Salmon
You can easily remember the five types of Pacific salmon (and their common nicknames) using the Five Finger Method. Also, like different cuts of meat have different uses, so do the different types of salmon.
- Thumb: Chum (Dog Salmon) Trick: Thumb rhymes with Chum.
- This salmon is good yet often fed to dogs.
- Index Finger: Sockeye (Red Salmon) Trick: Use your pointer finger to point or “sock” someone in the eye (Sockeye).
- This is the salmon of choice for smoking.
- Middle Finger: King (Chinook Salmon) Trick: Your middle finger is the tallest and largest, just as King salmon are the largest of all the salmon.
- The king is the one that is served on special occasions and to immediate family. Natives are allowed one per day.
- Ring Finger: Silver (Coho Salmon) Trick: The ring finger is the finger you wear a silver ring on. Silver salmon jump the highest
- These would be the salmon of choice for a BBQ.
- Pinky Finger: Pink (Humpy Salmon) Trick: The smallest finger stands for Pink salmon.
- This salmon holds up well to the canning process.
Plants
Our naturalist was a self professed plant nerd. Here are a few things that he pointed out:
Mosquitos
Birds
Mammals
Caribou and reindeer are the same animal just a different name. They don’t shed their antlers like the moose. Both the male and female have antlers. The male has a point in the middle and the females don’t. Reindeer are smaller than moose.
Pika are a small rock dwelling mouse. Every carnivore wants to eat them so they are hard to find.
Scat
Alaska Train
We boarded the train from Denali to Anchorage. There were about 12 in our car. We met trains going up and it was standing room only.
We saw a bear from the train. He was on the outskirts of town digging through a dumpster. Bears eat anything even dead animals.
Flagstoppers
A “flag stop” refers to a designated route where you can literally wave down a train from the side of the tracks to board, or ask the conductor to let you off in the remote backcountry. One flag stop train called the Hurricane Turn Train is one of the few remaining flag-stop trains in the United States. It runs along a 56-mile stretch of the Alaska wilderness between Talkeetna and Hurricane Gulch, serving as a vital lifeline for off-grid Alaskans and a scenic drop-off for hikers and rafters.
Denali
We asked the park ranger the proper way to say Denali. There are five different ways and all are acceptable. The word means The Great One.
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