Art's Personal Photos Pages
SUMMER 2005
Alaska
Matteo and I spent two weeks in Alaska, one week on the Kenai Peninsula and
the second week northwards.
Here we are enjoying the late evening sun along the waterfront in Seward.
It seemed like it was 7 pm from about 6 till 11 at night.
We visited Kenai Fjords National Park on a big tour boat.
In the park (Resurrection Bay) we saw Steller sea lions (here's a rookery),
a sea otter, puffins (Matteo's favorite), a humpback whale, a sea otter,
dolphins swimming beside the bow of the ship, and three killer whales feasting
off a Steller sea lion carcass.
The is Holgate Glacier, which creaked and cracked, and then obligingly calved
a nice chunk of ice into the sea.
We also went halibut fishing in Resurrection Bay for a half-day and had some luck.
I caught a 10 and 20 pounder. That's Captain "Cat" holding it.
She was a great seafarer. I also reeled in the one silver (coho)
salmon of the day.
Matteo caught a couple of 10 pounders.
We kept three halibuts and split the salmon with the
other couple on the charter. We shipped home 16 pounds of halibut and salmon
fillets from this day's fishing.
At the Russian River, we experienced the highlight of the trip.
A mother grizzly and three cubs came down to feed on the red (sockeye)
salmon that were running.
Here's another view. The mother growled when one of the cubs
tried to snatch her salmon. After that, the cubs all caught their own.
They were about 20-30 yards away, across the river and stayed for
about 10-15 minutes.
Here's one showing Matteo, in foreground, with one of the cubs across
the river.
We met a nice fisherman, John Jackson, who had already caught his limit
of salmon. So he explained the technique of snagging (lining) them
and let Matteo reel in two of them.
He also showed us how to rip the gills out to bleed them properly.
We cleaned them in the river, practicing the policy of "fillet and release".
The river was filled with filleted salmon carcasses that support the
ecosystem.
Matteo's highlight of the trip was riding the four-wheeler at Steve Okkonen's
house on the cliffs over Cook Inlet.
We camped on Steve's lawn and had a great time with them, helping
to pick the red salmon out of their commercial fishing gill nets that they set out.
We went out for a half-day of king (chinook) salmon fishing on the Kasilov River,
but only caught a few jacks and a dolly vardon. Along with the red salmon
from the Russian River and from gillnetting,
we sent home another 16 pounds of salmon fillets.
One of the B+B's we stayed at was on a lake, with a canoe that
we paddled around in. I caught a little northern pike here.
Here's our campground in Denali National Park, at Riley Creek.
It was remarkably private, with all the trees and vegetation growing there.
We took the tour bus into the park and went only as far as Toklat.
Although we saw ptarmigans, caribou, Arctic hares, and Dall sheep,
the highlight was spotting another mother grizzly with three little cubs.
You can see them as specks in the middle of this picture.
They crossed a river, one by one. But the littlest cub could not make
it across. So the mother went back to help it
to cross by letting it hang onto her.
I only managed to spot Mt McKinley (Denali) after the rainstorm,
here seen from Savage River. The north and the south peaks are
the snow-capped glassy ones in the center.
The rain made for some miserable camping.
On the Fourth of July, we went whitewater rafting down the Nenana River Canyon.
We stayed at a B+B near Fairbanks that is an Iditarod kennel.
Their house dog is an Australian shepherd.
Matteo went out and met all the dogs (more than 50). At least once
per night, one of the dogs would start howling. Then the others
would join in the group howl, which would slowly crescendo in a ghostly way
until they stopped abruptly after about a minute.
Here we are in downtown Fairbanks.
Here's where we should have been able to see McKinley in all its glory
from the south view in Denali State Park.
But it was obscured by clouds as it is most of the time.
It would have been visible right near the tip of that tree sticking
up to the of the photo.
Return to Art's homepage