• this page is posted after the Alaska Trip ended. Better late than never.

If you dream of Alaska and fresh caught fish, of chartering out into water so cold and pure and fish wild as the day they were hatched, then this post is for you. Diane, Mary and I chartered with Dave and his lovely wife and went out for the day salmon fishing. We went out pretty deep. Dave uses outriggers to catch fish – seemed like cheating until he popped that weight off and you were on your own. No simple matter, outrigger let loose when the bite happened. We set the hook (or didn’t) and convinced the fish to come aboard (well, Dave hauled them in with his net…).

Look at this day!

We had an absolutely capital day. Sunny enough to take jackets off. Sea otters, puffins, murre, kittiwakes and murrelets iced the cake, for sure.

How did we do?

I even kept the bellies and my son smoked them for me. My recipe was too salty, though. With hope we can try again another time.

That night at camp we had a pj party in the laundry room – everyone told of their days. Wait… What did other folks do? They went bear watching and to a salmon ladder and to the dump to watch eagles and messed around in Valdez. I wasn’t there so can’t really attest to the fun they had – though Barb was an eagle and bear watcher and she reported having an amazing time. I’ll see if she will write an edit to this post to talk about those days.

Remember Thompson Pass? Well, to get out of Valdez, we had to climb that mountain again. Phew. Scout is a trooper, she managed to get us out of the hole and back up to Tok.