RACHEL MASON: Okay. We're in the home of Warren and Mary Huss. It's August 5th, 2010.

My name's Rachel Mason, I'm here with Karen Brewster and Shannon Kovac, and we're working on a project for the Kenai Fjords National Park on the Exit Glacier.

We're looking at traditional activities around the Exit Glacier in an effort to determine what the traditional activities have been there.

So, Warren, if we could start with you. WARREN HUSS: Yeah.

RACHEL MASON: First, we'd like to just know some of your early days in Seward, how you got here, what -- what your -- how you got involved with this area.

WARREN HUSS: Okay. We moved here in 1971, fall of '71, and I came here as a dentist.

We had been in -- two years in Goose Bay, Labrador, in the military, but I was originally from Michigan, so we moved here just because I like to hunt and fish.

And Mary had kind of enjoyed the remote, small town atmosphere that we experienced in Labrador.

So, we came up here on a five year lark to start a dental practice here in Seward, and at the end of five years, we never talked about moving, we've just been here ever since. I retired six years ago, but --

RACHEL MASON: Were you the first dentist here?

WARREN HUSS: No, there had been several dentists here. The first dentist came here in 1917 and practiced in the Arcade building, which is now a vacant lot kitty corner from the Yukon Bar.

And he practiced here two years until that building burned in a large fire they had here in town.

And then there had been several dentists in and out on a fairly short term stay.

They would come in, and usually what they'd do is they'd get their dental license, practice here for six months, and then head up to Anchorage.

The last kind of permanent dentist was Dick Williams, he was here up through, I think, 1968, and he was practiced here for about three and a half years.

The rest of them were here for just very short periods of time.

And then I guess I'm the longest serving dentist because I was -- practiced here for, well, going on 33 years I practiced here in town. So...

RACHEL MASON: What kind of hunting did you do when you first got here?

WARREN HUSS: A little bit of everything. Obviously, when I was younger, I did a lot of, like, moose hunting.

We hunted sheep, goats around here. Not -- there aren't many goats around here, but up the road towards -- in the Crescent Lake area, and Carter Lake area, we hunted goat -- sheep.

We hunted goats out along the coast, next bay to the east, Day Harbor, up along the Ellsworth Glacier, we just hunted up in the mountains.

I did a lot of hunting up in the area just to the -- across the river from the park now, there's a big stone bridge about, oh, it's mile 8, I think.

RACHEL MASON: Could you mark the areas where you hunted before, or -- WARREN HUSS: Let's see. RACHEL MASON: -- or maybe not necessarily like pinpointing exact spot.

WARREN HUSS: Yeah. Let's see here. I've got to find the place here. Where are we. Resurrection.

Exit Glacier, so it would be back in here.

We hunted up in these mountains up in here.

This -- I believe this -- this doesn't connect through here, but this was a drainage that comes down and crosses a road, so we hunted on these areas up in here, on the mountaintops.

KAREN BREWSTER: For sheep or goats? WARREN HUSS: Those are goats up in that area. RACHEL MASON: Oh, okay.

WARREN HUSS: You don't find many sheep down close to the -- the coast here because there's something to do with the saltwater, it does something to their hooves -- RACHEL MASON: Really?

WARREN HUSS: -- and they get a fungus or something. I've been told that.

So most of what we hunted around here locally were goats, and then we hunted goats over --

Well, I hunted -- well, it's off the map up this way, too, but up in, let's see, Caines Head, well, it'd be up in just n this area up here, we hunted goats.

And then up 4th of July, I come over Thumb Cove, we hunted goat up in here, on these mountains up here.

They're accessed off Thumb Cove. There's a Lake Creek that drains into Thumb Cove, and we hunted up to the east of there.

We also did a lot of hunting, it's just off the map here, over in Day Harbor, over on the east side of Exit -- of Ellsworth Glacier.

Where are some other areas that we hunted?

RACHEL MASON: How did you know which areas to hunt? Did you have a local --

WARREN HUSS: Well, most of it -- most of it was what was accessible, that you could get -- areas that you could get up the tops of the mountains because goats usually,

you know, you get up above them and hunt down on them, so you have to climb up to the top of the mountain, and then hunt down on the goats from the top of mountain.

So you had to find an area that was accessible. The closest area, like I say, is this area, we call it Sugarloaf Mountain,

and it's where that big cement bridge is about 8 miles up, it comes out of a valley from the right side, and there's a tall peak there called Sugarloaf, and we'd go up around Sugarloaf.

And that actually was a trail that an old fellow in town here, Hoff -- Hans Hoffmeister, put in years ago, they used to hunt up in that valley, and he told me about that trail and how to access the area.

A lot of the area you just can't start up the mountain, it's just too steep, so what you do is go up one of these river drainages where you work your way up, get to the top of the mountains, above the glaciers and look down on the goats.

And a lot of times it was just a matter of spotting them from the road, going out Exit Glacier. At that time it was just a dirt trail.

Somewhat of a road, but it was constantly washed out. Other times we heard about areas where there are good goats.

A fellow told me about this area over off Day Harbor that was good goat hunting.

There's a couple other areas we never got into, the Lake Nellie Juan drainage that comes down south fork of the Snow River, north fork of the Snow River. It's good goat hunting up there.

Arley Zimmerman used to have a camp up there, and he's the one that started the snow machine operation up at the top of Exit Glacier. RACHEL MASON: Oh, really?

WARREN HUSS: Yeah. And he was a big -- he was a hunting guide.

And he had a camp -- well, he had several camps around, but the one that he had is off the south fork of the Snow River drainage,

off the map here again, in the south off of Lake Nellie Juan, and you hunted goats off the east side of Lake Nellie Juan towards the Day Harbor drainage.

RACHEL MASON: Did he access them by boat or how did --

WARREN HUSS: No. They would go up south fork of the Snow River at times, but usually he had an air taxi service that flew him in there.

RACHEL MASON: I see. And how about you? How were you accessing it?

WARREN HUSS: Almost always just on foot, off the road system.

And I can't remember, in this area I never even -- well, I -- this was accessed by a boat, the area over in Day Harbor.

This area up in here, which is kind of up behind what they call Fort McGilvray, in South Beach area, we hunted goats up in there. And that we accessed off the water.

The other areas that we hunted, this area over up Day Harbor we accessed by my boat, went around the cape and went down to Bowen or Anchor, Anchor Cove,

anchored there and just hiked up on what would be the east side of Ellsworth Glacier.

Areas up in here it was all accessed just by foot.

There are a lot of goats around in those days, and with the hunting pressure and stuff, it used to be when we first got here, you could just go out during the season and hunt.

Then it got to a, you know, registration hunt, then it got to a permit type of hunt, so it really changed over the years.

RACHEL MASON: What -- what was the season? What time of year was that?

WARREN HUSS: Oh, it -- it was September -- MARY HUSS: August. WARREN HUSS: September and Aug -- MARY HUSS: Goats? RACHEL MASON: Goats. WARREN HUSS: August.

RACHEL MASON: So it would be a month or two that it could --

WARREN HUSS: Yeah, it was open a pretty long period of time.

It actually got to the point where the latter part of the season it got kind of dangerous because oftentimes you were already into snow at that -- snowstorms at that upper elevation.

And it would -- you'd get up there and it would be a nice day, and all of a sudden a storm would come in off the Gulf, and it would dump 3, 4, 5 inches of snow, and then you're scrambling down rock, and it wasn't fun sometimes.

RACHEL MASON: Did you observe any population changes during the -- those early years of the goats, or was it just -- I mean, was that why they made it more and more restrictive?

WARREN HUSS: Well, the population declined a lot as the hunting pressure came on -- it actually started to really decline the areas that were accessible in the road system.

The areas that you could fly into, which I didn't do much of, but the people I know that flew in still had successful goat hunting, much more successful than what we had on the road system.

I know a lot of people used to fly out of Moose Pass and go over to the border between Unit 6 and Unit 7, and they would land up, like, at Lake Nellie Juan, they would fly over to the Icy -- Icy Bay drainage, Kings Bay drainage.

And those fly in hunts were still pretty good until -- oh, I can't even remember, it must have been the mid '80s when those really started to decline, as well.

There was some shifts in the population.

Originally when we got here, there were a lot of goats up along the edge of the Quartz Creek and Mills Creek drainage.

On the Quartz Creek side facing the highway, or the Quartz mountainside facing the highway, that was all goats. And then after you got on the east side of Quartz --

RACHEL MASON: Could you mark that, too, where that -- WARREN HUSS: Let's see, is it even on this map? Ptarmigan -- No, it would be further up. RACHEL MASON: Oh.

WARREN HUSS: It's past Grant Lake. RACHEL MASON: I see.

WARREN HUSS: So it's -- yeah, it's up, further up in this area, up past Grant Lake.

And it's -- it's an area where for some reason the goats moved into the sheep territory and pushed the sheep out of there eventually.

And they were gone for a couple years. And then all of a sudden the sheep started migrating across the highway back up into the Crescent and Madson Mountain area, up in this area.

So -- up in this Madson Mountain area, and then all the edge of -- in these areas along here, and up in the bend of the lake on Crescent Lake, these mountains up in here.

They used to have goats up in there, and then all of a sudden the population of sheep took off, and they actually -- that was closed for a number of years, and then they opened it,

I couldn't even tell you what year it was, probably in the early '80s, and they had a permit -- they issued, like, 10 permits for sheep up in that area.

So we would climb up on the mountains there, and I hunted a lot.

We had actually had a camp that we would go in. We'd start down here at Lawing, and we'd take a boat up -- let's see, how did we -- we'd take a boat up to right about in here,

and we would hike up this valley up to this lake right in here, and then from there, we actually had a camp right in here where we hunted moose, and then we climbed up the mountains up here onto Manson Mountain and hunted these ridges up here for sheep.

And this -- yeah, we had a moose camp here, it was kind of a fun place.

We just hauled gear in, in the winter, took it up the -- up the trail, down the lake, up this riverbed, and across on the other side of the -- this is a deep valley that goes between Manson Mountain,

and I can't remember the name of this mountain, but we established a camp up at the top there.

So we left all our gear in big steel barrels up there with closeable rims on them. And we got a lot of moose out of there. I can't remember how many, but --

RACHEL MASON: Yeah. Then you'd have to -- would you have to pack them out on your back?

WARREN HUSS: Yes. Yeah. We would -- from this camp, we would go down the lake in the fall, then, because you couldn't get up here by snow machine, this is too long a walk.

You could have flown in. In fact, in later years we kind of quit hunting there because people would fly in, and there's a cabin right here now, a Forest Service cabin.

People started flying into that cabin and hunting this area.

When they started doing that, we abandoned the camp, but we would go up and actually beyond these little creeks and hike back up here, and then when we shoot our moose, we would have to pack it back down,

back down the mountain, down to the lake, and came back by boat, back to Lawing. So it was about a three and a half mile pack to get to -- to get the moose out of there.

RACHEL MASON: Who did you go hunting with?

WARREN HUSS: I hunted with Dave Hilton, who was the lab tech at the hospital;

Ted McHenry, who was the Fish and Game biologist here for a number of years.

Let's see. Al Lamberson, Al and Bob McCabe, they were both employed at AVTEC, Al was a counselor, and Bob McCabe was in the clerical program there.

And my son hunted with us several times. And that was it, I think. As I recall, basically it was about four or five of us that went up there usually two or these -- three or four at a time.

And you'd divide up in twos so you always had a hunting partner with you.

Because there were bear up there, there were just black bear, we never saw any grizzly, but there were a lot of black bear up there so we always hunted in pairs up there.

RACHEL MASON: Yeah. Did you ever encounter any bears?

WARREN HUSS: Not as far as we -- we shot some bear up there, but never had a encounter with one.

We had -- one time we had one in camp in the middle of the night, a black bear.

Woke -- let's see, I can't even remember who it woke up, one of the other guys, and he went back to sleep, and we woke up in the morning and the bear had walked through our camp.

But didn't -- didn't even bother us in the tents or anything like that. RACHEL MASON: The bear tried to wake the guy up. And he went back to sleep.

WARREN HUSS: Yeah. I did have one instance where I was at that camp, I was with my son and Bob McCabe and Al Lamberson, and they were in another tent, I was camp --

I was with my son, and I was up against the side of the tent, we had a little two man tent, and we were camped right along the edge of a moose trail that came off this little drainage and went out into this, there's a long, open valley there.

And in the middle of the night I just -- it felt like somebody kicked me in the head, and I kind of woke up with a startle.

I got up the next day, and here was a cow moose track, had walked right next to the tent and, I mean, right next to it, and my head was against that side of the tent,

and there was a calf because there was a smaller track with it, and that moose, evidently, when it walked by kicked me in the head because --

I mean, the track was -- fresh track was right there, and I mean, like that far from the edge of the tent, so it must have swung its foot and kicked me in the head, and --

RACHEL MASON: Wow. You're lucky it didn't step on your head. WARREN HUSS: Yeah. Tapped in the middle of the night.

That was the only close encounter of any kind we had. So... RACHEL MASON: Yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: Now, when you were a dentist, were you in private practice here or were you --

WARREN HUSS: Yep. Private practice. Yep. I came here in '71, and just took -- actually, I didn't have a license to practice here.

I took -- the board examination had just been offered when I got out of the military in July, I wasn't here in time to take the board, but they gave me a provisional license and I could practice in a town with no resident dentist within 25 miles.

And there were about four different communities that were seeking resident dentists, and Seward was one of them. And they --

RACHEL MASON: Do you -- sorry. I interrupted you. I was going to ask if it was easy to fit into the town when you first moved, in or --

WARREN HUSS: Oh, it was. The town was -- it was not a lot smaller than what it is, right? There was probably about, oh, 2500 people in town, and maybe 3,000 people in the whole area.

But everybody was really friendly. I mean, we got introduced around real quick and, you know, awful lot of those people that are our age or a little bit older are still here in town.

That's why we've never left. I retired and I don't intend to leave.

KAREN BREWSTER: I was wondering why you chose Seward, but they were recruiting and you saw an advertisement?

WARREN HUSS: No. What I did is I had gotten out of the military, we were looking -- I had had contact with a fellow who had been in the Public Health Service, was here in Alaska, and had come back to University of Michigan where I went to dental school.

He came back in orthodontics and he said, "Oh, you've got to go to Alaska." And he showed me bunch of hunting and fishing, you know, things.

And so I -- I wrote the Alaska Dental Society and I asked them if there was any place that needed a resident dentist.

And they wrote back and they said that, well, you can -- you have to have a license, but we will grant you a provisional permit for one year to practice without a license as long as I was licensed in another state.

And I was licensed in the state of Michigan at the time. So they said, well, if you come and practice in one of these smaller communities, we'll let you practice for a year, and then you can take the boards and if you pass the boards, you can stay.

And the places that were looking for dentists at that time were Seward, and they were the most positive respondent.

Dick Enberg (phonetic) who is the banker here at the town was very helpful. Keith Campbell was the hospital administrator.

And he had talked with Geraldine Morrow who was a dentist in Anchorage, and she later became the first woman president of the American Dental Association.

And they just made things very easy for me. Gene Thorn, who built -- had the Showcase Lounge, or still has it to this day, he built an office for me, and charged me next to nothing for rent.

And so we came up here and -- oh, and the pharmacist, Jim Warren, was also very helpful in getting us settled here in town and everything. In fact --

KAREN BREWSTER: Which were -- which were the other communities? You said there were other --

WARREN HUSS: Oh, there was Seward, that was the most helpful community.

There was Valdez, but that was pre-pipeline days, and everybody said you don't want to go to Valdez.

I don't think there had ever been a dentist there at that time.

KAREN BREWSTER: Right, it was also not too long after the earthquake, either. WARREN HUSS: Right. And that -- RACHEL MASON: Which would have been an issue here, too.

WARREN HUSS: Yes, it was, it was a big issue. The -- KAREN BREWSTER: So Seward, Valdez.

WARREN HUSS: King Salmon, Naknek Borough were seeking a dentist, and then Pribilof Islands.

And the Pribilof Islands, they wrote back and said, you know, it's basically a Public Health Service contract, you're really not going to be, you know, a private dentist out there, you'll be doing Public Health -- Public Health Service work.

Valdez, like I say, I don't think Valdez ever even responded to my letter when I wrote them.

And King Salmon said if you like to hunt and fish, we would love to have you come, great place, we need a dentist, but you better not be married because your wife won't like it.

I don't know why they said that, but -- so that kind of --

RACHEL MASON: There was a red flag. WARREN HUSS: -- that kind of nixed us going to King Salmon, and we made the right decision when we came to Seward, so...

KAREN BREWSTER: So tell us about Seward, then, because it was not too long after the earthquake here.

WARREN HUSS: Yeah. It was '71 when we got here, and of course, the earthquake was in '64, but there was still a lot of -- a lot of debris around that hadn't been moved.

Right out at the end of Nash Road here, there were still three or four of the big tanks that had floated across the bay, and had grounded themselves over off Bill McDonald's property over here at the -- just before you start at the hill to go out to the Spring Creek area.

When we got here that first summer -- or the summer after we got here they burned 26 or 29 derelict buildings in town, mainly homes that had just been deserted after the earthquake because people -- people up and left town. Longshoring went to zero, basically.

And so they had just started a volunteer fire department, and I believe that started under Oscar Watsjold, and he was the first fire chief, maybe. Don't quote me on that.

But -- so they were looking for buildings to practice on, they got all these old buildings in town that they wanted burned down, so they would set them on fire and call up the fire department, the volunteer fire department to go out and put out the -- put out the fires.

And a lot of vacant buildings in the downtown area.

I couldn't even begin to name some of the -- the Osbow building, the -- there was just a lot of buildings downtown that had been vacant since the earthquake.

Those eventually were occupied, and most of those buildings are still here today. They've just been gutted and remodeled and turned into, you know, nice commercial property downtown. So.

RACHEL MASON: Where did you live when you first moved here?

WARREN HUSS: When we first lived -- when we first moved here, there was nothing -- well, when we first moved to town, there was absolutely nothing available to rent or anything,

so we ended up living with the pharmacist who was Jim Warren at the -- Jim and Mary Warren, and they lived out on the start of Bear Creek Road, right after you turn off the highway, that first home on the left side, and we lived in the basement of their house for 11 or 12 days.

And it just so happened we knew -- we lived -- we knew Keith Campbell, the hospital administrator, become close friends with him right off the bat,

and he knew a fellow in town who was the engineer on Nash Road.

And they were -- Nash Road, just a year before that, had just been a trail.

And it always flooded out down at the lagoon here, a half mile back down the road.

And so they came in and they upgraded Nash Road, and they had just finished that project, raised the grade, straightened the road out quite a bit, and so this Dick Kopeney (phonetic) was leaving, he and his wife were vacating an apartment downtown on Fifth Avenue.

And so we moved in on Fifth Avenue, and as it turned out, it was right next door to Keith and Jackie Campbell. Well, out the back door. They lived at Sixth Avenue, so we ended up being neighbors with probably our first friends here in town.

And we were there for a little over a year, and then the physician that was here in town with his partner, that was Ed Watson was the physician,

and John Noyes were in practice together here in Seward, and Ed Watson decided to leave, and this home came up for sale.

So at that time, it was just a little bungalow and we just kept adding on.

I put on these additions and stuff just to -- I had a lot of it framed in, but we've kind of putzed around with it, and just kept enlarging it.

So this is -- this is really the first place we've lived here in town other than the rented place downtown.

RACHEL MASON: So you've been here for over 30 years anyway?

WARREN HUSS: In this house? Oh, yeah. Over -- MARY HUSS: It was actually July '72.

WARREN HUSS: Yeah, that's right, we bought it in July '72. And we got the house.

We were looking for just a house, but the physician, Ed Watson, had a nice boat at the time, it was a boat being Airedale Norway Fjords, it's called.

And he wanted to sell the house and the boat, and another person was ahead of us on the house, and Dr. Watson said, well, if you'll buy the house and the boat, we will sell you the house. And I thought, I can't afford a boat.

So he -- how did he do that. He -- oh, he approached us and he said -- he took us out the highway, and he had one of those front wheel drive Oldsmobile Toronados, and he says, we are going out the road.

We were -- I sat in the front seat and Mary was in the back seat, and he said, "I'll tell you what," he said, "I'm going to sell you this boat for $1."

It was a beautiful boat. I mean, I don't know what it was worth at the time, $40,000, or something like that, maybe.

I have no -- I couldn't -- I don't even know, but he said, "I'll sell you the boat for a dollar," and he said, "you go down to the bank with the papers on this boat and they'll loan you the down payment on the house."

So we -- I said, "Sounds good to me." So we -- RACHEL MASON: That's great.

WARREN HUSS: -- took the -- bought the boat for a dollar and went down, and then they loaned me the down payment on the house.

And it was kind of nice because the house at that time was built on -- part of the loan was an assumable SBA loan from the Small Business Administration at a very low rate, it was like 3, 3 or 3 and a half percent.

So loans at that time were 11, 12, up to 14 percent, you know, on -- for home loans, so we got a pretty good deal right off the bat.

RACHEL MASON: A lucky break. WARREN HUSS: Yeah, it was a lucky break.

KAREN BREWSTER: So, should we find out a little bit about Mary and her background?

MARY HUSS: Nah. All I needed was a road when we moved here. KAREN BREWSTER: Yeah. MARY HUSS: A road that went to an airport.

RACHEL MASON: Okay. Did you have any kids at that time? WARREN HUSS: No, they arrived after we did. RACHEL MASON: Oh, okay.

MARY HUSS: So they were both born here.

RACHEL MASON: Uh hum. Are you from Michigan also? MARY HUSS: Yes. Yes.

RACHEL MASON: Oh. And both of you were born and raised in Michigan?

WARREN HUSS: Yeah. Well, actually, Mary was born in Cleveland, but left Cleveland when she was about a year old, and we were both born in -- or both raised, grew up in Ann Arbor. Old high school sweethearts, so -- married. RACHEL MASON: Oh.

KAREN BREWSTER: When did you get married? WARREN HUSS: 8/7/65. August 7th, 1965.

KAREN BREWSTER: Happy anniversary. WARREN HUSS: Coming up real quick, Saturday.

MARY HUSS: That's why I know when goat hunt -- hunting season was.

KAREN BREWSTER: Because he was always gone for your anniversary?

MARY HUSS: Yes. And our son's birthday was August 7th. So he -- or August 9th. Yeah. WARREN HUSS: August 9th.

MARY HUSS: So he was usually gone for those events.

RACHEL MASON: Oh, okay. well you're going to be coming up on your fiftieth anniversary pretty soon. MARY HUSS: Right. 45 this year.

RACHEL MASON: Yeah. Wow. Well, did -- Mary, did you participate in any of the hunting that went on or --

MARY HUSS: Only in the moose hunting, in my camper.

RACHEL MASON: Oh. Okay. Well, how about that boat, that $1 boat? MARY HUSS: No. RACHEL MASON: What sort of use did you make of that?

MARY HUSS: I never went on the hunting trips. WARREN HUSS: Not hunting -- fishing.

RACHEL MASON: Or fishing either? MARY HUSS: Well, I go fishing, but --

WARREN HUSS: She used to go hunting, we would go with the Campbells, we had a camper, a little truck camper, and we would go hunting over by Cooper Landing back on the Snug Harbor Road,

drive back and just park there and hunt the hillsides.

That's the only time she -- you ever really went hunting. But fishing all the time. She loves to fish, so...

MARY HUSS: Well, and you also did a lot of duck hunting. RACHEL MASON: Oh, yeah, where did you go duck hunting?

WARREN HUSS: Oh, locally. We -- I just started out just hunting out -- it used to be legal to hunt out around the airport.

RACHEL MASON: You can mark that.

WARREN HUSS: Yeah. Right -- get the right end of it here.

There's tidal flats out here, and we would hunt these flats out around the edge of the airport, and sometimes over on the east side of the airport.

And hunted some out on Bear Lake. We'd go up Bear Lake on the right side of Bear -- east side of Bear Lake.

Sometimes we hunted up at Crescent Lake, at this end of the lake we hunted up here for ducks.

There's a couple of little creeks that would come in there and you would get ducks in here.

A lot of my duck hunting, early days was across the inlet over on the Kustatan River, we'd fly across from the east to the west , and go up the Kustatan.

And some friends had a cabin up there, which is the original -- it sits on the original drilling pad where they dropped the first oil exploratory well for the whole Swanson River oilfield.

RACHEL MASON: Really? WARREN HUSS: And the pipe is still there. The cabin's still there, and we'd fly across there and had boats and we duck hunted out in the mud flats out there.

RACHEL MASON: What particular kind of ducks did you like to get?

WARREN HUSS: Oh, if -- everything over there. We always looked for mallards, but a lot of them were widgeon, teal.

We had some Canadian -- Canada geese. Oh, boy, I almost said Canadian geese. My friend in Canada that we just visited last fall, he said, they're not Canadian geese, they're Canada geese.

So -- but we hunt those. Green-winged teal. There's just a variety. A variety. Pintails, quite a few pintails.

RACHEL MASON: Yeah. I was just wondering if there were specific areas where you would try to get certain kinds?

WARREN HUSS: No. Most of the hunting here, it was best when the ponds froze up in the upper elevations, the ducks would come down, like, around the airport when the upper elevation puddle ponds would freeze up.

Then there was sort of like a two or three week period where ducks were really prominent here.

And we did some hunting right down here at the slough, you know as you come down Nash Road here, as you're driving around Nash Road, you cross that big body of water. RACHEL MASON: Uh hum.

WARREN HUSS: Just down here about a half mile. RACHEL MASON: They call that the slough?

WARREN HUSS: Well, we called it the slough for years. But it's -- MARY HUSS: The culvert.

WARREN HUSS: The culvert. We'd hunt on the south side of there. I had a blind out there and my son and I would go down there to the canoe, paddle out to the blind and sit there.

And there were just local ducks. In the evening they would come back off the saltwater and land back up on that -- in that marshy area off to the left.

KAREN BREWSTER: And so what time of year are you duck hunting?

WARREN HUSS: That's in the fall of the year. You know, that usually starts in September. MARY HUSS: Ptarmigan.

RACHEL MASON: Ptarmigan. Yeah. WARREN HUSS: Oh. Ptarmigan. To no end. MARY HUSS: Crescent Lake. Crescent Lake.

WARREN HUSS: Crescent Lake, we went up a lot on. RACHEL MASON: Could you put that on there.

WARREN HUSS: Yeah. On the Crescent Lake area, what we would do is we would -- we'd go up in the wintertime by snow machine and hunt -- there's big willow flats right here at the end of Crescent Lake,

but the mountainsides, these ridges on either side between Carter and Crescent Lake were really good for -- for ptarmigan.

In fact, when my son was really young, that's the only meat he would eat. RACHEL MASON: Really?

WARREN HUSS: Yeah. We couldn't -- I mean, that and baloney.

But you put anything else in front of him, he wouldn't eat it. Put a piece of ptarmigan and, you know, saute it up, and he loved it.

And this is like when he was two years old. And he stayed that way until he was about four.

It was about the only thing he'd eat is ptarmigan, so I did a lot of ptarmigan hunting in the early years.

RACHEL MASON: How do you get up there?

WARREN HUSS: There's an old -- right past the Trail Lake Hatchery, there's a pull off at Crescent and Carter Lake, and it's a zigzag trail that you could take snow machines up, and we'd hunt up -- during the wintertime we would hunt for them up there.

And that trail was put in, I couldn't tell you exactly, it was sometime in the mid or late '50s, and they were looking at a possible hydro electric development from this little lake here, which is Carter Lake,

and the drainage that goes off to the -- to the east and south out of Carter Lake, they were looking at putting in a hydro electric, small hydro electric plant there to supply supplemental power to Seward, and I guess Moose Pass.

So they put that road in, but they never -- never went ahead with any kind of hydro electric plant of any kind up there.

But there was a switchback road that went up there, and you'd just ride up in snow -- that trail was really heavily used in the wintertime for people that want to get up in the alpine and get up onto Crescent and Carter Lake.

And, of course, there's now two nice cabins up there that the Forest Service has, one here that's right down on the -- about halfway down on the bend of the lake, and then the other one's kind of off the map, it's down on the very south -- that would be the northwest end of the lake.

So there's two Forest Service cabins up there that you can rent.

But we did some other ptarmigan hunting some other places, but it wasn't very successful.

That was one of the areas that you could get up into high country and on a snow machine in the wintertime.

We also -- well, I take that back. South fork of the Snow River, let's see, is this -- is this south fork here?

Bear Lake up here, go up the south fork to Snow River. And let's see.

I guess it's this drainage here. And up at -- up around Lake Nellie Juan there was good ptarmigan hunting up there, too, so we used to go.

RACHEL MASON: So have your hunting areas changed over the years where -- where you hunt?

WARREN HUSS: No. Not so much. It pretty much -- MARY HUSS: You don't hunt.

RACHEL MASON: The areas have never changed -- WARREN HUSS: Yeah, I've really kind of gotten out of hunting.

I still love to camp and hike and stuff, but I don't know, beef tastes awfully good, and packing a big moose right now does not -- is not -- not on my plate.

KAREN BREWSTER: Maybe we should talk about the Exit Glacier area. WARREN HUSS: Okay. KAREN BREWSTER: And that drainage, in that valley.

RACHEL MASON: What kinds of hunting have you done in that area?

WARREN HUSS: Well, very little on -- on the -- we never really hunted prior to the formation of the park on the -- what would be the west side of the road, or on the Exit Glacier side of the road.

We did some hunting in the river valley, there were occasionally ptarmigan there, and -- but we never really hunted on this side at all.

And then after the park opened, I think it was closed to hunting.

And actually, after they closed it to hunting, that area, there are quite a few ptarmigan were there and then up, what we used to call Blackstone, they now call it Paradise, which is the valley just to the east of the Exit Glacier Valley.

And they call it Paradise now, but we always named it -- we called that valley Blackstone Valley because it was off what they call Blackstone Glacier.

And I used to trap up in there with the -- the Forest Service head Phil Gumm, we trapped wolverine up there.

It was his trapline, but I went up with him sometimes on weekends, and we'd trap wolverine.

RACHEL MASON: When was that? Was that before it was a park?

WARREN HUSS: Oh, yeah, that was back in -- in fact, he's in one of these pictures. It's this fellow here.

And we used to trap just around this point.

RACHEL MASON: Could you hold it so the camera could see the --

WARREN HUSS: Oh. That fellow there, it's not very -- on the far right side. This is a bridge that we were making to get up to Exit Glacier, and this is in '72.

RACHEL MASON: Which one is you? WARREN HUSS: This is me here. RACHEL MASON: Oh, okay.

WARREN HUSS: Standing on a piece of plywood. This is me when I made it to the other side, and all of a sudden a big chunk of ice broke off and I was stuck on an ice floe out in the middle of the creek.

RACHEL MASON: Yeah. Well, it looks like you're giving the thumbs up -- WARREN HUSS: This is my son. I think that's --

MARY HUSS: No. WARREN HUSS: You know, I don't know who that is. It couldn't be -- that was Richard Oldow.

RACHEL MASON: Okay. WARREN HUSS: Richard Oldow. RACHEL MASON: Another one --

WARREN HUSS: And then finally, what, they retrieved an old piece of plywood, I don't even remember where they got the plywood, but I'm stuck on this hunk of ice out in the center, and they put a board out.

And so we went back -- RACHEL MASON: Pausing breifly to take pictures. WARREN HUSS: -- and built a better bridge. We got a great, big ladder, and that's how we made bridges to get up to Exit Glacier in those years. RACHEL MASON: Oh I see. Wow.

What time of year was that?

WARREN HUSS: This is -- well, let's see, the date is on this. I think it was November.

Where is the date? November 19th, 7 -- 1972. That was one of our early attempts at getting up to Exit Glacier. RACHEL MASON: Okay.

WARREN HUSS: When we trapped, we -- there were several years in the early '70s where we didn't have to build bridges, even though the creek is -- I don't know, it seems like it's as big as it was -- is now.

But we used to be able to just find snow bridges and cross those snow bridges, and we would go up and we set our traps up in --

Well, Phil actually was the one that was doing the trapping, I'd just go along for safety factor so he had somebody else with him, and I kind of helped him.

RACHEL MASON: Could you mark where you -- WARREN HUSS: Well, it's actually off your map here. RACHEL MASON: Oh. It is? Oh.

WARREN HUSS: And I don't think it carries over on to this map. KAREN BREWSTER: Well, the maps kind of line up with these.

WARREN HUSS: Oh, here it is. No. Here they are. RACHEL MASON: They should line up. WARREN HUSS: It's Paradise.

It's up Paradise Creek here. And what we would do, see, this is your Exit Glacier Road here. Right there.

And what we would do is we would cross the river back, which in this picture here, that point right there is -- where was I -- is this point of land right here.

So we would cross the river back here a little ways because up here where it's just below the current bridge that goes -- turns and goes up to the Exit Glacier Park, that was always open;

but as you got down here, the river got a little braided and was a little shallower, and we were able to find snow bridges across there.

And then we would go up Paradise here.

And usually what we did was we would -- right where this narrows down, there's a spot on here, and a spot along -- spots along the side of this -- the west side of this peak where there were quite a few wolverine in there.

And so we trapped wolverine up there.

And then up as far as where this makes a fairly sharp bend right here, and this heads up, this gets real avalanchey, so we very rarely ever got beyond the -- well, this is about 3 miles up there, I would guess.

And he was real meticulous, used the regular leg hold type trap, and boiled his traps and, you know, never touched them so -- because wolverine can smell the scent on your hands and stuff.

So he would boil his traps, whenever he cleaned -- used ptarmigan and rabbits for baits.

He used to go over to Skilak and hunt rabbits and always wore gloves, never touched them, so there wasn't any human scent on the animal.

And then -- but that's about the only hunting or trapping I did on the park side of the -- of the --

KAREN BREWSTER: Now, how did you get up there? Were you using snow machines? WARREN HUSS: Snow machines, yeah.

KAREN BREWSTER: When did you start using snow machines here?

WARREN HUSS: I brought a snow machine from Labrador with me, so we started right in '71.

I shipped, of all things, kind of stupid to do, but the military was paying for it, so I had a snow machine, and I shipped it up here.

And we started out with one snow machine and a dog and the three of us on a snow machine.

RACHEL MASON: Did other people around here have snow machines at that time?

WARREN HUSS: Uh hum. Yeah. It was -- it was pretty popular. There weren't the trails that there are now, but the Lost Lake area was accessible at that time and had been for a number of years.

RACHEL MASON: Was it in -- was it 1980 when the park was established -- WARREN HUSS: Park started. Yeah.

RACHEL MASON: Can you tell a little bit about how the local response to that, or how that affected --

WARREN HUSS: Well, you know, it was -- it was real negative to begin with.

People were really afraid that especially not the Exit Glacier Park, that part of the park, but the whole Kenai Fjords National Park,

a lot of people were afraid the whole place was just going to get shut down, that you weren't going to be able to go onshore, you weren't going to be able to fly over the area.

I mean, there were just some bizarre rumors that went around.

And fortunately, one of -- the first person that they brought in here to head up the park was Dave Moore.

And Dave Moore was a very personable -- person with the Park Service. And he really calmed a lot of the fears.

And, I mean, I can't remember that we were really all that negative about it.

We kind of were a little worried about the boating activity because we always had enjoyed going over to Aialik and going to shore there.

But Dave just did a real good job in dealing with the public and making -- making the point for having the park. So...

And that's kind of -- you know, the park, actually, the real visionary for Exit Glacier Park, I think, goes back to Herman Leirer.

Herman Leirer was one of the -- I don't know if you talked with other people about Herman, but Herman was --

RACHEL MASON: We've heard about him.

WARREN HUSS: He owned -- right after the earthquake, he bought a lot of property here in town.

He owns -- he or his sons own and still own a lot of the property that's in the industrial area down around Seward Ship's Chandlery, in that area and he acquired all that land.

And he was a heavy equipment operator. And so after the earthquake, you know, the town itself had very little going on until the pipeline days.

So Herman was one that could see the potential for tourism in the area.

And I couldn't tell you, I think it started shortly after the earthquake, Herman just took it upon himself, and I'm not sure he even had the permits to do it,

but he had a big bulldozer and he started knocking a road up the -- the north side of Resurrection River towards Exit Glacier

because he'd, you know, seen Exit Glacier and he thought, wow, what a tourist attraction that would be if we could just build a road up there.

And as I understand it, for years he just putzed along, built that road; it kept washing out and -- but he kept, you know, persisting.

At one point he walked the -- his Cat across the creek where the current bridge is, and from there, just knocked down the brush right up to the glacier, made a couple passes with his Cat.

And then over the years, that was overgrown, so it was all overgrown with alders, but all the big trees had been knocked out of there.

And so by the time we got here, a few people had already started using the Exit Glacier area where the -- where the visitors center is now, but you couldn't get across the river.

There was no bridge or anything.

And the road from town starting out at the highway, it just constantly washed out.

He would build -- you know, work on the road, and then maybe get a mile or two done in the summer or something like that, he would come back and the river would overflow its banks and take the road out.

And, you know, once every couple years, starting when we got here, you could -- with a four wheel drive vehicle, you could get up the road to the bridge, as far as the bridge.

Sometimes you couldn't quite get -- there was one area that you couldn't quite get past, because oftentimes it was a big river that washed out -- and I can't remember which river it was,

but so what we do is we would haul a canoe, or let's see, I had a little raft that went with my boat, a little plastic we called a sporty-ack,

and we would go up there, and Mary and I and her folks and Campbells, a lot of people would just -- we'd go up there on a lark and launch our canoe and paddle across the river.

And then at that point, we only did that every year or two because it would overgrow with brush so quick.

So we'd whack our way up to the glacier and just go up to see it.

And then we learned the trick in the wintertime of going up Exit Creek, which is the creek that comes out of Exit Glacier now. And we'd just go up the creek valley.

RACHEL MASON: On foot? WARREN HUSS: No, on snow machine. RACHEL MASON: Uh hum.

WARREN HUSS: Well, in the -- in the summertime, we always hiked the -- in the summertime we always hiked that Cat trail that was overgrown.

People -- enough people went up there they kept it open, it was -- you know, it was just brushed out with an axe or whatever, but you could hike it.

And I think the moose helped to keep it open. But then in the wintertime, we usually just went up Exit, Exit Creek on our snow machines.

We crossed the river down south -- I mean, east of -- of where the bridge is now, and then we'd get on Exit Creek and go up to the glacier that way.

KAREN BREWSTER: So is that why you were building these bridges to take your snow machines across WARREN HUSS: Yeah, we would take -- KAREN BREWSTER: -- Resurrection River?

WARREN HUSS: Yeah, we just started out just trying to use snow bridges, and they were constantly getting washed out, and it wasn't very dependable.

So then we went to building ladders, and we would put the ladders across.

The first thing we started doing was cutting trees and hauling the trees out and standing them up and letting them fall.

Well, we soon learned that that was just too much work.

So we built ladders, looked like a ladder, and we'd drag it up behind the snow machine, drop it across the creek, and then go off and cut a bunch of spruce boughs, put the spruce boughs on top of it and wait until the next snow.

And the next snow, it would cover the spruce boughs over and you could drive -- it would form an ice bridge that was stable, and then that ice bridge would last for a number of years -- or a number of months --

RACHEL MASON: Wow. Sounds kid of dangerous -- WARREN HUSS: -- before it'd get washed out again. KAREN BREWSTER: That ice looks pretty thin.

MARY HUSS: I was not involved. I had babies, you know --

WARREN HUSS: Yeah. Well, not -- off on the side here, it's not that thin. KAREN BREWSTER: But to get up there to put the bridge, it looks thin, no? --

WARREN HUSS: No, right along the edge, it would be -- you know, the snow would accumulate. The river was fairly well channeled.

MARY HUSS: But you were on the other side of the river from the road. WARREN HUSS: Right.

MARY HUSS: Yeah. If that makes sense. Where the current road is. KAREN BREWSTER: Right.

MARY HUSS: A ladder, this was on the -- against the other bank. WARREN HUSS: It'd be the south side. Against the other bank.

KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, you started on the other side.

WARREN HUSS: Actually, early, or when we first started here in '71 and started snow machining up there, we didn't even go up the road.

We used to leave from town, our friends Jackie and Keith Campbell had moved to Forest Acres at that time, and we would drive from their place in Forest Acres out through what is now the dump,

and there was a trail there, and then we'd just go up the river valley.

KAREN BREWSTER: You can mark that on the map, maybe.

WARREN HUSS: Oh, okay. What we'd do is -- Forest Acres is this area right over here, the residential area,

and what we would do is we'd go out the back of this residential area out onto the riverbed, and then go up the riverbed on our snow machines.

And the only problem with there is all along in here we got into trouble several times, the river was very well channeled up here, it would get down here and it'd kind of get braided, ice bridges would form, but then a lot of overflow.

So several times we got caught in the -- trying to get up to Exit Glacier, we got caught in the overflow.

We'd be riding along and all of a sudden your snow machine just sinks in this slush and you're stuck there.

Stand on your seat, take your boots off to keep boots and socks, and try and wade your way out of the thing,

pull the snow machine up onto good, solid ground again, put your boots back on, and usually at that point we'd turn around and head home.

KAREN BREWSTER: So how do you get the snow machine out?

WARREN HUSS: You'd just physically get in, take your boots and socks off, roll up your pants, and wade in there. Your feet would get numb and you'd pull it out.

KAREN BREWSTER: Because it would weigh a ton with all that ice.

WARREN HUSS: Oh, yeah. You'd get it packed in the tracks, it would take three adults, three adult men to pull the snow machine that's stuck in overflow and you just drag it.

You know, usually it was only, like, 20 feet one way or the other, and you'd be out of that area of overflow, and then --

MARY HUSS: Well, machines were lighter then, too.

WARREN HUSS: Yeah, they were these little -- we had little 250 twin cylinder Elans, they were made by Skidoo, they only weighed about 270 pounds or 260 pounds.

So, you know, they were pretty light. Not like the big machines nowadays.

RACHEL MASON: Well, did you go up for day trips or did you ever camp out around the glacier?

WARREN HUSS: Almost all that was -- prior to the park was just -- just day trips. We never stayed the night over there, never -- never camped. I know some people did.

We did -- a couple times we went out after it was a park and stayed in what's now where their visitor in the park stays, there's a little A frame in there. And then --

RACHEL MASON: Was it a cabin? WARREN HUSS: Yeah, it was a cabin, it was put in, actually --

MARY HUSS: That was in the '90s.

WARREN HUSS: That was in the '90s, though. And that's the only time we stayed overnight over there.

Our son did a project out at Exit Glacier in coordination with the DePaul University and Anne Castellina, who was the head of the park at that time, and they spent winter term out there.

One guy was a writer, one guy was a biologist or botanist, and the other was -- our son is a geologist, and they spent a month out there, and they did surveys across the face of the glacier.

It's 70 some survey points. And what they were doing is they were mapping the glacier every 12 hours,

and then they put that on a computer to show how the face of the glacier moved.

And they put that all on a computer program. And they -- they went out there, they did a lot of just observations.

They would get up on the edge of the glacier where the upper trail is now, that upper trail, they would hike up there, this was in the wintertime, it was in February, I think.

And there were nine or ten moose in the valley, and there was a pack of eight wolves in the area that constantly were harassing those moose,

and so they would go up in the evening and just watch these moose and wolves interact out there on the outwash plain and down Exit Creek, in that area.

It was kind of an interesting project. I took them food out at night, several times ran into the pack of wolves; about halfway up, I ran into and saw five of them at one time.

Just past, like, where the last gate is now, which is about mile -- right at the -- right at the Forest Service boundary there, where there's a gate.

And I was -- I had just gone another quarter mile beyond that, and out in the flats I saw one wolf, and pretty soon five of them, five of the eight came out and were visible, like they just watched me.

I was on the snow machine, and it was really, really a lot of fun. It was good.

RACHEL MASON: Wow. How long ago was that? WARREN HUSS: That was in '94. Yeah, well, after the park was --

RACHEL MASON: Do the trails around Exit Glacier, do they precede the park or are those -- they have just been made since the park was there?

WARREN HUSS: Most of those trails, like there's a trail from Paradise that constantly changes, and they went from Paradise, or what we call Blackstone, over to Exit Glacier.

And that -- that -- all those little trails and everything are all new since the park was formed.

We never cut through from Paradise Valley over to Exit Glacier in those days because there just wasn't a way through there.

KAREN BREWSTER: Are you talking about snow machine or hiking?

WARREN HUSS: Snow machine. And there weren't any hiking trails. Today I don't think there are any hiking trails in that area.

There are the little hiking trails that they've established around the edge of the glacier.

RACHEL MASON: Well, like, how about that Harding Icefield trail? Does that -- is that --

WARREN HUSS: No, that was -- that trail -- I think some people had climbed up there, but that trail wasn't even put in until after the park was established in '80.

I don't believe there was a trail there.

The people that went up on top of the glacier, at the top of Exit Glacier to this snow machining operation that Arley Zimmerman had, and Norm Waggee (phonetic), who was another fellow here in town, they flew people in.

And you'll be interviewing Gary, his son, later. RACHEL MASON: Oh, we did. KAREN BREWSTER: We already did. WARREN HUSS: Oh, you already did.

Okay. And he's one of the few, his dad -- no. I can't remember if it was his dad or Norm Waggee was one of the few that snow machined out of that place, and they came down --

they came out Paradise Valley instead of coming down Exit.

They went over and came down Paradise Valley out that way. He got caught up there in a snowstorm and couldn't get out of there, and finally he was running out of food,

and the cabin was buried and just for the first time in -- I don't know, I mean --

MARY HUSS: What about Resurrection River trail, was that there?

WARREN HUSS: Yeah, that was -- yeah, there is one trail right at the bridge where you cross over.

There was always been a trail that went from there -- I mean, not always, but there was a trail there in '71, I believe it was -- it was already there,

that used to go up to a couple cabins up Placer Creek, further up past Exit Glacier, and that trail eventually, and by the time we got here in '71, I think that trail actually went all the way through to Upper Russian Lake,

Upper Russian, Lower Russian Lakes. So you could hike all the way up that valley.

There were a couple cabins of there. Arley Zimmerman used to have a bear hunting cabin up there, Gary's father.

And there were a couple old mining cabins up there that when our son was doing this project with DePaul,

I know he and the three boys went out, there was so much snow that year that he had talked with the -- somebody at the Park Service, and they were afraid that cabin was going to collapse.

So they went up and got up there, and I think they said there was 9 feet of snow on the roof.

And it was an older logging -- mining cabin.

And the three of them went up there and spent a day and shoveled that cabin off, to keep it from collapsing.

I'm not sure whether the cabin's there or not, yet. It was five or six miles further up the valley.

KAREN BREWSTER: And have you hiked up that trail yourself?

WARREN HUSS: Yeah, we've hiked up it several times. It's not very far.

We've gone up in there two or three miles.

I've never hiked it all the way over to Upper Russian Lake, but it's a fairly popular hiking trail.

And I can't remember, it was probably in the late '80s they -- the Forest Service came in and put a nice series of bridges and stuff in over the creeks, and widened it and improved the trail.

Put in some things to stop drainage, little like culverts underneath the trail to keep it from washing out.

And there's still a lot of people hike that trail now. I know mountain bikers like to run down that trail.

It's kind of a risky area. There's brown bear up in there, it's kind of an area populated by the same brown bear that moved down into the Russian River area and Upper and Lower Russian Lakes area. So...

RACHEL MASON: You were saying you shot a few bears over the years. Was that hunting them or just in defense situations?

WARREN HUSS: Yeah, I was -- you know, we shot one bear that didn't taste very good. That was up at Crescent Lake, and I thought, I don't need another bear.

I never -- I never hunted for -- we always hunted just to -- for meat. I never was after, you know, the racks or anything.

RACHEL MASON: Trophy hunting WARREN HUSS: I just -- we enjoyed the meat.

Take it up to Alaska Sausage and Indian Valley Meats and had it made into everything under the sun.

MARY HUSS: But not bear. WARREN HUSS: But not bear.

Bear didn't seem to keep very well in the freezer, and just decided we didn't like it.

KAREN BREWSTER: You mentioned a wolverine. When you were putting on the map those dots for the wolverine, were these wolverine dens?

WARREN HUSS: Well, the -- I've never found a wolverine den, but we'd see them moving around, tracks and stuff. KAREN BREWSTER: Oh, okay.

WARREN HUSS: This area, there was quite a few wolverine, like up Paradise, up south fork of the Snow River, up Johnson and Bench Lake out of Moose Pass, which is probably off your map here.

But Johnson, Bench Lake is an area where there -- we used to see quite a few wolverine.

Up in Ptarmigan Lake area there are wolverine.

But any the only place I actually trapped them or helped trap, I really -- Phil was the one that trapped, the Forest Service had here, was over in this area here.

There was another fellow in town who did a lot of trapping up here, Arnold was his last name, and I can't think of his first name.

He was the -- now they moved from here to Glennallen, but they trap -- he trapped a lot up in the Mount Alice area.

But we would just go out there, and you would find an area where they frequented and put your set,

usually we used a -- he had all kinds of different types of set, use a slanted log, and bait it with, like I say, ptarmigan or rabbits, and --

RACHEL MASON: Is he still around? Your old trapping partner.

WARREN HUSS: Phil -- no, Phil left Seward here in about '74, '75. And he went on to be -- they moved to Juneau, and he was the head for the state fire.

RACHEL MASON: Oh, really.

WARREN HUSS: Yeah. He managed all the firefighters's efforts, firefighting efforts in the state.

And I think he was at that job for about ten -- maybe five, ten years, and then he and his wife Audrey retired down to Washington State and bought an apple orchard down there, and they're still around.

They travel. Our friends Keith and Jackie Campbell have seen them down in Padre Island, Texas, and stuff, but --