Boating Up Tustumena Lake By Andy

Right now we are staying at Matt and Marlene’s mansion with their six children while they and their oldest son Shane, who is thirteen, are off in the wild blue yonder chasing caribou.

I dropped them off yesterday, and that was a story in itself.

First we traveled to the river where the launch ramp was and put the boat into the water, whereupon it became evident that there was something wrong with the propeller.

We had gotten there just barely in time to take them to the trailhead in time to get to where they wanted to go, so that threw a wrench into the plans.

It turns out that Matt’s cousin had ruined the propeller a few weeks before and had put another one back on, but there was a plastic insert in there that was supposed to shatter when you hit a rock, and it had shattered, and it had never been replaced.

So we went to the marine shop and figured out what was missing and got a spare propeller and a spare plastic insert and the tools to do the required work, then headed back to the river to fix up the boat.

After we got everything back together, we headed up the river.

It was the Kasilof river, which flows out of Tustumena lake, which is glacier-fed. The water is a beautiful turquoise tint from the glacial silt. It looks like someone dumped truckloads of food coloring into the water.

We motored up the river until we got up to the head of the river and we had to be careful there because the water was shallow at the edge of the lake.

After clearing the bottom and getting out onto the high lake:) we motored around twenty miles across the turquoise water and found the trailhead.

There were lots of wild roses there and there were rose hips galore. I ate quite a few, since by this time it was getting on towards twelve o’clock.

After dropping them off, I boated back across the lake and down the river. It was a bit tricky getting the boat loaded onto the trailer by myself in the current, but I found it worked best if I let the trailer be a bit shallow and approached from the downstream side so that I could fight the current with the motor and get the front landed on the trailer, then kind of push the boat onto the trailer with the motor/propeller.

I got back to Matts in the mid afternoon, where Tabitha was holding down the fort with the younger children.

They had been having a great time doing somersaults and cartwheels in the living room as well as having a treasure hunt and playing store and lots of other fun things.

Last night we made s’mores and jumped on the trampoline until late.

Our family of two children has grown to eight. It’s kinda fun.

Andy