Alaska Tourists - Part 1

At the outdoor show, John and I talked to an outfitter from Talkeetna who does Salmon fishing charters and we decided we wanted to go fishing for King Salmon.  We went through our calendar and discovered the only time we could do that was father's day.  So on June 16th, even though I should have stayed home and cleaned house for Sister Sue and Mo's visit, we headed to Talkeetna to do some fishing.

Talkeetna Campground

It's about a 5 hour drive from here and we got there just in time to set up our teepee tent and then headed to Twisted Creek restaurant where B&J had made reservations for us to eat.  We had a nice dinner and walked around Talkeetna a little then headed back to the campground to get some sleep.

John had to try the Old Mad Dog beer - then he tried a different kind.

There were several painted moose around town - the one above had a patriotic theme.  Unfortunately by the time we got done eating the gift shop was closed so I didn't get to check out all the treasures.

The little log place in front of the Denali Brewing Co is the Twisted Creek restaurant - the outside tables were full so we ate inside - good thing too or while we were eating, we would have also been on the menu for all the mosquitoes down there.

This is a moose-quito - just in case you've never seen one.

After not sleeping much, we met our guide at 5:00 Sunday morning for our fishing trip and headed up the Talkeetna river to Clear Creek.

Phantom Salmon Charter - there was the guide, John and myself and 3 guys from Texas on our fishing adventure.  But while there were lots of people, someone forgot to tell the King Salmon to show up.

Here's a picture of our guide running over to one of the fishermen when the kid called "Fish On".  Unfortunately, the fish got off the hook and went on to live another day.

John tried and tried to catch a fish.  There was a trout that was kind of rolling in the water near him but despite all his efforts, the fish refused to grab hold of the lure.   I didn't do a lot of fishing because I'm more into the catching thing - if they aren't biting, I'm not going to waste the energy.

The King Salmon run seems to be small and late this year.  One of the guys from Texas caught a fairly nice Rainbow Trout but it was in an area where he had to turn it loose.  Our guide tried a number of different places and after 8 hours of poor fishing, we got back to the dock to make the long drive home to Fairbanks.

We did stop by the Mt. McKinley view point but the mountain was as cooperative as the fish.  Then the day just got a bit worse when John decided Lynda needed to drive on home.  He pulled off the road and I got behind the wheel.  Some traffic was coming so I pulled out quickly and floored it.  Then I realized that I had hit 80 MPH so I took my foot off the gas to slow down.  Just then, I looked up and saw there was an Alaska State Trooper coming south towards me and then he hit his lights and I pulled over.  Man - first time I had been stopped since we first moved to Nevada.  And of course, since he clocked me at 80, he had to write me up - thank goodness he did drop the speed to 74 because according to his story "I slowed down as soon as I saw him."



Oh well, that was probably the highlight of John's day because now he had something to tease me about.

On June 21, at 10:38 PM, Sister Sue and Mo flew into Fairbanks for their Alaskan vacation.  It had been a long time since we'd spent quality time with them so we were very excited they were coming up.  John and I had to work the next morning so we got them back to the house and all went to bed.

June 22, Friday, John and I had to work so I gave them tickets to the Large Animal Research place and about 10:00 A.M. they drove the 5 miles or so down to that to see the Musk Ox.  Unfortunately, it was such a warm morning that the musk ox wouldn't leave the trees so they didn't even get to see them up close.  The animals just aren't cooperating around here this week.

They did get to see a baby caribou though.  We'll have to drive back over to see the Musk Ox if it cools off this week.

When I got off work, I drove them around town a little.  We drove up to the UAF campus but it was too cloudy to get a look at the Alaskan Range so instead, we went to the fish and game to pick up their fishing permits.  Then we headed over across town to go to the Morris Thompson visitor center.

On the way, we had to follow this vehicle a bit to get a picture.

Isn't that just the coolest thing you ever saw.

At the Morris Thompson visitor center we had to get a picture by antler Arch.  The antlers have been donated by people all over Alaska - way cool.

I made Suzy pose by the tent in the exhibit area and then we walked through the rest of the exhibit.

We drove to the pipeline and Suzy jumped up a little so she could say she touched the pipeline.  Then we stopped by Walmart and went on home to make halibut tacos and avocado tostados for dinner.  After dinner, we walked up to the runway since we hadn't got a lot of steps in.  By the time we went to bed, we had gotten over 11,000 steps in.

Saturday morning, June 23, we decided to go fishing down on the Salcha River.  We loaded up, drove the 40+ miles down the Richardson Highway and put the boat in the water.

We went up river and stopped at a gravel bar to do some fishing.  Fished for a while, without any luck.

We went further up river and then back down a bit to find a nice place for a picnic in the shade.  It was over 80 degrees here which was way hot.

John and Morris set up the barbeque and cooked up some brats for lunch.  While John was cooking, Morris was busy catching fish.

He caught a nice arctic grayling and put it on the stringer so that he could decide later if it would be catch and release or kill and grill.

After eating a little lunch, he caught a 2nd fish and walked it through the water over to the stringer.

I did a little fishing but didn't catch anything at all.

Suzy was getting into the boat but didn't realize that when you step in with one foot the boat kind of pushes away from you and she ended up taking a spill in the water.  As you can see, Morris thought it was pretty funny that she was all wet.

Morris is the only one who caught fish worth keeping so it was going to be a "Kill and Grill" kind of day.

Holding out the huge fin that is on the Arctic Grayling.

And what would a day on the Salcha be without some kind of trouble.  The boat engine locked up and John tried to push it over to the gravel bar so he could fix it.  He tried doing the gondolier thing like Valerie did last year but the water was a lot deeper in this part of the river so that didn't work very well.

Oh no, what are we going to do.  John decided to get off the boat and using the rope, walk the boat over to the gravel bar.

Oops - he didn't take the rope with him and when Morris threw it out since we were heading down stream, the rope floated the wrong way.  "Goodbye John - get to the other side of the river".

Morris used the push oar and tried to get the boat stopped.  We crashed into a tree that was falling into the river.  I tried to start the boat and it wouldn't start.  Morris lifted the lid and messed with the fly wheel on the engine - he pushed it one way, then the other and it freed up.  Then he started the engine and was able to maneuver the boat over to the gravel bar so we could pick up John.  Good thing because a little further and we would have been too far down the river for John to even follow along the side of the river he was on.

We weren't too terribly far from the boat ramp so we went a little past the ramp and went on down to where the Salcha dumped into the Tanana.  Then we turned around, loaded the boat and came back to Fairbanks.  Grilled the fish and had a little dinner - I'm probably starving people cause I wasn't very hungry - but we had halibut left from last night and the 3 grilled grayling.

Tomorrow we are heading to Valdez for our next adventure.

A little information for anteemoile (in case you read this):  Morris said you were wondering what this little house was.  It's actually a wood boiler.  You shove a bunch of wood through the door in the bottom and the top is where the water is.  At the rear are hoses so you build a fire, turn on the circulating pump and the hot water helps to supplement the fuel oil boiler in the garage to keep us warm in the winter.