Tuesday, July 21, 2009

A Salcha Kind of Sunday


The weekend of July 17th proved to be very uneventful. Mike and I spent Saturday at the Farmer’s Market smiling at people, encouraging them to smell our candles and closing the sale. After the smiling, smelling and selling, we headed off for a quick bite to eat. We decided to try the Alaska Roasting Company for some flatbread pizza. With full tummies, we headed off to visit a new church, Bethel Church. We had a great evening of praise and worship and watched the last video in a series by Andy Stanley. What an incredible evening at Bethel! However, it’s hard to mess up with Andy Stanley!

On Sunday, Mike and I slept in until 7:00 a.m. Feeling like we had wasted half the day, we got up and got ready to go on a little road adventure. We got out a map, closed our eyes and put our finger on a spot. This would be the place we would spend the day. With great excitement, we opened our eyes and found that we would spend the day in Russia. Since we couldn’t drive to Russia, (we can see it from our back yard, though), we decided to drive to Salcha.

Salcha is about 30 miles south of North Pole. Our destination was the Salcha River State Recreational Area. When we arrived, we saw a smattering of people in the river with their fishing poles. They were fishing for King Salmon. How exciting! We waited and watched for someone to reel in the “Big One.” Ten minutes into our watching, Mike and I gave up fish watching and walked along the river bank and found a nice secluded spot nestled in the rocks. We parked ourselves and began to skip rocks in the river. Mike would get four or five skips out of his. My fun was found in flicking tiny pebbles in the river. After about 45 minutes of skipping and flipping, I looked at Mike and said, “Honey, it’s Sunday afternoon and we are sitting at a river throwing rocks into it. Wow! We are really boring people.” He turned to me with the sun shining into his squinting eyes and said, “Yup” and went back to skipping rocks. I must admit, it was a very peaceful 45 minutes.

Realizing that we needed to head back to North Pole, Mike and I strolled along a wooded path and suddenly made an amazing discovery! What was this find that had us so incredibly elated??? It was fresh, wild raspberries! Mike ventured into the brush and began to pick them. He popped the first one in his mouth, closed his eyes and savored the taste. He picked another one and gave it to me. Forgetting that fresh fruit should be washed thoroughly, I popped it in and felt the sweet juices tickle my taste buds.

One raspberry would not be enough. I was suddenly feeling very greedy. We had to find more. We needed to find all the berries in the entire park. No one else could have them. They were mine! All mine! As we walked along, we ate the berries as fast as we could pick them. They were delicious! Once we had our fill of red, juicy, fresh Alaskan raspberries, we waddled to the truck, crawled in and enjoyed our drive back home.


Mike contemplates applying for a fishing license while posing.


The log cabin on the river looks a bit dilapidated.


Mike watches for thorns while picking fresh raspberries.


Waiting to be picked, these raspberries did not last long.

Eat'em while they're fresh!

No comments:

Post a Comment