Is it “2 Weeks Yet?”

Well it’s been too long since I made my last post so I’m gonna try to catch up before we get on the Kennecott Blue Canoe from Whittier to Kodiak. 
I’m writing this on Thursday, July 21 and we spent about nine days here in Whittier.

We went to Anchorage and stayed at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson (JBER) FamCamp. This was a planned stop for us to get oil and fuel filter changes. While there saw a black bear run through the campground along with a couple of moose and her babies. 

Seemed like every time Virgil went on one of his walks he always saw some wildlife. He almost walked up upon a moose when on a trail next to the road and luckily he was warned by a motorist that a Moose was nearby.  He saw a few foxes and other animals which is really amazing as we are in the city of Anchorage.

During this time Ann Marie and I both came down with a cold and took almost a week to get better but better we are. Virgil and Delores kept their distance until we got better.

So as you know, we’ve been told every time we’ve been fishing, we are a week early, the fish are coming next week. We keep hearing that over and over. So we traveled to Soldotna, and stayed at Swift Water River campground, which is a city campground right on the Kenai River. Campsites are first come, first served, and because the fish are not running there are campsites available. We find a spot, 26 bucks a night, no hook ups, just dirt and a picnic table, but we’re really close to the Kenai river. What could be bad about that?

The folks camping across from us right on the riverbank were Dave and Susie from Wasilla. They come here with their family every year to go fishing and they gave us some tips… when the fish arrive that is. The river is high and flowing fast, and the campground has grated platforms on the river bank to fish from.

Well fishing is slow, we missed the first run of “Reds”, and the “King” season is closed.  Our son and daughter-in-law hit the early fish runs and tore them up , and we’re any day away from the second run. 

After many hours of fishing Virgil caught a real nice king that he had to release as king salmon are off-limits at this point. After some time he caught a really nice sockeye red salmon about 6 pounds and 26 inches, nice fish. Beautiful fillets and boy it tastes great the next day!
I’m still skunked on the salmon. All I caught was a King Jack, which is a small king that had to be released and a Dolly Varden . Ann Marie didn’t fish as the weather was too bad, and Delores was happy reading her book in the Elkhorn.

So we didn’t get skunked but we fished a lot for what we ended up catching, which seems to be the story of our trip. Once again our consolation was nobody on the pier was catching any fish either. Any day now I’m sure, any day. 

Virgil and I both recalibrated ourselves, we are explorers and survivors, and when the fish aren’t biting, we still have plenty of spam!
We left Soldotna after four nights and drove to a the Kenai (city) to watch the locals dip net for salmon at the mouth of the Kenai river. Subsistence fishing allows AK residents 25 salmon per head of household and 10 for each family member. The dipnet season is only only for about a week depending the how big or small the salmon run is.

After getting drenched in the rain walking the beach looking at the dip netters, we drove to Watson lake for a free night of boondocking. We thought we were going to go trout fishing but you really needed a boat to get out there. There were too many lily pads along the shore, but that’s OK it was a beautiful spot.

 
We left after one night and drove to go see the Portage Glacier. Mind you it’s been raining every day for the last five or six days with a temperature around 55°. So we got on the tour boat to go see the Portage Glacier. It’s a one hour trip and we got to the glacier, and it’s still there ! Ann Marie and I visited this glacier in 2017 and yes it has receded some but it’s still there. It was pretty cold and windy and we were socked in with clouds but we enjoyed the trip.

From there we found a spot next to the railroad to stay for the night. Not as loud as you might think they’re basically only tourist trains that run through the day going from Anchorage to Whittier and Seward. 

Woke up the next morning, getting ready to leave, and our slide out on the bigfoot quit working. There is an electric motor and all we heard was some clicking noises from the relay. So after a lot of  trouble shooting Virgil and I came up with a bush fix, I hotwired the motor by just touching the wires to 12 volts and it brought the slide in. After some research the small relay controller is bad, so the repair will have to wait until we get somewhere that I can order a part. In the meantime, I have a manual crank that takes 4 revolutions to open or close the slide, so that is no problem.

We continued back to Whittier, which means we had a cross through the tunnel.  If you remember, when we got off the Kennicott blue canoe almost 2 weeks ago we drove through the tunnel, now we’re returning and this time it’s 13 bucks. Not bad for a 2 1/2 mile journey. 

Once we arrived in Whittier we drove from end to end in about two minutes. We stopped next to the Anchor Inn where we visited the Kenai peninsula World War II museum. Whittier was built by the US Army during World War II as it was a good access point via open water. So there’s a lot of history here with the army and the navy. Many old buildings that still stand that are vacant; one such building is called the Buckner building. It is a really large apartment looking building that housed a  thousand people and all of the facilities, such as a bowling alley, grocery store, post office etc. all in one building. That building is shut down now but still looms on the side of the mountain overlooking the channel. 

The museum was very small but packed full of local memorabilia and stories of people that fought and served their country in World War II  to include the Japanese attack in the Aleutian Islands. Lots of history much of which isn’t talked about anymore. In the same building as the museum is the town‘s grocery store.

The store is real small, but full of basic essentials to include oil filters for cars that were built in the 70s and 80s . These all filters have been on the shelf for a long time. But they did have some good ice cream bars that we bought that seemed to be fresh and for three bucks we were on our way eating ice cream as we walked to Bigfoot and Elkhorn in the pouring rain. . 
From there we headed outside of town and found a trail head at the end of the road up the side of the mountain overlooking the bay. On the other side of the bay is the Billings Glacier. Mind you we couldn’t see it most of the time because we were socked in by clouds and rain but every now and again the clouds would break and we would either look out the window  or go outside and take some quick pictures before the rain drenched us. 

So that brings us up to Bigfoot and Elkhorn sitting in the parking lot at zero 830 waiting to drive aboard the blue canoe for a 19 hour ride to Kodiak. Like all of our stops on this adventure we have no idea where we’re going or what we’re doing once we get there  but we know what it is and where it is once we see it and that’s what we’ll do.  In Kodiak there is the largest US Coast Guard facility in America, the U.S. Navy handed it over to the Coast Guard in the 70s and it’s a very active facility. So that means once again we will have that feeling of being at home where we drive through the security gates of the base. And of course go to the commissary to stock up and go buy some more amber beer.

We arrived in Kodiak at 0600 on July 22, all is good! More to come. Be sure to check out our Garmin link to see where we are and where we have been. https://share.garmin.com/EGURG