that most people got a job offer to come up here and were excited about the location, so came up for a new adventure. Sound familiar? But it makes me wonder... if nobody is from Juneau... is it because nobody wants to stay in Juneau? Hmm... something to consider...

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Well, it's been slightly depressing here lately. It's been raining, well... we're on day 9-ish of straight rain. And, normally, rain in Juneau is like a light mist - where you can still go out and enjoy the outdoors, you just come home with a head full of frizz. But for the past 9 days it's been a steady and heavy rain. Today, and the next 2 days are supposed to be warm and sunny or partly cloudy, but so far it's still rain.

All this rain, made for a not so interesting last week. We did get our new furniture delivered though! We now have tables - coffee, end and dining. And of course, still trying to get everything put away. I also did a lot of cooking last week - made my first cheesecake! It was delicious and pretty easy. I've apparently also sent a lot of desserts into Eric's work. So much so, that this week they're already asking what's on the menu. :) They may be disappointed because at this point I wasn't planning any large dessert for this week. We'll see what happens.

While our week was not all that interesting, our weekend was pretty entertaining and exciting. On Saturday we ran a bunch of errands to start the day. The previous weekend we had noticed a pick-up truck in the mall parking lot that had a sign for crabs. So this weekend, we decided to stop by, check it out, and buy some crabs. We bought 2 - 2lb. ish Dungeness crabs for $6 a piece - ground beef is the same price as that up here! But they were live...and not rubber-banded. And they just put 2 crabs in a trash bag, 2 LIVE crabs in a thin trash bag. Crab claws are pretty sharp so they started tearing holes in that bag right away. I was a little freaked out the whole way home, as you could hear and see them moving around in the back seat. We were originally going to run more errands after picking up the crabs, but we're afraid if we did stop somewhere and the crabs broke out of the bag, we would never get them out of the car. So we stopped home, put them in a cooler and put about 40lbs. of weight on top of the cooler so they wouldn't get out.

As you can see they were pretty big suckers. Once we got back from our errands we then had to determine how the heck to cook them. Cooking them, actually, is pretty ridiculously easy. All you do is put them in a steamer and steam cook for about 10 minutes. The tougher part was getting the crabs from the cooler to the steamer. I let Eric handle this entire process... :)



Once cooked, the next hardest thing was cleaning them. You have to take the crab apart some to clean out all the guts... nicely said, huh? But that's how they describe it all when you search for instructions online on how to do this. Again, I let Eric handle all this. :) He struggled a bit with the first one, but the second one he cleaned with ease. Serve with a little butter and oh my goodness it was the best crab I've ever had! One of those crabs fed the both of us, so I used the other one to make a Crab and Artichoke dip, recipe provided by Laurel - delicious. So we may be eating crab every Saturday and we'll most definitely be making for guests - provided this pick up truck continues to sell crabs in the parking lot. :) Next time I want to get a few extras and make fresh crab cakes out of them! But we also need a bigger pot, as our largest could only hold one of these at a time.

We also tried to go to a Farmer's Market in town, hoping maybe we could get some better produce prices. Well... the only produce sold at this market was rhubarb. Everything else resembled a flea market - consisting of a whopping 4 tents. We will not be attending this 'farmers' market again. It was pretty lame.

For the 4th of July weekend, I was pretty excited for the fireworks. I thought it would be pretty cool to have the fireworks light up all the mountains and reflect off the channel. They were supposed to be Saturday night, but were canceled due to bad weather. So, they got postponed until Sunday night. Sunday morning we went to the 4th of July parade in downtown Juneau. It was pretty fun, although raining. The only downside was apparently they aren't allowed to throw candy anymore - they have to physically hand it to someone. Well that means that us 'big' kids aren't going to get the random pieces that fall to our feet. :) Our favorite thing was this dump truck that sort of danced down the street. I'm not really sure how else to describe it, but try to imagine a super huge dump truck bouncing to the left and right down the street. We were impressed, never seen anything like that before.That night the fireworks were a go! ... At midnight. Because, of course, that's when it gets dark around here. On the way downtown, the radio was hyping it up so we got excited for the show. It was a good show, up until the finale.. because there was NO finale! That's the best part of the fireworks! Eric claims there was a finale, but when they set off 10 fireworks at once and call that a finale... well I disagree. As we were walking back to the car, Eric jokingly said, "Outdone by Chicago on a Wednesday night." So that was a little disappointing but we brought the camera out to see how it would handle fireworks and we got some cool shots. Unfortunately, the weather was still really cloudy so we didn't get to see the fireworks illuminate the mountains, like I had hoped. But had fun, nonetheless.



Then, on Monday, since once again the weather was predicted to be bad. Eric and I painted the master bathroom a beautiful blue color. We also built an over the toilet cabinet for extra storage. It's amazing the transformation a coat of paint and some rearranging does. We used all the same fixtures and mirror as the previous owners, but by moving it around some and the new coat of paint, it looks 100 times better!

Then, the best part of the weekend, we also tried Skype for the first time! First with Dad and family. And then with Matt and Meagan to play Settlers! Surprisingly, it worked wonderfully! I'm in love with Skype. What a cool program, really makes you feel more at home even when you're thousands of miles away. And the best part? It's FREE!

Lastly, here are the pictures of our place that I promised. It's still a little messy as we continue to find places for things, but we are getting close and I'm starting to plan where pictures should be hung. But I'm also trying to decide, first, if I want to paint. Fortunately none of the walls are white, so it's just a matter of if I want to keep the walls the colors that they are.

A view of our living area from the upstairs loft. Obviously, this is our living room and kitchen. Notice the views out of our windows - just forest, hence why we see bears. When you lay on the couch you can see all the birds in the area flying close to the tops of trees.

This is our unfinished loft. The twin bed lying against the wall is one of the things the moving company broke - well they just lost pieces, but pieces necessary to build it. It will be our computer and art area, with a twin bed and tv in case someone wants to use it. Through the door, in the back, right corner is our "attic". It holds our water heater, but also serves as some much needed storage as well. It's a decent size which is really nice.

Standing in our living room, here is a photo of our kitchen, dining room and hall way - you can see the laundry closet. Through that hallway is our pantry, 2nd bathroom, and bedroom.

This is our Guest Bedroom, where all you will sleep when you come visit! It's a little messy right now, as it's kind of like our working room. We put stuff in there that we need to install or that we don't know where to put just yet. And it's also our donation room, all things we don't want we're putting in there. Our condo board discussed the option of doing a yard sale at the end of this month, so we're keeping everything for now, just in case we can make some money of it all. But our first guests come mid-August, so it will all be gone before then - sale or no sale.

Here is our Master Bedroom. The main door is to the right of the dresser, the other doorway is our walk-in closet that also leads to our bathroom. We have a nice large window on the wall I'm standing at, not photographed because the light was giving the camera too much glare, that you can see the top of the mountain from.