After hanging out at the house for a couple days we headed out to Talkeetna. A small town with lots of shops. I’m still not sure why we went there, but it felt like a long drive just to have beef pasties. Oh yeah, we actually went there to get a better view of Mt. McKinley (Denali). The highest mountain peak in North America (Wikipedia). We thought we were going to be able to see it but the clouds love to hide that mountain often, very often. You don’t get to see it much, so you’re lucky if you do. Apparently it’s a great site, cause it’s a giant. I guess people travel to Talkeetna to start their climbs, many, many people die only about 1/2 of the people make it to the top. “Climbers usually take 2-4 weeks to ascend the mountain” (Wikipedia) Crazy!!!

After a cloudy day at Talkeetna, we hoped for a nice sunny camping day at Kenai. Ryan as determined to catch a salmon, so we got another fishing license and went back to Kenai to camp and fish along the Russian river. The Russian river eventually meets up with the Kenai rivers and that spot is a really popular one for salmon fishing and for fly fishing.

The Kenai and Russian Rivers meet in this particular spot in the Chugach National Forest and groups of people stand waist high in the water fly fishing. A foot ferry takes passengers to this fishing spot and there are always groups of people here as this is known as one of the busiest fishing locations in Alaska. – Alaska Visual Guide

The drive: gorgeous AGAIN! And long. By this time, I’m tired of driving (being in the car, that is) even if it’s for 1 hour. We of course stopped at the Kenai River Brewery, in Soldotna, which by far was our favorite. Customer service wise and taste wise! Luckily, we were the only ones there so we didn’t feel rushed AND we sampled ALL the beers! They were reaaaaaaally good. The lady behind the counter (who was super nice) somehow realized that, that same exact day was their 4 year anniversary, so we took a picture, hence the 4 fingers up :)

Camping wasn’t as planned. According to Cameron’s predictions, we  were headed for a nice sunny warm weather camping. We got rain, rain, cold, and more rain. Actually it was more of a never ending drizzle. More annoying than anything. We got the fire going, well Ryan did (he’s the fire expert) and were able to keep warm. Cam and I stayed behind, making sure the fire wouldn’t go out while Ryan caught dinner ;P We were setting up camp around 9pm or so and Ryan headed out to fish, came back like an hour later, telling us of how he had to jump in the water to catch this ginormous  fish…that swam away. Booooo! Thanks for trying love. He eventually caught two nice trout. I accompanied hime while he cleaned them out around 1 am or so, still light enough to see. The fish inside were lovely! Red, colorful rainbow trout, and bloody too. I was afraid a bear was gonna appear any sec. His shoes, pants, socks were wet, he had to use garbage bags to walk around. The trouble a man goes for a fish.

Reindeer sausage was our dinner along with some yummy dinner rolls. Reindeer sausage is so good! I can’t even tell you. The next morning we packed our stuff and went to get Ryan some new dry clothes. Stopped at this recommended diner called “Sal’s”, supposedly good. Not really though I wouldn’t go there again. The service was weird. The food wasn’t good.

After Sal’s Ryan wanted to keep fishing, so we stopped at the Russian River and found a lonely spot and he went at it. again Everyone else was fishing shoulder to shoulder in other spots, so we got lucky with this one, I mean loooooots of people! It was crazy! While were there, (me, just watching and Cam walking the dog), this couple (tourists) had just gotten back from catching two or three giant salmon. I’ve never seen fish that beautiful! It was bright orangish red, it look sooooooo good. They cleaned it up while my mouth watered. They gave us a friendly smile and I complimented their catch. All I kept thinking was SUSHIIIIIII. Yum.

Ry caught a nice big trout real quick and that was the end of our fishing in Alaska. We had to get back, since it was our last day there and we had to get ready to fly. It was weird to know we had just camped, and explored some of Alaska, went fishing and drove a couple of hours and we were leaving that very same day. It was a great day to end our trip, just perfect. No rushing. We got home around 6 or so after vacuuming packing the fish to take it home. Relaxed, packed and got ready for a long flight home.

Enjoy the photos. Sorry for the unnecessary story telling.

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