The Weekend in Anchorage (and beyond!)

Brian went to the Kenai fishing by himself for a few days - well, 2 days by himself and the third day on a charter.  The first two days were on the Swanson River, but the salmon had moved on, so no luck.  Today he was on the Kenai River with a charter (small boat) with 3 other people fishing and caught two big silvers - could have kept 3 if another one had shown up!

Here is a picture of the Kenai River, which is more perilous than it looks.  It's cold, and it's rushing, moving deceivingly fast!  Because it's been doing so much raining, it's high also.  They left in the pitch black dark, 6 am, and you had to put your faith in the captain!  The fishing charter is at www.kingoftheriver.com.  Here is the captain filleting the fish -- Brian said he did an excellent job -- we'll see when we eat it tonight!

The others with Brian were a couple and their daughter -- the woman caught three, had a fourth on the line that took off with her pole!  Husband caught two and daughter caught none.

In the meantime, back at the ranch, I was INSIDE all weekend so far, which I intend to correct as soon as Brian takes a shower and gets cleaned up -- I had a debriefing weekend for the Educators Cross Cultural Immersion program from going to rural Alaska (Klukwan) in August.  It was very moving to listen to everyone's trips - there were 32 of us and think about what we were taking away as our gifts from participating.   I wrote "travel haiku" while I was gone in my journal and shared it as my experience of the trip.  Here is one:

Our life is close by our food,
Our drumbeats close by our hearts,
An ancient village, Klukwan.

Hopefully a FULL day of hiking tomorrow in the Chugach Mts. -- more on that later!