9/15/06 Ed’s visit to Alaska

After three years of trying, and multiple trips back to Maine, I finally got my brother, Ed, to come visit me in Alaska this past week. He had a pretty good time, and, having never been West of the Mississippi, was amazed at the mountains.

Sunday I took him out driving to see some sights, and we ended up going up thru Hatcher Pass, a local drive through the mountains. I'd been there before, but had forgotten how pretty it is up there, and he was quite taken with the vistas.

Monday we headed down to the Kenai Peninsula, stopping in Portage Valley to see the glaciers. We hiked into Byron Glacier, which I’d never done before, and were able to walk up on the glacier and stand at the mouth of an ice cave. Ed was suitably impressed.

We stopped off at Quartz Creek on our way down to fish for Dolly Varden, but found that the stream was had very few spawning red salmon, and no Dolly's. We got skunked. The next day we went fishing on the Kenai River with the brother of a co-worker who’s a guide. We got a silver salmon each right off, then headed up to fish for rainbow and Dolly's. Ed got one small 'bow, but that was it for 4 hours of effort. We got lots of pink salmon, one of which took me into my backing! The last 2 hours were spent trying to get another silver each. We both lost one, but got nothing to the boat. Anyway, I now have about12 pounds of salmon to do something with.

The next day we went to the Russian River, as we heard the red salmon were still spawning there. We both got a smaller rainbow, then found a pool that had a load of reds in it. I managed to get a nice 'bow out of it, measuring 19 inches. Ed had one that was even bigger, and after fighting him for 6-8 minutes, he broke off, snapping a 15-pound tippet. Ed was beside himself!

The weather was amazing. Absolutely cloudless for the most part till the end of the week, and it actually got up to 68 one day. We saw Dall sheep, mountain goats (up close!), beluga whales, and eagles, and fished for 3 different species of fish – silver and pink salmon, and rainbow trout. We didn’t see any bears, and Ed was just fine with that.

All in all, it was a fun visit, we got to do a lot, and it was great having him up here.