Boat trip along the river

Nick had managed to talk Archie, the guy that runs the Corp store amonst other businesses in the village, into letting him borrow one of his boats whilst he’s away on vacation around Anchorage. The guy’s got three boats, so sinking one of them wouldn’t be all that bad 😉

But, after a couple of days where the weather was a bit patchy, today turned out really nice to go exploring up the river. Was kinda weird seeing the village from the river whilst actually being on the water rather than when walking or riding a snowmobile across it whilst frozen:

Koda guided the way, seeming quite happy sitting at the front of the boat with the wind in his face! Apart from the odd duck along the river catching his attention and wanting to jump in after it, he was pretty good. Certainly enjoyed running across the tundra when we moored up a couple of times as he got to explore without any other animals around.

Having the freedom to just the pull the boat into the side of the river and jump out was pretty cool, and it was so peaceful without kids running around or 4-wheelers driving past!

Getting the binoculars out, you could clearly see Tunt way off in the distance, and even on this photo the school and community center are apparent (if you look close enough, honest!). The GPS said we were about 4 1/2 miles from Tunt if you took a straight line, but it’s more zig-zagging through all the waterways!

We saw a couple of beaver mounds along the way too – this was a good sized one:

Not quite what they look like on nature programs, though as there’s not a great deal of wood for them to make them, they did a pretty good job. No signs of them damning any of the streams either.

Moving through the small waterways was pretty tricky, and also pretty easy to get lost I guess if you didn’t pay attention! It was all quite deep, so no problems with the boat getting grounded.

Nick had brought along a couple of guns incase he came across any animals along the way, and as we moored up heading back to Tunt he found an old soda can so mounted it on a branch to take some shots at it. First time I’d fired anything other than paintball gun, but managed to hit it first time from about 25 feet!

Can’t take credit for firing it right off the branch, as Nick got a clean shot right through the wood, but I fired a whole load of .22’s through it first 🙂

Driving the boat back to Tunt was pretty good fun, though I didn’t expect it to be so much work to keep the motor pointed in the right way. There’s a lot of vibrations coming back through it and takes a good bit of force to turn the boat, but I enjoyed it.

Hopefully Dana managed to get a few photos of Kat + I together I’ll post tomorrow. Was nice just to get out of the village as since the ice started breaking up has felt a lot more isolated with not being able to just walk or ride wherever you want. Least we’ll be flying out in a few days, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what the area looks like from the air during the summer without all the snow + ice!