Just Around the River Bend

Today was a beautiful 75° day in the bush. We were tossing around ideas for some fun in the sun when we got a text from our friends inviting us out for a day on their boat. 10 minutes later, we were packed and ready to go. It was so exciting to finally get to take the ONE road out of Bethel (the river)!

We headed out around lunchtime and started upriver toward the (distant) Kilbuck mountains. The Kuskokwim river originates just behind Kilbucks in the Alaska Range and flows for 700 miles all the way to the Bering Sea. It is the longest free-flowing river in the US. And it is SUPER curvy! The whole ride was turns and bends, hardly any straight spots. 

The Kuskoskim is also the lifeline for many of rural native villages outside of Bethel-and the highway by which many of our patients reach us from those villages in Bethel. The first village we passed on our journey was Kwethluk. It's one of the bigger villages: 11 square miles and 700 people.

Just past Kwethluk, we got to see several fish camps along the river! Rows of bright orange filets hanging to dry, the smell of sweet smoke from the smokehouses, and native summer tents/houses dotted the river bank. It was awesome to get a glimpse of this part of the Alaskan native culture. These fish camps are how natives the bush feed their families for the whole year. 

Among the fish camp territory our friends had previously discovered an abandoned school campus, so they took us there for our first stop of the day. There were several building still standing, including the school itself, a church, and a housing unit. The place had a 70's vibe, but the creepy part was that there were still desks, books, toys, etc. lying around as if it had been abandoned yesterday. 

The schoolhouse

Straight out of a horror flick. Eeeek.

Overgrown jungle gym. Someone needs to fire up that lawnmower and put it to good use.

This desk had an ink well in it. Old schooooool!

Housing unit

Once we were thoroughly creeped out, we left to head farther upriver for some more exploring. We made several stops along the way and made all sorts of fun discoveries:

Open tundra, baby! (That's Tucker the dog in the background - not a bear. But we did see bear tracks!)

Wild salmon berries

Tundra spider. Looks interestingly like a salmon berry.

Our ride.

Our awesome Bethel friends.

Kilbuck mountains, Kuskoskim river in the background.

We were having so much fun exploring that we barely noticed how far upriver we had gotten when the driver realized we were down to half a tank of gas. Whoops. Luckily the way home was downriver, so we made it back around 10 pm with plenty of fuel (to fill a shot glass). It's still weird to me that at 10 pm, the sun shines just as bright as at 5 pm, so I was still amped up when we got home. Hence the reason I finally got back on the blog train tonight (:

Happy rest of the weekend, all!