North to Alaska - Clamming

Tiffany, Brett and Dad ~ booted up, clam guns ready

Suzette and Tori sporting their high-fashion clam diggers

Saturday, Jim and Uncle Stowell took us all clamming down at the beach near Deep Creek campground south of Ninilchik. We loaded up with clamming boots, spades, clam guns, buckets, four-wheelers and our cameras.

Uncle Stowell, Aunt Sue & Jim ~ our teachers and supervisors

We headed south on the Sterling Highway for a Razor Clam dig. It was tons of fun, and we found lots of clams. It is harder than I expected, once you find a dimple in the sand, you place your clam gun over the dimple and push the gun down deep into the sand, then cover the small holes in the handle with your fingers and pull with all your might.

Brittany, giving it her all!

You can watch the water in the surrounding sand literally being sucked out along with the sand as you lift the sand up and let it drop in a pile on the beach. Your clamming partner, then looks through the sand to see if you got your clam, if not, you dig again, until you have found him.

Finally, Sandy - a big one!

We found some good six inch clams and even a few butterfly clams, we also found lots of purple starfish along the shore. The clams all went into a bucket of water and after we had a couple of these full, we headed back to the vehicles.

A group project ~that must have been one big clam!  Shrek, Ray, Tori, Brittany, Aunt Sue, Cory

and in the background: Jim , Suzette, Larry, and Jay

Check out this sand crab~ Brett

Along the cliffs behind the beach, eagles perched on the rocks, the cliff edge, and the trees, scores of them, just waiting. The fishermen clean their halibut and other catch down the beach from where we were clamming and the eagles wait for the entrails to be thrown out. Yearlings are all brown, it is after they are four to five years old and mature, they gain the white head and tail. They are so huge and it was just exciting to watch them soaring out over the ocean.

Happy Clammers, after the Happy Wok

 Cory, Brittany,  Shrek (Jonathan), Tori, Brett, Tiffany, Sue, Sandy, Ray, Larry, Front: Suzette and Jay

In the honor of the J family tradition, we stopped at the Happy Wok restaurant and had Chinese for lunch.

Uncle Stowell teaching us how to clean the crabs ~ it was an assembly line group effort: Brittany, Uncle Stowell, Dad (Larry) and Ray

That night, Suzette fixed us clam fritters and fried clams for dinner. Jim grilled some ribs, chicken and bratwurst - quite a feast! Yumm! They were so good! And we felt so spoiled! Our Anchorage family went over and above the extra-ordinary hosting us - they did amazing things!

Visiting around the pot-belly stove on the deck: Judy, Janice, Venna, Matchko, Jim, Stowell

That night after midnight, after the sensible ones went to bed, everyone else went fishing off the dock in the Kenai River, then after that they decided to go fishing at a nearby lake and they caught quite a few nice looking fish!