Thursday, June 14, 2007

Insane Summer Road Trip #1: Ninilchik for Razor Clams

Myself, the S.O., two dogs and a coworker will pile into the Soob on a mad dash (after work) tomorrow to the Kenai Peninsula for one of my favorite summer hunting/gatherings activities: digging razor clams.

And what's a mere 600 miles, anyway?

Digging clams beats fishing for a number of reasons, mostly because they are a heck of a lot easier to get and require nothing more than an enthusiasm for playing in the mud and a clam shovel.

It's been a bit tough to post lately, what with the 1.5 job thing. But a synopsis of all the posts I'm not writing:

The world continues to flumox, amuse and depress, does it not? At the CabinDwelling Compound, beer has served as a remedy of sorts on several occasions. There was the 'Someone Gave us Half a Half Barrel of Silver Gulch' celebration, followed by the 'We Still Didn't Manage to Finish Off The Keg Somebody Gave Us' get together, followed by the 'Significant Other's Birthday' fete.

Besides beer drinking, numerous attempts have been made at the Chicken Coop to Be site. (Attempts made without beer involved for safety reasons.) It's a fixer upper project which means that we'll spend more time fixing it than would be required to just build a damned new one. If we were sensible, we'd just knock the whole thing down and start from scratch. I planned to just nail a few pieces of scrap wood here and there to the frame to make it stable enough to hold press plates and chicken wire. (And keep the birds in. And not collapse on them and kill them before we do.)

Thanks to the delays, (and there are always delays in construction, whether it is half-assed construction like I practice, or the professional kind) - it is getting late to get chicks. After all the talk of our planned Great Chicken Massacre of 2007 - it turns out we might not actually raise them.

The S.O. has suggested a substitute for chickens: Rabbits. I believe I agreed sometime around 1 a.m. to the idea and now face the possibility that we will be killing bunnies this fall. I'll cook rabbit, but I'm not killing any. And yes, there is a story behind that.

But must run off, have to pack up the Soob for two frenetic days of digging razor clams and trying to find a place to fish not entirely overrun by tourists.

Photo above found at http://wdfw.wa.gov.

7 comments:

Ishmael said...

So about 20 years ago when the movie Roger and Me was in the theaters, I saw it at a little arthouse place off Broadway in Seattle. When they showed the scene of the woman raising cute little bunnies two little girls (about 7 and 8 maybe) there with their dad ooh and awwed. Later, when the film came back to show the same woman clubbing to death and stripping the hides off the now-grown rabbits, the girls let out huge shrieks of horror and started crying uncontrollable. The father gathered them up and left, most likely for ice cream and counseling. You weren't one of them, were you?

CabinDweller said...

Nope, I wasn't one of those little girls.

But I have similar bunny trauma.

Ishmael said...

My little brother won a little white bunny at the Easter Egg Hunt at Goose Lake in Anchorage when we were five and six or so. We kept it in the house for a number of months and both had to clean up after it as it hopped and pooped across the living room. Until one day our folks said they decided to send it to a bunny farm, where it would be happy among its own kind.

Funny thing though, we had some mighty fine homemade fried chicken a few nights later.... I've never told my little brother my theory, though....

Ishmael said...

Oh, how was the clamming? Heard the weather and tides were pretty good for it. If there weren't deadly red tide here on the rock I'd be gathering some tasty, tasty bivalves, too.

Ishmael said...

This might be late for this trip, but next time: Try fishing at the mouth of the Swanson River. It's past Nikiski, just before you get to Captain Cook State Recreation Area. Just a few locals there and pretty much zero tourists. Just go through Kenai on the Spur Highway, past all the oil refineries and gun nuts. It's about 20 miles up the road from Kenai, but it's a pleasant drive. Um, watch out for the bears. And take some time to go down to the beach while you're there. Very nice on a summer day.

CabinDweller said...

Just back - 1129 miles on the Soob.

We did alright, but didn't limit out on any day.

Day 1: Ah, coastal weather. I forgot about freezing your ass off in June, living here in toasty Fairbanks.

Day 2: Sunblock would have been a great idea. Am burned.

John said...

Besides beer drinking?

Shame.