In 1964, Chuck Heath loaded his family and belongings into his vehicle leaving Sandpoint, Idaho for a drive up the Al-Can Highway for a new life full of adventure in Alaska.

Back then, the state’s population was growing faster than its teacher base and Heath took the opportunity to answer a call to Alaska’s mystique.

Since then he taught the arts of hunting, fishing and trapping to his four children with his wife, Sally, along for most of his outdoor pursuits.

To say the Heath family is outdoor-oriented is a pure understatement.

The Heath home is like a user-friendly natural history museum with its unending collection of animal furs — fox, otter, seal, beaver, wolverine — and bones, including a mammoth femur. There are skulls, fossils and a collection of glass fishing floats that even the folks on Antique Roadshow would envy. Each item has a story behind it that Chuck willingly shares with visitors. The shelves of the Heath garage house a wide selection of gallon and quart size jars chock full of the fishing lures Chuck has found while spending the past several decades fishing the lakes, rivers and streams in what is known as the Mat-Su Valley where he and Sally make their home.

But their adventures aren’t limited to local excursions.

Their reputations as naturalists have earned the pair plenty of invitations for world-wide work helping to control invasive animal species with the federal Wildlife Service Program housed in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They’ve trapped fox in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands and trapped rats at Palmyra Atoll, southwest of Hawaii, and at the World Trade Center ground zero operations in New York City as investigators searched for remains of the disaster’s victims.

In their younger years, both were avid runners. Chuck, now age 69, ran the Boston Marathon during his years as a high school track coach. Sally, now age 67, has finished the Anchorage Mayor’s Marathon.

According to long-time family friends, one rule stood the test of time in the Heath household: always be honest.

7 Night Celebrity Alaska Cruise from $499