Thursday July 8

Rained like crazy in Valdez. Filled up with gas and propane and headed out.

Checked out the Klutina River near Copper City again to see if the fishing action was heating up at all. It looked dead.

Drove up the road a bit more and stopped at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. What’s unique about Wrangell-St Elias you ask? Well, for starters it’s America’s largest National Park. It also has nine of the tallest peaks in North America. Most of the park is totally inaccessible. It has 4 mountain ranges within its boundaries. 90% of all Alaska’s wildlife species can be found within it. And…25% of it is glacier.

It also had first class bathrooms…..a welcome change.

Total nerd ball ranger kid gave a convincing talk about how the park represented freedom. By the end he had me convinced that I could preserve the park while living in Massachusetts…… by installing energy saving lights at home etc, etc.

Sometimes the job of park ranger appeals to me. They ride around, give talks, and answer questions. They don’t ever seem stressed about anything. It’s the isolation that would get to me. I think I’d feel trapped in the park. Sometimes I’d like to hit the Northwork’s, go to the movies, catch a sporting event…all things not readily available to the average ranger. It’s all give and take I suppose.

Checked out the only place in Alaska where a non-Native can operate a fish wheel. A fish wheel is this crazy mechanism that spins in the river and, when the fish are in the river, literally scoops up fish by the bucket load. Some interesting cats down there.

Got a few tips from a ranger on some great lakes to fish so I drove to Silver Lake near Chitina, pumped up the float tube and caught some monster rainbows, biggest around 20 inches. Fished ‘til after midnight…..because I could.

During the night, well the dusky night around 3am, I went out to water the daisies and was startled to find a moose and her baby strolling past the truck and on down Main Street in Chitina.

Wednesday July 7

Late nights make for late mornings…I need to break the cycle.

In the end, the LuLu Belle boat trip was a bit of a disappointment. Here’s a synopsis.

-Sea Otters, cool

-Puffins, only saw flying, not a great look.

-Humpback whales, ok but the Capt made no attempt to produce a “great” view. Kept his distance, which was far too great in my opinion. Whale watch out of Provincetown, Ma WAY better, same kind of whales too.

-Ice bergs….eh, cool for about 5 minutes. Get a glass of ice and fill it with water and use your imagination.

-Rained almost the whole time (nobody’s fault)

-The Captain was well, he had this way of speaking where he’d continuously decrease the volume of his sentence the longer it went on…..like.

“The most important thing you need to know about Alaska is……………..”

You were like what?? What’d he say??

I’d say the overall trip was pretty lousy……I did get a free popcorn though.

Back to the restaurant for a double order of tots, watched a little bear mayhem at Allison Point again and called it a day.

Tuesday July 6

Slept late. Rain. Low 50’s

Valdez is a seaside port most famous as the place where the Alaskan Pipeline terminates. Tankers leave the harbor every other day full of oil. The ships don’t go to ports in North America. It all goes to the Far East. Crazy right? The irony is that there is enough oil stored in Valdez to power everything in America for eight hours…that’s every car, home, everything….for eight hours. Yet Valdez, (and Alaska), have the highest gas prices in America.

Blogged my brains out at a harbor side eatery with a very good order of tater tots. I would have been pleased if Uruguay had beaten Holland just because of the annoying Dutch people watching the game.

Studied the different wildlife and glacier cruises and decided on one that appeared more down home and family operated. The boat was called the LuLu Belle. Leaves the dock at 1pm tomorrow.

Heard there were a couple of free flicks about the Alaskan pipeline and the great Alaskan earthquake at this place down the street. What I was envisioning, and what that experience was actually like were to very different things. The “theater” turned out to be a row of folding chairs in front of a 19 inch TV set and VCR. The whole shooting match was set up in the middle of a second hand clothing store called Sugar and Spice. Next to the TV were all these mysterious boxes covered with white sheets and a sign that read, “Don’t mess with these boxes. They are for Michael’s dialysis treatments, Thanks, Ann (Michaels Mom)” The flicks were from the 60’s…..black and white. Even scarier, it was the LuLu Belle lady that told me that they were great….hope the boat doesn’t sink tomorrow.

Headed back to Allison Point to catch some pink salmon. This grizzly bear and three cubs were roaming all over the place chowing down on the salmon. The crowds of people were funny, getting displaced from one area, running over to another, snapping photos like crazy. People were in a frenzy to get the perfect photo. Every one knows that there no more intense tourist then the Asians. They will literally box you out to and take your spot if they can’t get the best pic possible. One guy even rested his camera on my shoulder and snapped away.

At one point I had 15 bald eagles in my view. Click to enlarge the one photo above and count the amount of wildlife in it. You’ve got to look hard to see the eagle. Thing is, I took that photo not thinking that there was so much in it. I was pretty surprised to see it on the computer later.

Caught a bunch with the help of local legend Praviit, aka “Bobby”, seen in photo above. The guy kept a running commentary of everything going on for like 4 hours. He told me to put fish oil on my fly, and even gave me some in a Visene bottle. He said he was a member of the King Cobras from Thailand back during the Viet Nam war. He was a great fisherman and showed me all his photos, which he kept in a photo album in his trunk. We fished ‘til around 1am when a van full of these Ukrainian’s showed up, broke every rule in the book and cleaned house.

Monday July 5

Chaos reigns in my head. For each kind of fish, you need to be in a certain place at a certain time. Add to this a rule book with so many rules for fishing and and the possibility of the dreaded Emergency Closure and you've got a recipe for frustration. Most advice I get includes info for 6 types of fish, each called 3 different names depending on who you talk to, 27 different locations (all 4 hours drive from each other), and a time frame of....well, sometime around this or that particular date, give or take a week or two. I just got a glass full of more of the same from a fly shop in Anchorage. I have moments of real frustration to the point where I get upset. I need to chill a little.

I'm sticking with my new pal Gerry and headed out of Dodge to the Klutina to see whats up there. The ride was pretty spectacular, glacial views, mountains, hairball hill side roads with no guard rails. It was fun.

Found Gerry's truck at the bridge on the Klutina River. He tells me it's slow but we decide to take a few casts anyway. I use the fly rod of course, Gerry opts for the spinning gear, his lure of choice? Absolutely nothing but a bare hook. He says the fish won't chance a fly or lure and swim in large groups with their mouths open. Our goal is to apparently get our lines across the open mouths of salmon and pull the hook through and into their mouths. Ok...more lessons in Alaska for me.....again the theme, nature less for sport and more for practicality. We didn't catch (or snag) anything. Might be better in a few days. I was headed for Valdez on the southern coast where the fishing was reportedly on fire at the moment.

The drive to Valdez was really spectacular. The temp dropped from 56 to 46 degrees (heard it was 100 at home today, don't miss that a bit). Then came the second highlight of the trip so far,

a place called Worthington Glacier. You could walk right up to it and it was awesome. It was a huge dripping ice mass and the view from just in front of it was incredible. You could look right out into this massive valley with high mountains on each side. Everything was cold and grey but you could see for miles.

Arrived in Valdez and immediately found wild kingdom at work. There were millions of fish stacked up in this one river with 5 giant sea lions chowing down. The gulls were going crazy and at one point I counted 11 eagles in the trees above. The locals were hard at work filling their pails with fresh fillets. Their lure of choice? The down and dirty weighted bare treble hook. Just cast her out and rip it through the school and reel in whatever gets impaled by the hook, Alaska style. I didn't even take a cast at this locale. Something felt impure about catching my first Alaskan salmon this way.

Sunday July 4

Hit the parade in Anchorage and it was a good one! It was packed with people and lasted a long time. It was followed by 4th fun stuff in this park where, as you can see, I had my picture taken with some pretty special people. Apparently the days events are the most attended happening in the whole state of Alaska for the year. You can imagine that there were tons of food vendors, rides, military demo's, and even a concert by the Air Force band.....off we go, into the wild blue yonder.

Next I went to a double header baseball game that started at 7pm....weird I know. They didn't turn on any lights till around 11pm and the fireworks were more or less in the day light.....yet, very good.

Met a guy an older guy named Jerry at the game He was from Montana and we got to talking. We were going to team up the next day and possibly fish the Klutina River for Red Salmon, also called Chinook. He was quite a cat, owned mules and horses and did pack trips in Montana. He also left a pickup truck, camper, and boat in storage here in Alaska during the winter so he could fly up during the summer to fish and camp. He had the mentality that many Alaskan's have. That is that nature is here to be used and harvested. Once in a while he said that he loads a large freezer full of fish, hooks it up to a generator, and drives it all the way to Montana. Man, machine and nature all in perfect harmony, Alaskan style.

Saturday July 3

Rained last night. I was online reading a little more about Talkeetna and I noticed that according to one web site there was a bakery in town that made a pretty mean ginger cookie. I found the bakery and they were right. Best I've ever had.

Like I said, Talkeetna is a stop on the Princess Cruise lines itinerary. Here's how it works. Every time a bus rolls through town or the train flies by, within 5 minutes the town goes from quiet and quaint to mobbed. Then, in about 2 hours time, the town is empty again....cycle after cycle, and, I'm sure, all summer long.

The tours are a funny thing. You can see the busses shuttling people all over Alaska, folks being whisked from one local to the next. Everyone's got their matching tour bags and looks like they just got out of the shower (maybe I'm a little jealous about the shower). They are essentially trapped in the tour. Doing it my way, I'm allowed to go walk through the woods or go fishing all day if I like......really the reason I came. I'd say the average tour lasts about 2 weeks and costs about 5 grand. I know I'll have spent $3,000 on gas by trips end and probably more on other things, but my trip will last 73 days and that's not too bad. These tours seem to provide a sterilized view of Alaska because they take you to all the very best places. The fact is, people here are pretty hard up, they bust their asses every day in some pretty harsh conditions for not a lot of money. The tour busses skip the shacks and huts that many people live in, the ones that I see when I've traveling down a dusty dirt road to some river. The crowd in Alaska is generally pretty rough, like the players in the drinking.....sorry..... softball league back in Fairbanks.

I fished a few of the spots given to me by yesterday's guide Skip to no avail. The water was running high. It was good to find these places now because when the silver salmon are here at the beginning of August, I'll know just where to be.

Drove to Anchorage via Sarah Palin's town of Wasilla, again, kind of a dump. Arrived in Anchorage late but managed to pass an hour sitting on a bench outside a nightclub watching the chaos. Half naked girls running in and out, guys fighting, everyone spitting and smoking. Quite a spectacle.

And....before I sign out today. Happy Anniversary wishes to my Sis and Ian. As you say, 15 long, hard, etc, etc.........

And special Happy Anniversary wishes to my parents......45 years, and a shining example to us all as to how it's done.....for shizel.

Friday July 2

So the plan is king salmon.....boat leaves at 8am. Boat driver Ivan is a no show. Apparently his cell phone (and his alarm) fell in the river a few days ago and it's still drying out. We decide to come back and try it again at 11......pending the locating and raising of Ivan.

Good to go at 11am. Ivan gets a mock standing ovation. Guide skip seems pretty excited that I want to catch one on the fly rod......most people are not into that. Skips been fishing and guiding for like 40 years and has never caught a king salmon on anything else but a fly rod.

The boat ride up is pretty cool....we turn the last bend and there are the crowds. The outlet of this river (the only one legal to fish for kings within 100 miles) is loaded with people. Whatever, I jump in line and try my luck. I cast and cast and cast for the next 5 hours to no avail. I saw a few mosters swim buy and even saw a few landed, just not by me. I gave it a solid effort...that's all I can say.

Skip spills the beans on a few great spots for trout which I decide to hit tomorrow. Skip was a pretty cool guy, still pumped for fishing after guiding so many years. He's lived in Talkeetna his whole life. His place has no running water and he needs to truck water in himself a couple times a week.

Every Friday night at 5, there's a concert in Talkeetna common. Had some pasta and watched the show. Sweet little husky pups on the common too.

Decided to check out the raging music at a nearby restaurant only to find the infamous Ivan inside. He turned out to be a pretty cool kid. Born and raised in Talkeetna. 40 kids started his freshmen year of high school and only 20 graduated. Drugs, especially meth, took over many of his friends. He said the problem was huge. The drugs weren't brought in, most were manufactured in secret labs in the woods. He said he couldn't recognize a few of his old friends.

Thursday July 1

The goal over the next few days was to catch some salmon. A major accomplishment for me would be to catch a king salmon on the fly rod. A king salmon is no joke, it's the biggest of the salmon and can weight as much as 80 pounds. Most weight around 20 to 30 pounds.

The kings were running now so I decided to temporarily bypass Denali National Park and head for an area known to have kings in it. Between finding the exact river you need to be in and dealing with the myriad of rules set forth by the Alaska F&G, things get complicated. Just when I thought I had it all sorted out......they come out with this last minute "Emergency Fishing Ban" on king salmon. No kings were to be caught within the entire area that I was in. What's worse is that looking off a bridge into the water at one stop, all I could see were these massive, massive, fish. It was making me nutty and frustrated.

What I needed to do was drive back down the road and enter another "zone" and hit the one river that wasn't closed to fishing yet. The problem this time? You couldn't get to the new river on foot. I figured that this was my best opportunity.....and the price was right, so I took the chance and hired a guide and a ride on a jet boat up to the spot for the following day. We'll see what happens...

The rest of the day was spent in a little tourist town called Talkeetna. Talkeetna is a stop on the Princess Cruise Ship company's itinerary and is a model little Alaskan village. It was a pretty cool place. Lots of little art shops and outfitters pushing airplane flights up and around Mt McKinley. Talked politics with a guy named Stephen Jacobsen. His motto was "Enough is Enough" and was greasing palms while running for House of Reps in Alaska. He seemed pretty cool. He was pissed that there is a 40% dropout rate in Alaskan schools and was putting a lot of the responsibility on the teachers....fair enough.

On some tips from a fly shop I decided to head out later in the day to try my luck for trout in a place called Montana Creek. It looked like a great little trout stream and as the 4th of July weekend was developing, it's banks were becoming inhabited with people camping and four wheeling. I managed one small rainbow before I caught a monster. I'd seen this fish rising and it looked big. I'd tried a few different flies before I went to the big egg sucking leech fly. It was the ticket. The trout crashed after it and lept in the air about 5 times before I netted it. It was about 18 inches of fury and probably the second or third best rainbow I'd ever caught. Now that's why I came to Alaska.

Walking back I saw a fox and spoke with a guy and his two sons who were fishing. He had a massive pistol strapped to his wading belt...not the first time I'd seen this in Alaska. At home, this just wouldn't fly.....but in Alaska? No problem.

Slept right down town in Talkeetna for the night.

Wednesday June 30

Time to get outta Fairbanks.....but before we do......

-Hit the Sportman's Warehouse one more time.

-Got a massive cheesburger at Carls Jr.

-Checked out the University of Alaska, home of the Nanooks

The University was only ok for me.....not the high profile like looking place you'd find in the east.They've got Division One hockey team and their rink was no fancier than the Wallace Civic Center. Apparently they are National champs in rifle shooting.

The school also was home to a pretty nice museum about everything Alaska....history ,art, science, you name it. It was only ok for me. It was kind of small despite the absolutely massive building it was in. A little pricy too for the size of the show.

-Bought a pair of boots at a place called Value Village......it was a value too, they were 8 bucks.

Then on the road......saw a moose or two. Caught some small trout that were rising in a pond..... and slept and a roadside pullout.

Tuesday, June 29

A day of reorganization.

Put some laundry in the washer and took a shower....put the clothes in the dryer and got a haircut, the model of efficiency.

Cleaned and organized the truck and the camper...things were getting unruly in there.

This giant crane toppled into the Chena River today in downtown Fairbanks. The operator suffered no more than a broken arm. It took them all day to get the crane standing upright again. The crane part destroyed a fence on the opposite side of the river....it was a pretty tall one.

The crowd cheered each time they took a section of the crane away on a flatbed.

Got some cheap souvenirs at Wal-Mart.

Monday June 28

It poured hard all night and into the morning. Haggard old lady at a gas stop said she was building an ark and asked if I wanted to join her. I guess it had been raining there for a while. Blue skies ahead said the buck at the visitors center. 190 miles to Fairbanks.

New fad...the Long Way Round style bikes like the one in the photo.....they are everywhere.

Arrived in Fairbanks around 4. Got talking to these two employees at Sportsman's Warehouse. Together we came up with a workable fishing game plan for the rest of the summer. In Alaska most of the bigger fish are migratory so you need to position yourself in the right place at the right time to succeed. Those two were interesting, Rob in particular told some great stories, and will most likely prove to be an invaluable source of info. For what it's worth, I plan to follow the plan they helped me formulate as close as I can.

(Aside.....as I'm typing this, it's 1:46am and it's still broad daylight. This guy just came past painting all the parking lot lines...he just circumnavigated my truck with the paint machine. Nutty.)

Every one's got a plug hanging out of the front grill of their car so that they can plug in and heat the block of their cars in winter. The outlets are everywhere. Every spot in the student parking lot at the local high school has one. One guy told me that when people go in stores for an hour or two they just leave their cars unlocked and running...and nobody swipes anything.

Cruised around Fairbanks for a while....pretty much a dump, but does have all the amenities. I happened upon the Monday night co-ed smoking and drinking league...oh and softball too. How can I say this tactfully.......well, it was a rough crowd. Cheesey tattoos were in abundance. At one particular moment every player on the batting team had beer cracked sitting in the dugout...women (and I use that term loosely) too. People hawkin' loogies and cursing up a storm. It quite reminded me of the lawless glory days down at the Leominster Dek-hockey rinks.

That's all for today!!! Glad I finally made it here.....nice to be able to chill a little and get out from behind the wheel.

Sunday June 27

Lots of fishing! A welcome break after so much driving. It was a nice sunny day. I stopped at every clear water stream for a while and landed fish after fish...all grayling. It was tons of fun.

You know, most people probably wouldn't willingly plan to go on vacation for a week or so to the Yukon.....but if you're driving to Alaska, you have no choice. You are in the Yukon for 3 days either side Alaska. I can say I am really enjoying it. There are NO people. The roads are empty. The fishing is fantastic. What more could one ask for? I'm wondering if the Alaska portion of the trip lives up to this part in the Yukon.

At about 4pm I packed up my rod and put the hammer down. I stopped in Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon, for a burger (I'm becoming fond of the Mama Burger at A&W) and passed through the checkpoint back into the USA and Alaska around 11:30pm......I finally made it.

Nancy navigator ran out of info for me....no more navigation. Also no more satellite radio. The last 100 miles before the border the road was absolutely terrible. It had these giant frost heaves...they were so big that if you were moving at any speed at all, you'd get airborne. No thanks. There were also tons of pot holes, dirt, mud, and giant cracks. It was slow going. I actually had to slow down to 10mph at times.

Rained all night.....there's something nice about hearing it on the roof all night.

Saturday June 26

Managed to watch the USA soccer game in this dive rest stop. Too bad for them.....wish they could have done more. Ghana looked great. Still can't swallow all the diving. Also had a $10 plate of the worst chicken fingers and fries I've ever had.

Got a late start driving because of the game. After a while I started passing these rivers that looked so prime for fishing.....so I tried it. Caught 2 of the biggest grayling I've ever caught....on dry flies too. You know, the grayling is the optimal fish. They rise to pretty much any dry fly easily, they fight and jump like crazy, and they are a beautiful fish with the large long dorsal fin.

Then the stupidity began....

I fuel up and hit the road again. At the next gas stop I can't find my credit card. The nice lady at the store lets me use her phone and I call the guy from the last stop thinking I left it there. Yes indeed I did. So what do I have to do...you got it, drive back and get it. .....75 miles....each way. 5 million miles driven...what’s 150 more......good times.

Also, I'm always amazed and the places that you can get wireless internet. You would think that there is no possible way.......but son of a gun, there's the signal.

Also fun is the state of semi-lawlessness in these little villages... cars that would NEVER pass inspection...scurvy looking dudes driving their 4 wheelers around.