Alaska - Anchorage, Quake, Sockeye Susan

Hello Everyone,

We arrived in Anchorage yesterday afternoon. We had barely picked up our rental car when Chris called to tell us about the 5.1 earthquake in the Anchorage area. Although we both thought it would be exciting to feel it, neither of us did.
It took us about three hours to drive to Soldotna. We did some grocery shopping in Soldotna before we drove out to the fishing lodge which is about 5 miles west of town.

This morning we were up and down to the dock at 5:30 a.m. We were joined with a nice man and his son who are from California. The primary focus of the day was to catch King Salmon although we were somewhat forewarned that there hadn't been many caught recently.

Here are some pictures of today's fishing:


The boat and the skipper, Mark Glassmaker

This is a 21 foot aluminum boat powered by a 50 horse Yamaha outboard. Most of the Kenai river is about 4 feet deep and moving at 10-12 mph and you have to dodge a lot of boulders. The fishing process uses small dipsy divers and either "j" type plugs or small poppers. Mark called the process "back trolling" where the motor is always in forward gear and although it's pushing upstream, you are slowly moving backwards. BTW - Mark has 2000 hours on this motor and expects to get 10,000 hours before he has to replace it.


Sockeye Susan

We didn't catch any King Salmon but the biggest fish of the day was caught by Mom. This is a 8-9 lb fish that we are about to have on the grill as soon as I finish this blog. This fish is about the best of the salmon family to eat; very deep red meat. Mom did a great job pulling this fish in and you can see she is pretty happy. Next to her is the skipper, Mark. Mark worked hard all day to try find Kings. Of all the boats we saw (over 50) and all the calls Mark made to other skippers, we only heard of two Kings being caught today. We did see a boat with a King on but they later lost it.




Rainbow Trout
Although you can't keep them, it was fun to catch this fish that was maybe 6 lbs. Tomorrow we are going trout fishing with the same skipper we had today. He expects us to catch lots of trout so stay tuned to tomorrow's blog.



Drift Boat

This boat is called a Drift Boat because except for the oarsman, this boat drifts down the river. This oarsman worked hard to keep boat situated correctly and away from rocks. He looks a little like Floyd and could be something he would do. Today, by the way, is Floyd's 85th birthday. Happy Birthday Floyd.

Young Bald Eagle

We saw many Bald Eagles today including this young one. It takes eagles 5 years to finally have a white head and tail. This was fun to see.


So, it was a great day on the Kenai river. Tomorrow we will also be on this river but about 24 miles upstream when we fish for trout. Thursday we will be back at the lodge to spend our second day fishing for Kings.

Hope you are all well,

The Travelers

Cecelia Ann!

Although there have been several blogs that have announced the arrival of Cece, it is still no less thrilling for Sue and I to blog as well. The birth of a baby is something that can only be described as a miracle. We were so excited when Jeff and Bridget announce Cecelia Ann was born May 30th, at 4:12 p.m. at Fairview Riverside Hospital. She weighed 8 lbs 14 ounces and was 21 1/2" long. Although she doesn't have a lot of hair, it seems to be fair colored, much like both Jeff and Bridget when they were born.



Here she is!

She is just a bundle of joy. We are so thankful that baby, mom, and dad are all fine.

The Family

Dad, Mom, and Cece . . .

John's Project - A new patio door.

John & Heather live near Como Park and like most houses there are opportunities for improvement. Not long ago John, his brothers and I build a garage. The next project was to replace an old sliding patio door. This involved cutting out the old door sizing the opening for the new but smaller patio (swing) door and complete the interior and exterior walls.

There are some pictures of this project:

Making Things Fit

This room had been remodeled some years ago and the original walls were plastered. Additionally, the work was done be someone who was learning how to finish sheetrock so John had to spend a lot of time making sure the result looked professional and as you can see it looks really good. Here he has just finished painting the trim. The previous sliding door was largely inoperable and had serious air leaks until John did some serious gap coverage (Great Stuff) to prevent winter from entering this room.


Looks like it's always been there.

A person doesn't realize all the work that's required to do this from pulling out the old door, repairing any lumber that has become unusable, making sure the resulting door is rain proof and weather proof from the outside. So here's the finished door that perfectly fits the style of the house.

It really expands the house
As you can see by replacing the old patio door with one which is very functional you can see how much easier it is for John and Heather to use this room and the outside patio.

Boat

We have been considering an additional boat. A boat that could handle bigger water and a few more people. We finally found one and picked it up last night. Since it was built in 1987, we will be going over it stem to stern which is also part of the fun. The boat seems to have been extremely well cared for.

The boat has a 4 cylinder inboard and when we were out on a "check ride" on Big Marine Lake, it seemed to run fine. We also had no problems loading it.

Don't think it will fit in the garage!
Although the boat is only 21' it handles much bigger than the 19.5 ' boat we currently use.

Here's a side view. We are evaluating the travel cover and well as the camper cover, which are likely 22 years old.

The Cuddy

It's not very big but large enough for someone to rest. There's also a small toilet as well as lots of storage space.

Marine on St. Croix

This was the building it was stored in on a small farm near Marine on St. Croix. The father passed away a year ago and none of their three sons wanted the boat so they decided to sell it. We feel pretty fortunate to have it.

Lake Michigan

Winthrop Harbor

What a fun weekend!

We got up early Saturday morning, April 18th to drive to Lake Michigan's Winthrop Harbor. This located pretty much on the Wisconsin, Illinois line. This was about 350 miles. We got there early enough and met the charter along with Captain Brian and 1st mate (and Brian's brother) Brad.


Sunday Morning

We were at the boat early 5:15 a.m. Sunday Morning. As you can see here, we are underway and the lines are out. We were never far from shore.

Brian and Brad

Here are Bran (right) and Brad getting ready to land fish. We rotated through the five of us so when one of these guys yelled, "fish on!" the next guy up would grab the rig and reel in the fish.

John

Here's John pulling in one of his fish. You can see more of this on the video.

Matt

This was Sunday (we were all wearing rain gear) and Matt is pulling in a fish.



Jeff's Big Brown Trout

Again this is Sunday and here Jeff pulls in a great Brown Trout. The charter guys said if we were in a tournament, we would be in the money with this fish. Jeff is thinking about having a replica made of this fish.



Both Jeff and the fish are smiling here

Double!

This happened two or three times.

Chris

You never know when we are going to get a hit. After a while, we did learn to watch the 12-15 poles for a fish.

Saturday's Catch

Sunday's Catch

The Video

This a work in progress for me. The 8 minutes of the video from the camcorder creates a file that is more than a Gig. So before you can even use U-Tube you need to find a video program to shrink this to a size that U-Tube will accept. A you can see I used a "beta" verson but it seemed to work well. It reduced the size of the file to around 40 megs and I think you can to to nearly 1000 megs.

This was a great weekend!

Another Baby!

We are thrilled to announce John and Heathers' news that they are expecting a baby the end of September.






We are all so happy and can't wait to meet this new little miracle.

Northshore Anniversary

Since 40 years ago we celebrated our honeymoon in Winnipeg, it seemed appropriate we celebrate this anniversary "up north"; in this case on the Northshore of Lake Superior. We stayed at Cove Point Lodge which is just south of Silver Bay.

Yup, it was cold with wind chills at -40 at times but inside we had a fireplace in our room. The hot tub and sauna were great.

On the way up we stopped at Grand Casino Hinkley where Sue won 80 bucks on a Sizzling 7's penny machine; what a country!

We did take some pictures. Here's a sample:


Cove Point - Years ago we fished for Lake Trout and salmon off this point. It's pretty remarkable how things look very different from the lakeside.

Room 134 This is one of the few rooms that has a fireplace and jacuzzi. It wasn't a large room but was very comfortable. Down the hall we also had a nice reception area along with a hot tub and sauna. We spent very little time sitting on these deck chairs however.

Cove Point Lodge - This complex consists of the lodge and the boathouse house here. There are also remote cabins and condos. If you have $300-450k you can buy one of the condos. The whole works seemed a little overpriced to us.

Two Harbors Ore Loading - We were a little surprised given the current economic situation that they would be loading these boats but this was one of two we noticed during our four days up here.

Two Harbors Lighthouse - Right next to the ore loading site are the landings for small boats. We used this when we fished this area as well. Behind the loading site is the Two Harbors Lighthouse. This lighthouse was built in 1982 probably retired in the 60s by the U S Coast guard. There is also a bed and breakfast at this location

Deer! - As we were leaving the lighthouse, deer started crossing in front of us, about 10 of them. We started snapping pictures. Turns out folks from all over town are feeding them. You can see this deer is stepping up to a feeder and we drove about 8 feet from him and he didn't move. This was pretty cool to see.

Bob & Sue at 40 Years! - I can't tell you what the glow is on Sue, but it was pretty fun to hold the camera out and try get a picture of both of us and the Split Rock Lighthouse in the background.

Fog Horns - These are fog horns build in 1909 and originally powered by gasoline engines which were replace in 1932 with diesel then to diaphones and finally by electricity in 1940. This signal was discontinued in 1961.

Split Rock Lighthouse - The light was retired in 1969 and is now a part of the Split Rock Lighthouse State Park and is operated by the Minnesota Historical Society. The site includes the orginal tower and lens, the fog signal building, the oil house and the three keepers' house. Every November 10th the lighthouse emits a light in memory of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald which sank on that date in 1975.

Lake Superior - What a beautiful area to spend some time. Everytime we looked at Lake Superior it gave us a different look back. Like our first 40 years, every year was different and special.

Bob & Sue