People have emailed me and have wondered why Bob doesn't use a net when salmon fishing. One reason is because he has two of them back in the garage in Florida, and doesn't want a third one. The other one is that very few people use nets when bank fishing for salmon, and they land salmon all the time. Either Bob hooks into very feisty fish, or he hasn't learned the trick of it yet.

He doesn't have a stringer with him, either. He fashioned one out of rope. He's going native. The next time he loses all his lures, he'll probably create one from a caribou bone - once he slays a caribou with his fletched-tip spear.

We didn't get out of Palmer until noon, what with one thing and another. One thing was that we slept in late, the latest we have during this trip. The other thing was that we went into town and found a Fred Meyer store, fewer than twelve hours after I had decided I needed to buy another card for the camera. I got my card, we bought groceries, and the morning was gone.

The ride up the Park Highway was smooth and lovely, a picture postcard of the quiet kind. The ubiquitous pink fireweed lined the verges of the road, ragged black spruce stood in bright green bogs, and behind it all ranges of gray mountains rose against the sky. Tundra replaced the bogs at higher elevations, and the mountainsides moved closer, then receded again. But the changes in altitude were so gradual we never noticed them, and the highway forged pretty much straight ahead.

Denali National Park is a major tourist destination, of course, which meant that campgrounds nearby would fill up early in the day. Our late start would have put us there about 5:30 p.m., and finding a site that late would be risky. So we pulled into a little campground here in the woods at Cantwell, thirty miles south of the park. It's a quiet, friendly, pretty place carved out of the heavy forest. The lines for water and electricity run above the ground from post to post through the campground. There's permafrost just a couple of feet down, earth that never thaws, so it's best not even to dig into it if it can be avoided.

A table in the tiny campground office offered souvenir items for sale. Four or five brightly colored childrens' books were fanned out in the middle of the table. Some of them I had seen for sale before at museum/tourist destination gift shops. When I picked one up to consider buying it for my grandson, the campground owner pointed out to me that the book I held, Alaska's Three Pigs, was signed by the author, Arlene Laverde. "She lives in a cabin down the road from here,” said the campground owner. “When she comes in here for a hot shower every now and again, she signs her books.”

I bought the book. Not only was it a signed edition, but had a neat author tale to go with it. I had seen the author's road on the Alaska map, and even considered, briefly, traveling it as a shorter way to Denali. But, the road isn't paved and goes through territory we know nothing about. It could be more adventure than we wanted, plus we still sported layers of grime from other unpaved roads. We took the long way around.

Not everything, though, is wonderful. As we drove, I went to reach for the binoculars at my feet, where they always sit, but they weren't there. We rummaged around the car and trailer in the campground this evening, no binoculars. The last time either of us remember them, they were around Bob's neck when we got off the tour boat in Valdez. Some time after that they wandered off, never to be seen again. Bets are that we left them in a restaurant in Valdez.

Denali, Alaska

Like so many national parks, gift shops, restaurants, inns and campgrounds cluster around the entrance to the park. We're in a campground perched on a hillside, the one nearest the park entrance. It's typically crowded, dreary, and utilitarian, just a place to put your rig for a couple of nights. However, the lodges and gift shops that line the highway just beyond the campground are attractive log and stained clapboard buildings. A paved walkway begins at a scenic overlook north of the campground a ways, passes the commercial settlement, crosses a river, and continues through woods all the way to the park entrance, over a mile down the road. I walked a section of it today, but not all the way to the park.

When we got into Denali in mid-morning, Bob discovered that one of the cotter pins had been lost off the trailer hitch. There's nothing like hardware store here; but the happy handyman he is, he fabricated one from a piece of metal in his supply box.

After the cotter pin got taken care of, we decided to have a warm up a cup of left-over breakfast coffee before we drove down to the park visitor center. The microwave purred, roared - and quit. Bob fussed with it, but it's deader than a doornail. We drank cold coffee. The sun may have shone these last couple of days, but there's a black cloud over our heads, for sure.

At the Denali National Park and Preserve Visitor Center, we signed up for a bus tour of the park tomorrow. It's an eleven-hour tour; bring your own meals and water. Then we went to the bookstore corner searching for binoculars. They had one last pair for sale, and Bob found them first. They were just inexpensive tourist ones and I wanted a pair for myself, but there were no more. For me, the black cloud persists.

Denali, Alaska

Gray skies hung above the mountains and cold winds blew over the tundra today for our eleven-hour bus trip up and back on the only road into Denali National Park. As the bus climbed out of the valley and taiga forest where the visitor center stands, scattered scrawny black spruce stood like lone sentinels spread across the hills and lower mountain slopes. The cold wind was the edge of loneliness and solitude, the call of the North.

At higher altitudes, where we spent most of the day, the sentinel trees were gone. Tundra flowed up the slopes and fell off ridges as brown scree. We stopped to view a grizzly on a far incline to our left. On the right, two brave and dusty yellow potentilla plants growing out of the blasted rock just a few feet from my bus window swayed in the winds. Up there, the sturdy fireweed is nearly gone for the summer. Only a few pink blossoms cling to the tops of their long bare flower stems.

We traveled a road that wound through valleys and clung to the edges of cliffs. At the rest stops there were trails I could hike to get out into the clear air, to get alone with the mountains and tundra. The stops were brief, my hikes were only fifteen or twenty minutes, but the spell of the wild that enveloped me then will last for a lifetime.

Our longest stop was at Eielson Visitor Center, Mile 66 on this one road that penetrates the park. There was a Wind Warning out at the center for thirty to forty-mile an-hour winds with gusts up to fifty miles an hour. It was windy everywhere, but at Eielson the winds were roaring. A number of us went out on the trails below and above the mountainside-perched visitor center. As I rounded one corner on a trail, I almost got blown over. These were serious winds. The temps were in the 50s, and I can tell you what the wind chill was. Blasted cold! But also exciting and invigorating.

Besides the view of Mt. McKinley, which is called Denali in the language of the Athebascans and to anyone who lives in Alaska, Eielson Visitor Center had one other item of interest. They had the binoculars. I got my binoculars and Bob picked up Peterson's guide to Mammals. We were able to see about half of Mt. McKinley from the visitor center deck, which is considered a pretty good sighting. We were miles from it, and often times the mountain is completely hidden by clouds. It was, frankly, so far away that it didn't make much impression on me. The nearer mountains and valleys were much more exciting.

Our inward-bound trip ended at Wonder Lake, Mile 85 on the road. Wonder Lake is in a high protected valley where aspen, spruce, and willow grow. Long grasses line the edge of the lake instead of tundra brush. It was seventy degrees at the lake, and there was no wind. Somehow the surrounding mountains blocked the winds from the valley. I gathered blueberries and lingered at the shore of the four-mile long glacial lake. That is, a few others and I did.

There were mosquitoes in clouds. Caribou sometimes swim the lake to escape the mosquitoes. Bob, with others who didn't like mosquitoes, soon dove back into the bus, where they kept the door closed against the buzzing invaders. The blueberries I picked, actually, were pretty sour, even though ripe. I brought some back to the camper, and I'll mash them with sugar before eating them.

By the time we got back to Eielson Visitor Center on the return trip, a light spattering of rain had begun. It really wasn't noticeable if you were out walking in it. The winds had not abated. I got a walk up the mountain in, a fifteen minute one only, but still, a walk. Bob was a bit peeved with me for wandering around on the mountain, and said he wouldn't hold the bus for me if I were late. I wasn't late.

There was an occasional rift in the overcast, and sun would light up a mountaintop like Mother Nature had touched it with her finger. Hazy sun shone for a while during the rain on our way back down the road, and spawned a rainbow that spanned a mountain-sided valley in all its glory. The driver stopped the bus so people could photograph it. I think I got a good one.

But, you ask, did you see any wildlife? Oh, my, yes. The woman across from us kept a running total on her notepad, and offered it to others to copy. There were six or seven grizzly bears, one with cubs, and two that were copulating - much to the amusement of the busload. The bus driver said that such “four-legged” bears are sighted every now and again, often enough for them to pick up a nickname. One bear crossed the road in front of the bus and we all hung over each other to get a picture. I got a good one, and only had to elbow two or three people out of my way to get it. It was a frowsy bear, with fur going every which way. We're so used to stuffed grizzlies in displays, all combed and lovely, we don't realize that a real bear doesn't look so coiffed.

A wolf wearing a radio collar led us down the road for a piece, and we saw her again on the way back, miles from where we had first seen her. Again she led us down the road ahead of the bus before she veered off into the brush. A moose cow bounded out of a ditch and crossed the road in front of the bus, followed by her calf.
There were moose, caribou, lots of caribou, and a family of ptarmigan for us to admire. But they're window dressing. The real wilderness is in the spirit of the North, the mountains, the tundra, the bogs, the taiga, the pale light and the cold air.

Anchorage, Alaska

Just fourteen miles off Park Highway, heading south from Denali, is the town of Talkeetna. Back in the days of the railroads, Talkeetna was a well-known stop between Anchorage and Fairbanks. When Park Highway was built, it by-passed Talkeetna. The town's raison d'être declined as the tourists and traffic sped on by far from the little town.

Then the climbing route to the summit of Mt. McKinley by way of the West Buttress was found, and Talkeetna was back on the map as the jumping-off point for scaling the mountain. West Buttress soon became the preferred route for tackling the highest mountain, 20,032 feet, in the United States, and the savior of Talkeetna.

There's glamour in mountain climbing, and Talkeetna reinvented itself as a charming little touristy spot where one might see real mountaineers from around the world. There are shops offering river rafting down the Talkeetna River and flight-seeing trips over seventeen glaciers that flow from the heights of Mt. McKinley. Restaurants are decorated with climbing memorabilia and photos. The trains still come to Talkeetna. They carry sightseeing tourists, or hikers who want a lift into the wilderness or a ride back when they've had enough wilderness. Only 868 people actually live in Talkeetna, and they all run gift shops, restaurants, and tourist trips.

Food was our first concern when we got into town, after the shock of seeing gaggles of tourists in a place we thought was remote. There were so many RVs parked around taking up any free random space that we were hard pressed to find a place for our RV. But, we did find one between a fifth wheel RV and a truck that Bob, with his increasing expertise at backing the trailer, was able to fit Little Moby into quite nicely.

We had come to Talkeetna for lunch, and found it at the West Buttress Pub. The deck out in front was filled with tourists. The waitress said she could clear a table outside if we wanted to wait a few minutes. Not us. We took a table inside where it was warm. Not that it was really cold. It was in the sixties. Just the grayness of the day made it feel cold. The walls inside the pub were covered with Mt. McKinley facts and photos, almost like a museum. A sheet with Mt. McKinley climbings short facts was on each table. There was plenty to read and view while we waited for our caribou burgers and hot coffee. The menu warned that caribou meat is quite dry. They were dead right. I've never had such a dry burger, rather like a sawdust cake with a taste of wild game. Flavor was fine, but it took a lot of chewing to get it down.

After lunch we walked along the main, and only actual street in Talkeetna under cloudy skies and spitting rain. The forest pushes into Talkeetna, and the few “streets” other than the main street were just dusty alleys and dead ends. Mostly, houses just sat wherever the owner's whim put them.

We did go to the Denali National Park Ranger Station and look around. All McKinley climbers must register and take an orientation program there. From Talkeetna, climbers are flown to a base camp on a glacier to begin their climb. There were ninety-eight climbers registered as being somewhere on the mountain today. It takes eighteen to twenty days to do the West Buttress route climb to the summit and back. Only fifty percent of those who attempt the climb make it to the top. The odds just enhance the challenge.

There was what looked like a very good local museum that we didn't, regrettably, have time to see. One gift shop lured us inside with the word “chocolate” on the sign in front. But when we got in, there were just some chocolate bars offered, along with all the usual souvenir coffee cups, shot glasses, stuffed toy moose, and Christmas ornaments. Their lure worked, though. I bought some chocolate bars.

Normally we avoid cities, but we had decided to go all the way to Anchorage tonight where there would be a better chance of finding a new microwave oven and getting a quick oil change. So we left Talkeetna, drove the fourteen miles back to the Park Highway and turned left for Anchorage.

As we cruised through Wasilla, thirty miles north of Anchorage - are you ready for this? There was a Wal-Mart. It was the first Wal-Mart we had seen in Alaska. The next one will probably be built as a base camp for the West Buttress climbers. We whipped in, bought a microwave, and one of our tasks was done.

At four thirty-six precisely it began to rain in earnest. At five thirtyish we pulled up to the campground in Anchorage in pouring rain, and found a large “No Vacancy” sign at the entrance. After a stunned pause, we drove in anyway. Ah, the glory of Little Moby. They did have a short site we could tuck ourselves into for just one night, a sanctuary from cold, rain, and grizzly bears.

Kenai City, Alaska

We got up early so that Bob could be first in line at the oil change shop and do some grocery shopping, while I stood at the office counter and sent out email and saved incoming email to read later.

We took a shortcut out of Anchorage that didn't work, and had to ask directions at a liquor store - happily, at a liquor store. Our supply of wine was getting dangerously low, and it was time to restock the wine cellar under the table in the camper. We finally made it out of town on Seward Highway going the right direction, toward Kenai and Soldotna. Again, just when you think you've seen it all…

Seward Highway winds and coils between mountains and the vast tidal mud flats and dark seawaters of Turnagain Arm. For nearly forty miles we were surrounded by coastal splendor. Ranks and piles of mountains across the sound from us rose from the sea and marched to beyond the horizon. White cottony clouds drifted across the steep gray slopes and ragged peaks. Once in a while a finger of sun would blazon a far mountaintop, then slip back into the overcast.

We turned from the sea into the green-sloped mountains and forests of a Switzerland. Silent lakes pooled in the valley beside our road. The setting brought back the time years ago, when I wore a younger body, that I backpacked up the mountains and over the passes of the Swiss Alps.

We came down to Kenai and Soldotna to fish. It looked like we came to the right place. At Cooper Landing the Kenai River was dotted with fishermen, and at Sterling, and at Soldotna. The camper park we're in here in Kenai is on a bluff above where the Kenai River meets the ocean at Cook's Inlet.

Down on the beach below the bluff fishers in waders dip huge round nets into the water for red salmon. This is the only place they're allowed to use nets, and not every year. But this is a good July year. Lots of salmon are running, and they can dip. They are taking the salmon and freezing, canning, or smoking it for the long winter ahead. It's not a tourist game. These are local people, to whom this is a business of subsistence, not sport. You can't even get a dipping permit if you aren't a resident of Alaska.

Each head of a household is allowed to take twenty-five fish a day. Ten fish a day are allowed for each member of the household up to three. So potentially, a family of four could catch fifty-five fish a day. That's a lot of fish, considering red salmon weigh in at five to seven pounds each.

As I stood watching them around seven this evening, fishing boats streamed into the river from Cook Inlet on their way home to the Kenai docks. There are 300 commercial fishing boats in Kenai. Tons of halibut and salmon come ashore here.

Kenai City, Alaska

It all started when we drove out to find a propane vendor Bob thought he remembered seeing as we came into Kenai yesterday. We want to get our propane tank filled. We kept going southeast on the Kenai Spur Highway, on and on, until we were in Soldotna, eleven miles down the road. The propane vendor had vanished.

Since we were in Soldotna, we decided to go to the Soldotna Visitor Center and find out about fishing there. We crossed the bridge over the Kenai River, looked down, and saw fishers on a waterside walkway casting their luck on the swift river. A quick stop at the Visitor Center, and then Bob was bounding down the stairs to the fishwalk, pole in hand. To greet him, the morning scud overcast thinned, and the sun shone on the Soldotna Visitor Center Classic Fishwalk.

While he chased red salmon, I got in better than an hour's hike on a walkway running along Sterling Highway back towards commercial Soldotna. Bob hadn't caught any salmon when I returned, but he had met some people from Howey-in-the-Hills, just nine miles from our home in Florida.

We got lunch at a local family restaurant, a late lunch, about two in the afternoon. From lunch we went out to find another local fishwalk, where he wants to fish tomorrow. Then we finished the errands we started out to do this morning, and got back into Kenai in later afternoon.

Here in Kenai Bob is river fishing for salmon, rather than ocean fishing. With the river's fast current, a net is really handy. The owner of the campground is loaning him one for tomorrow. Bob broke down and thought he'd buy one today, but the stores here were out of them.

It's the high run time for red salmon, and the banks of the rivers are lined with fishermen. You almost have to fight for a spot. Bob still doesn't have a stringer, though. He made himself another rope one tonight, with one of my knitting stitch holders for a pin. I guess I can kiss that stitch holder good-bye.

For supper, we walked over to a quaint tiny local restaurant, Veronica's, that we had heard about from other tourists. It's a neat offbeat place with outstanding food. The restaurant is in an old hand-hewn timber cabin built in 1918 by a homesteader. They've added a sort of plastic-covered greenhouse room to extend the size. The effect is very Home-Made Architecture, charming. They have a rather limited menu chalked on a board. Every table is different, and every chair, all from antique and thrift shops. Each table has a different old craftsman-style lamp with stained glass/glass beads shade on it. They serve a variety of expresso drinks and Republic of Teas tea with their meals. I had Earl Greyer (not Earl Grey) tea, and the bergamot in it almost knocked me over. Good stuff!

We ordered a zucchini/green pepper no-crust quiche that was out of this world. I don't know what they did to it, but it was right. It came with a mixed lettuces/red cabbage/tomato/olive salad tossed with balsamic vinegar dressing. Again, one of the best balsamic vinegar dressings I've ever had. Also we got a square of molasses corn bread, haven't had that in years! Everything was made on site, of course. On my way out I snagged a big ginger/molasses cookie. It was fat and puffy, like the cook had dropped big spoonfuls of gingerbread onto a cookie sheet.

The high today was sixty-two degrees, with hazy sunshine and a breeze from the sea. The crisp, fresh smell of salt water and seaweed drifting in our windows every night just soothes the soul.

Kenai and Soldotna, Alaska

Bountiful sunshine danced on the waves of the rushing milky river today. The color reminds me of a light green milky opal. Fishers lined the fishwalks at Swiftwater Campground on the Kenai River, hoping that the salmon will run by them. Swiftwater is run by the city of Soldotna, and for five dollars and a quarter you can fish there for twelve hours. Bob paid his fee, collected his gear, and maneuvered pole, tackle box (cardboard), and borrowed net down the steep stairs to a fishwalk. The one he chose was about forty feet long. He established his spot. Once you have a spot established, you have to stay right there. If you leave to go to the bathroom, someone else could be in your chosen place when you get back. So I stand guard on the walkway whenever Bob wants to go upstairs.

The Kenai has cut high banks and bluffs along its length as it flows to the sea. Salmon like to swim near shore and under overhanging banks as they come up the river to their spawning streams. Fishwalks are long open metal ramps suspended just above the water along the base of these high banks. They place the fishermen right over the water where the salmon are most likely to be swimming. Swiftwater is far enough upriver that the tides don't change the water level much, but they do affect how the fish run. You can see the tide change in the color of the water as incoming tide washes salt water and silt into the estuary.

Once Bob got established, I walked around the campground and up and down to various fishwalks for an hour. Then I got in the car and drove into town to a Subway for sandwiches for lunch.

There were picnic tables at the top of the bluff, where the cars were parked, but Bob wasn't about to leave his chosen fishing spot. So I took his sandwich and pop down to him, and he held his pole with one hand and ate with the other. I went back upstairs and ate at a picnic table where I could sit down. He stood down on the fishwalk for eight hours without sitting down. Now that's devotion to a cause.

After lunch I walked back into town. It was only about a mile and half down a dirt road to the main commercial corridor along the Sterling Highway and Kenai Spur roads. I nosed around in a Salvation Army Thrift Shop, walked down out to the end of town on the Kenai Spur, and back to Swiftwater. That took about three hours.

I went into every thrift shop I found. There was one in Kenai I had already gone through as soon as I found it. I am looking for an aluminum drip coffee pot. I don't suppose one has been made since 1957. Bob found one in 1999 in a second hand store, and we have used it almost ever since. But it has developed a pinhole leak, as beloved things do, and will need to be replaced. We used a coffee press for a while, which I think makes superb coffee, but Bob says it's too hard to clean. So it languishes at home in the garage while we try to get good coffee out of the aluminum drip pot. He does the meal cleanup, so I'm not about to complain too much. I might have to go back to doing dishes again.

I went downstairs to check on the fishwalk. Bob hadn't caught a thing. A woman had moved in beside him and was cramping his style. Their lines got tangled a couple of times. That's the way it is on a fishwalk. Fishers fill up the walk, and a rain of fishline fills the air with the constant casts. I read in last night's paper that a fisherman had been fined for punching another one in the face when their lines tangled. People on the walk where Bob was perched on were very polite and helpful to each other, he said.

The fishing is highly regulated in Alaska. They are really protecting the resources. On this section of this river you can only fish designated areas, can only use a single hook, and cannot snag the fish. If the hook catches the fish in the back, for instance, you must let him go. You can only land a fish that takes the hook by mouth. Starting August first, you can use treble hooks, but you still can't snag them.

Three or four people along the walk seemed to have all the luck. They were pulling in fish. Bob changed lures, copied their style, but still the had fish eluded him. I stood for a while and watched, then climbed back up the stairs, opened up the laptop on a picnic table under a nice tall pine tree, and wrote letters.

Around six he gave it up, and we turned the BlueVan back towards the campground in Kenai. We were tired. I was too tired to cook, and really not hungry anyway. Bob seized the opportunity to buy himself some oysters to fry, since I won't touch them with a ten foot pole.

At the campground, I walked over and looked down at the lines of dippers in the river mouth. A few even had tents on the beach back from the tide crest level. Nights get into the forties here, but if you didn't have to go home, you can fish as many hours as possible, saving a few for sleeping. The darkest night is only a dusky twilight. You can certainly see well enough to stand out in the river and hold a net.

I spent some time in the campground office trying to call campgrounds in Seward and Homer to make reservations. These are big tourist areas, and campgrounds could be filled. I couldn't seem to make connections in either place. So I plugged in the computer, sent and downloaded email, and called it a night. I could have done more, but they wanted to close up the office and I was in the way. I did hear, though, that a dipper had died yesterday in the river out in front of the campground. He had walked out too far, got caught in the tidal bore, and carried away. They found him fairly soon by knowing how the currents run, but he had already drowned. Since salmon run close to shore, there wasn't any reason to be out that far. He apparently just wasn't paying attention to the rising waters.

Tides here are thirty feet, second only to Fundy. There isn't a tidal bore like Fundy, but I stood out one night and watched at the tide's turn, and I could see the incoming rush of water as the tide pushed into the Kenai River.

When I got back to the camper, Bob had breaded, fried, and eaten his oysters. It had cost him five dollars for seven oysters. He said they were really big oysters, and delicious. Whatever. I dragged a leftover half a croissant ham sandwich from the fridge and warmed it up. Good enough. That wasn't a sacrifice. I really wasn't hungry much, and I knew that around ten we would have a big glass of wine, some soy nuts and Chinese snacks.

Kenai and Soldotna, Alaska

We read in the Anchorage paper last night that there are bear problems in Denali. One grizzly scratched a hiker. That was considered natural behavior, as the sow had a cub with her. But to be safe, the park closed the area to hiking for the indefinite future.

The second instance was at the Eilsen Visitor Center up in the mountains, where it was so windy when we were there, but I got to hike out on some of the trails anyway. I'm glad we were touring then, as now the trails are closed. Another grizzly sow has gone bonkers. She's been attacking vehicles, and even attacked the visitor center building. She also has a cub. So she is under close scrutiny to see what's causing her stress and erratic behavior, and visitors look over their shoulders when they get off the busses.

Well, Bob fished all day, stood six hours on the Soldotna Visitor Center fishwalk, and caught nothing but a sunburn. No one caught fish today. The fishers across the river in front of the resort didn't catch any; the fellows out in waders along the bank below the fishwalk didn't catch any. The fish just weren't running today.

But his day was not without any catches. A lady about our age, who has lived in Alaska for fifty years, got to talking with Bob about his fishing. She could see he wasn't used to salmon fishing. She showed him how to bend his hook to a better angle, told him to put on more weights, demonstrated how to drag the lure. They chatted on, and then she got around to asking him if he were married. After he said he was, the conversation lagged. Soon she patted him on the shoulder and left. From the top of the hill at the visitor center I saw them talking below on the fishwalk. I was coming down to the walk when I saw her pat him on the shoulder and leave, and I thought it was a bit familiar for a casual conversation. I later told him he probably blew his only chance for a log cabin in Alaska.

Around one o'clock I walked up to a Subway take-out, just fifteen minutes from the river, and brought back lunch. There was a picnic table on an extension of the fishwalk, only fifteen feet from where Bob had his territory marked out. But he wouldn't come over to the table in case some fish rustler would move in. I had to give him his sandwich and Diet Coke to eat standing and casting. I ate at the table.

I walked for four hours around town in the afternoon. Soldotna is not that big a town, rather small, really. But the asphalt sidewalks of town are really bike trails, and go off along Sterling Highway and Kenai Spur for miles and miles. So I could walk out of town on the bike trail and then back in. It got up to sixty-three degrees, and I was hot while walking. I guess the Florida body is getting somewhat adjusted to the climate.

I sent some email at the local library, and did a little shopping. Didn't get anything spectacular, just some red Velcro to fix the hood on my fat red winter coat. The hood of my fat red winter coat falls over my eyes when I tighten it. I tightened it at the Columbia Glacier on the boat tour from Valdez, and couldn't see the glacier. But I noted a tricky Velcro arrangement on some expensive name-brand jacket hoods that solves that problem, I think. I hope it works on fat hoods.

Around five, after breaking three hooks trying to bend them like the gal did and catching no fish, Bob hung it up, and we drove back to Kenai. We've learned some of the back roads now, and can miss the highway traffic. We parked the van at the campground, and walked about a mile to the Kenai Elks Club for their Saturday night halibut dinner.

The parking lot of the blue pole Elks Club building was filled. We passed through the darkened, smoky bar to a small dining room at the back of the building. Our waitress was a jolly talkative Elk lady whose husband was making the rounds of the tables selling 50/50 raffle tickets. Groups of friends and families filled the room, laughing and joshing the servers. We ordered a Black Butte Porter Alaska-brewed beer, and relaxed in a bit of true Americana, supper in a small town social center.

There was a cooler table at the front of the room between the kitchen doors. Cartons of paper towels and toilet paper were stacked behind it. An electric roaster on the table held beans baked with ham and bacon, and beyond, on ice, were potato salads, slaw, and fluffy pink gelatin something, all obviously donated. We each picked up a paper plate from the stack at the end of the table, and dug into the homemade food. The Elks' attitude was “take all you want; come back for more if you're still hungry.”

The halibut pieces came fresh and hot from the fryer in a cardboard dish like you get at fast food places. While we ate, Bob reminisced about his years working Friday night fish fries at various Elks where we had lived. This was really a taste of home for him.

Bob ordered coffee, and we lingered at the table for the seven o'clock 50/50 raffle drawing. The drawing happened. We didn't win, so we put on our coats and went out into the sunshine and sharp winds from the sea for a leisurely walk back to the campground.

There's a lovely, manicured little memorial park right beside the campground entrance. The benches of the park, like the benches along the edge of the campground, sit on top of the bluff that overlooks the point where the Kenai River pours into the sea. This is the last night for dip fishing. At midnight, the party is over until next time, a year or more away. Fishers lined the shallow water practically shoulder to shoulder, pushing and dragging their big round nets into the current. We saw one dipper catch a fish and haul it up onto the beach, then we strolled back to Little Moby for the night.

Kenai and Soldotna, Alaska

I stepped out of the camper this morning, and someone had built a huge snow-covered mountain across the inlet from the campground during the night and piled other smaller mountains around it for trimming. We have been here five days, and never ever saw them, even though it's been sunny from noon on each day. There was always morning overcast until this morning, and apparently even when the sun shone on the other days, the mountains out there were hidden in sea fog.

The tide didn't crest until nearly six today, so we fiddled away the morning doing laundry and other small jobs. I had a yen to go back to quaint little Veronica's once more before we left Kenai, so we walked over. After a late and large egg and sausage Sunday breakfast, our intent was just to have a cup of coffee and a dessert for a light lunch. Well, “The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley...”

Bob took one look at the clam chowder listed on the little chalkboard, and ordered a bowl of it. Not even crumble-top apple pie could lure him from the prospect of home made chowder with fresh Kenai River clams in it. They saw us both coming, as the second soup offering was lentil soup, my absolute favorite. Both soups came with pasta salad and the wonderful molasses corn bread. We chose an old wicker table and chairs in a sunny spot in the attached plastic-covered “greenhouse” room, and enjoyed.

After lunch we drove the back way over to Soldotna. Bob dropped me off at the intersection of Bridge Access road and Kalifornsky Beach road, six miles from Soldotna. A bike path starts there and goes into Soldotna and beyond. He drove on to the Classic Fish Walk at Soldotna Visitor Center, and I walked over.

Temperatures soared to an unheard-of 67 degrees, and it was another hot walk, but a great one. Walking gave me a chance to really look at the woods and wildflowers along the way. The path ran along the busy road and past a lot of light industry, but still there were forested areas to walk past. Aspen joined the spruce spires, giving a softer look to the land.

Fireweed, even though only small clusters of the bright pink blossoms still remain on them, made a statement en masse in the forest understory and along the roadway. I saw a lot of lupine plants, and even a couple of purple lupine in full blossom that were confused and thought it was spring. Pink and white clover still bloomed, though they were going fast. It's August First today, and Alaska winter is reaching out its long talons. By September, it will be here. The only flower that bloomed consistently and without blight was white yarrow. The bike path was lined with white yarrow. I didn't see any across the road where there had been no disturbance of the soil, so the yarrow must have moved in when the bike path was built.

When I got to the Classic Fish Walk, Bob shook his head. It had been another day without fish, another day when only the fantastically lucky landed a fish. Bob wasn't one of them. He had caught a fish, but it was too small to keep. In the whole day, only one fisher on the walk had caught a fish that was a keeper.

I sat down at the picnic table nearby and wrote postcards. Fishers are the world's greatest whiners. Up at the visitor center and here on the walk they moaned and groused because they weren't catching fish. Huh. They should sit out in a boat in Shoals Provincial Park in Canada, as we did for many a spring. I used to cast fifty times off one side of the boat, and then fifty times off the other side, over and over, bored out of my mind. We went to Canada for walleye, but we caught a pike, which was ridiculous as we had a lake full of pike in front of our home in Michigan. But still, every spring, hope for that big walleye sprang anew.

Around six thirty Bob gave up, and we drove home to a supper of leftover fried halibut and sliced tomatoes. As Scarlett said, “Tomorrow is another day, ” or something like that.

Getting Started

Michigan
Mackinac Island
Sault Ste. Marie

Canada
Wawa
Schreiber
Kakabeka P P

Alaska
Cantwell
Denali
Kenai
Soldotna

International Falls, MN

North Dakota
Icelandic State Park
Willston

Malta, MT

Alberta, Canada
Fort McLeod
Wetaskiwin
Valley View

Alaska
Kenai
Soldotna
Homer
Seward

British Columbia, Canada
Dawson Creek
FortNelson
Muncho Lake

Yukon Territory, Canada
Watson Lake
Whitehorse

Alaska
Seward
Palmer
Tok

Yukon Territory, Canada
Whitehorse

Alaska
Haines
Skagway

Yukon Territory, Canada
KluaneLake

Alaska
Tok
Valdez

Yukon Territory, Canada
Whitehorse
(and Skagway, AK)

British Columbia, Canada
WatsonLake
FortNelson
Dawson Creek

Alberta, Canada
Whitecourt

Havre, Montana

North Dakota
Williston
Medora

Valdez, Alaska

Medora, North Dakota

Wyoming
Spearfish
Devil's Tower NM

Rt. 20 across Nebraska

Des Moines, Iowa

Branson, Missouri

Jackson, Mississippi

Tallahassee, Florida

Home!