All the villages for the last 500 miles of the river are dry villages, it is illegal to buy or sell or have any alcohol within the village. If you have an extra $150 you can buy a jug of whiskey or vodka or for $35 a bottle of homebrew, native moonshine, from some folks that are easy to meet but there is no beer anywhere, too bulky to smuggle, and we soon ran out of our stash and went without. There is only 75 miles between Pilot Station and St. Mary's and Mountain Village and all three of them are the biggest towns than we have seen since Dawson City, over 600 people in each village. The big villages are harder to get around on foot, the people dress nicer and do not stop and stare when you walk through town. I went into the Alaska Commercial Company store in Saint Mary's and they had avocados for sale and ice cream in the freezer. They also had a four wheeler in the ketchup aisle for sale.
In Pilot Station we had a lot of visitors on the boat, including Charles Heckman III who is 13 and just got a chainsaw for his birthday. I asked him what his favorite foods are and he said pumpkin pie and moose soup. He is a wood carver and I bought a small wooden boat he had carved. Another guy stood talking with us about the hunting in the area which was great except that the snow geese used to come by every spring by the millions but now they must go another way because they have only seen a few each season for the last 4-5 years. It was the same story we had been told downriver by a couple guys.
We drifted by a group of kids swimming down by Mountain Village and lots of people out on their boats getting ready for the commercial fishing period to start. They have a 6 hour fishing opening from 9 PM to 3 AM and are drift net fishing for Chum Salmon. This is the first area where we have seen commercial fishing, before it was only for subsistence use.
Late in the evening we take a back channel north paralleling the river. On the map it is called Patsy Slough but we later find out that the name is Refrigerator Slough and that another slough up about 15 miles is the real Patsy Slough.
Matthew Heckman and the boat that he carved