Saturday July 31

Arctic Thunder!!!!!

Making the national news was the tragic deaths of 4 American servicemen killed as their C-17 aircraft plunged into the woods 2 miles short of the runway at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage. The C-17 was to be part of the air extravaganza at this weekends scheduled Arctic Thunder air show.

The show went on as scheduled and I was there. Highlight of the day was not the highly touted Navy Blue Angels but the incredible show put on by the Canadian Snowbirds. They were fantastic. There were 9 planes on the team and when 5 or so were doing some type of cool formation one or two would sneak attack the crowd by blasting wicked low over the spectators. The red and white colors showed brightly in the blue Alaskan sky. The whole scene was made better with the usual back drop of snowcapped mountains and a light line of low clouds that the planes would shoot right through.

There were some great bands playing and tons of aircraft on display. All day long these unbelievable jets would crank through over the airstrip at full volume. They even had one of the new marine harrier jets that could take off strait up vertically off the ground.

Also providing hours of enjoyment was the people watching. The air show was completely free of charge and the locals were out in full force. You could sit in your chair and take the whole scene in. Massachusetts is sort of a waspy white place to live. Alaska is a total hodgepodge of races.....Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Eskimo, White, Black....you name it. I'm not even sure who the minority is. It was fun to watch everyone enjoy the day in their own crazy way.

Having the camper was nice because I could take a nap when I got back instead of waiting in traffic for 4 hours. I was one of the last out of the lot.

And with that, it was goodbye to Anchorage. I drove north in the direction of Willow Creek and what I hoped to be the place where I ticked off the last type of salmon off the list, the Chum salmon. Hammered down some pancakes at IHOP in Wasilla and called it a day at the Fred Meyers. Again I was woken from my slumber around 1am when this Fred Meyer's employee got to his truck, two spots from mine, and shared Jay Z with the entire parking lot while he cleaned every window in his truck with a rag. Nice goin' bro. I should sleep in the woods more....it's way more quiet.

Friday July 30

The Mission is Fishin'

On a great tip from a patron of Mossy's fly shop named Greg, I decided to fish the mouth of Jim Creek where it meets the Knik River. This area is famous as being the home of Robert Hansen, the serial killer who murdered at least 17 prostitutes in the early eighties. Wonder if Bob was a fly fisherman......Not only was the area home to complete nut cases but Greg told me that it would be a great place to catch a silver (coho) salmon. He called it the mullet spot (as in the hair cut)......business in the front (fishing), and party in the back. If you looked strait forward you saw, between two snow capped mountains, the Knik Glacier where the Knik River started as it flowed to a point right in front of you. It was a beautiful setting. The party part comes in when you turn around. It was beer drinking, 4 wheelin', dirt bikin', mud boggin', madness! The trail alone down to the river was a maze of muddy tracks hammered into oblivion by every type of of 4 wheel drive vehicle known to man. It was like a scene out of Mad Max's Beyond Thunderdome minus Mel Gibson and Tina Turner, where everyone drives around in these wacky vehicles in search of gasoline. No kidding, I even saw two full on Peterbuilt tractor trailer rigs down there on the beach. How they got there I have no idea...the roads were gnarly. Check the trails in the photos.

But the fishing was spectacular! I must have caught over 20 salmon....some over 10 pounds. After all was said and done, I'd caught 6 beautiful silver salmon. Mission accomplished. Special thanks to Greg from Mossy's for the perfect spot.

Just to add to the mayhem some guy gave me a ride back to the parking lot (at least a mile over hellacious terrain) in the bed of his pick-up truck. At times the mud was above the the rims. The guy was a saviour. I gave him and his dad each a handful of mini snickers and NAPA baseball hat's I'd been carrying around.

A little pizza party celebration of success back at the Mooses Tooth (corny) where I talked to this guy who pitched for the Mets and the Indians before wrecking his shoulder. He told me that the players used to hang candy bars near the end of this mysterious pipe in the visitors dug out at Fenway........and the rats used to come out and snatch them.

Thursday July 29

Took another day to pretty much relax.

Looked around a bit for a small radio for the camper. Something with an antenna that takes batteries would be cool. It'd keep you entertained while keeping you informed of local stuff wherever you go. Even just an AM radio would be fine. Everything I'm finding is either too big (CD player attached), or is somehow a clock radio. I'm struggling to find the simple, old fashioned, transistor type.

Tried to watch the Legion Baseball State championships but they wanted $8 to get in.....no way.

Next stop.....The Golden Corral for lunch. If you've never heard of the GC, it's a super buffet type place that is usually pretty good. In today's case, not so good. Excellent variety but nothing exceptional. What was exceptional were the exceptionally huge people that were dining at the buffet......holy moly, the Golden Corral may have taken a loss of profits the day I was there. There were 2 dudes who easily went 4 bills each that were staying the afternoon. Even the kids in there were giant.

Bought my first ever fleece vest at Sports Authority then sat in my truck and listened to the Howard Stern IQ test results by some fluke of reception.

Started watching yet another Streep film called Julie and Julia before I fell asleep. Bone head move of the day? Parking for the night near the exit of a 24 hr McDonald's drive-thru. Stupid.

Wednesday July28

Got some gas, headed back to Mountainview Sports to complete my jacket purchases, then drove to Lake Hood to check out the float planes flying in and out. I've been thinking of doing the classic Alaskan fly out type fishing trip and I wanted to check things out. Turns out it's pretty expensive...and even many of the places the planes take you are, believe it or not, full of people. I'll probably let that idea die.

Time to clean......completely cleaned and organized the the truck and camper. Restocked some stuff at Wal-Mart. Did laundry at a laundromat conveniently located next to a fly shop. (Where that suspected silver salmon I caught the other day was properly identified as a pink salmon.) Then showered with the rec basketball players at a local community/rec center. The shower was seriously high pressured. That sucker nearly took my skin off. 3 bucks. It was the kind of shower where you needed to press the button every 10 seconds to keep the water flowing. There was this weird dude in there who made showering look like a ballet. It went something like this.......button-armup, pit- twirl-button-other arm up, pit-spin-button-face-spin-button-chest-dip-button-hair.....and so on. The dude was the Barishnakov of bubbles.

Watched some hoops afterward, typical teens, it's not about who's better, but who's cooler......no one passes, ridiculous shots, etc.

Highlight of the day of cleanliness was a pizza shop called The Moose's Tooth, (corny). It was the first place to serve up a normal pizza at a normal price. Free refills to boot.

Need a cab in Anchorage? Hit the number 2....... seven times.

Tuesday July 27

Back to civilization.....

Bought some more split shot at Sportsman's Warehouse in Anchorage. The guy at Sportsman's told me about a better shop for fishing stuff and he was right......Mountainview Sports. The KTP of Anchorage. They had the nicest outdoor clothing section, all the good stuff....Simms, Patagonia (Patagucci), Columbia, etc....the sale started tomorrow so I had them hold a few items under the counter until then.

Had a cheeseburger at this Coney Island type classic Anchorage burger joint called The Arctic RoadRunner. They had 8x10 photos on the walls of all their best customers, pretty weird but kinda cool I thought. Better the customers photo's then the owners hero shots.

Then, for a little luxury, I snuck into the pool at the posh local Embassy Suites, took a dip and worked on the blog. Not having a toilet in the camper, I've been in every kind of of bathroom, porto, outhouse, woods with leaves, etc. there is, and the bathroom in the Embassy Suites was the nicest so far on the trip. Actual cloth face towels to dry your hands with. It was comfortable.

Hit another ball game. Another one of those wacky 7pm double headers. There's a kid on the Oilers named Garrett Wittels who, when he returns to college, needs four more games with a hit to break the all time Div 1 baseball hitting streak. Former major leaguer Robin Ventura currently holds the record. You can Google Garrett Wittels if you want to read more. It's kind of a big deal I guess.

Also at the game was Hall of Fame pitcher Fergie Jenkins. He pitched for the Red Sox for a couple of seasons, but did his longest stints with the Cubs and the Texas Rangers. He had no less that 7, 20 win seasons. His stats are pretty staggering. He was firing up a bunch of local high school kids with some funny stories. Coolest thing about Fergie? He grew up in Ontario, Canada and is a huge Habs fan. He still plays men's league hockey.

There were about 10 fans left in the stands for the second game as it was getting pretty cold. The park gates were wide open and this neighborhood drunken woman and her boyfriend found their way into the seats. She was hammered and clueless about baseball so her guy was telling her all these things to yell. It was pretty much dead quiet in the place aside from her so she was making quite a scene. Even the players were laughing at her. It was pretty funny.....she eventually got tossed out of the park by none other that the home plate umpire. I'd never seen an umpire throw a fan out of a baseball game before. He took some serious heat from the remaining fans for doing it. She's the nutty looking one in the photo above.

Monday July 26

A Day Fit for a King

What do you know…still raining.

Headed back to Hope for more fishing. Like I said yesterday, the river in Hope empties into the sea. The actual spot where it empties has these incredible tides. The tide rises and falls one foot every 20 minutes and it is crazy. The total length of the tide line is around 27 feet. Standing in the same spot one part of the day you can’t see the end of the river, 6 hours later your knee deep in the ocean. It’s best to fish the rising tide so I killed time waiting for it I watched another Meryl Streep film called “Doubt”. It was a good one. Around 5pm the tide turned, I threw my waders on and went at it. I caught a ton more pinks or “humpies” as the locals say.

So at one point I’m standing in the river up to my knees, I look to one side and I can’t believe what I see. It looked like a giant red log. It was a king salmon, the largest type of all the salmon. I was probably way out matched with the size rod I was using, but, like my friend Mark used to do, I made the cast and figured I'd worry about problems as they came up. I hooked it immediately. It felt heavy. Like a giant log it swam slowly to the other side of the river and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I battled it a while across the width of the river and finally it started to come to me. I managed to get it close enough to shore that a guy down stream grabbed it by the tail and yanked it onto the gravel. The thing was insane. The salmon was old, spawned out and was probably going to die one of these days just like salmon do. If it were fresh from the sea, pre spawn, I probably never would have landed it. Anyway you look at it, I had just caught the king. My first ever. It looked insane, black and red all over, nasty looking, with huge teeth. I could not believe my luck. I had just caught a king salmon on a 9wt fly rod.

The rest of the day people kept coming up to me asking if I was the guy that caught the king salmon. One woman shrieked when she saw it come ashore…..she later asked me, “What was that thing?” It was a monster and knowing it was alive and that it was still alive in this little stream was pretty surprising to most people.

It was time to regroup back in Anchorage. Drove the 2 hours and stopped at the only restaurant still open, Popeye’s, for some chicken.

Hope was wonderful. Misty mountains and mysterious fish……

Sunday July 25

The rain beat down all night and was still pouring when I lifted my lids in the morning. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

When I woke around 10 I decided to head back to the fair in town and cash in on free hot dog and drink day for lunch.

Did a little scouting of possible put in’s and take out’s for my planned float of the Kenai. In the end, I decided to bag the idea. As it turns out, the Kenai would not be the desolate nature filled day I thought it would be. There were a ton of people fishing along the banks and a ton more people floating the river with guides. Time to hit the road.

My next stop was the little village of Hope. I’d heard that it was an idyllic little Alaskan village with some great fishing. When I arrived, I found it to be just that. Hope is at the end of Resurrection Creek where it empties into this giant bay called Turnagain Arm. The city of Anchorage is across the bay only about 20 miles away, but the road to get there is about 120 miles as it circles the bay.

Scouting the river I noticed that there were a ton of kids fishing……and they were having a ball, despite the rain. They were soaked, muddy, and slipping all over the place….and they were reeling in salmon. This one group of three kept their dad busy untangling lines etc. One of the kids had neoprene waders on with no shoes. His feet had zero traction in the mud and he was slipping around like crazy. His hair was soaked and his face was covered with mud. The three of them were having blast reeling in salmon, slipping around, falling down, fooling around, and making fun of each other. I wasn’t going to fish but the scene looked fun. People’s spirits were high and it inspired me to get out the rod and fish. I caught a bunch more humpies and called it a day. I have discovered that the combat style of fishing can be an extremely good time. While not so crowded, the crowd in Hope was pretty comical. Some people haven’t the slightest clue how to fish while others are experts. But…everyone gets along together, helps each other out and makes it fun. It’s like a social event or party. The atmosphere was filled with fish, mud, children, and laughter. It was one of my favorite moments on the trip so far.

I met this guy who's goal was to tell me his life story. He told me his first wife met her high school sweetheart at her 25^th high school reunion and never came home. His took his next girlfriend on a romantic getaway in Banff where she dumped him. I asked him which kids were his and he says, “The black ones.” He, at about age 60, adopted these 2 kids from a mom who was hooked on meth and basically gave them up. They were out there battling the fish and the weather like the rest of the kids. At one point I hook this fish that seems big, and if not big seemed pretty fiesty, not like the humpies everyone else was catching. I reel it in and the guy informs me that I’ve just caught the first silver salmon in my life. Pretty cool. (2 days later I show the picture of the fish to some guys in a fly shop. They say it's not a silver salmon. So I still am in search of the first silver.)

Drove 5 minutes out of Hope to camp for the night and ended up with at most scenic sleeping place so far on the trip. I was on the water, with nothing but the sea in front and snow capped mountains beyond and behind me……..in the rain.