Saturday, May 29th

Yes, we have fresh fish for supper tonight! I caught an 18.5 pound King salmon which may have been the only mature salmon caught on the river today. Our guide, Dave Wilson, was in phone contact with other guides throughout the morning, and nobody was having any luck. BUT ME, that is. Honest, I have never been very successful at fishing but today was incredible! A word about our guide, Dave, who is 6’7” tall, and rowed our boat the entire trip, navigating around huge rocks and keeping us away from the many boats on the river. We were on the Kasilof River (Ka’-si-lof) which is very shallow when the tide is out (inches in places) and has a tide of at least 20 feet. What a day. We saw moose, river otters and eagles, young and mature. There were also seagulls and sandhill cranes.

The boats on the river are like nothing we use. See a picture of one that was fishing in front of us. There’s a good reason for the design: when we ran aground, Dave jumped over the side into ankle-deep water and pulled us into deeper water – calf deep.

I took only a couple of mountain pictures today. For one, the windshield was too buggy and two, you can only take so many mountain pictures before they begin to blur before your eyes. I am including one though that is what I’m looking at out of the side window of the RV as I sit here writing this. Just another pretty “face”. Ha, ha. Had to climb onto a picnic table to block out the civilization that was in my way.

Since this is Memorial Day weekend, there is not a camping space available in Seward where we visited after the fishing trip. We wanted to go to the end of the road and we did. (We have been as far south as you can go in Texas, Hawaii, and now, Alaska.) At least half of the Alaskan population must be in Seward in RVs, popup tents, popup trailers, and all have their small children and their big, yellow dogs with them. Seward is right there on the great big Pacific Ocean. It’s kinda like Cedar Key with mountains. : )

We did indeed get up at 3:30 and now we are ready to eat and go to bed. Cliff is “resting his eyes” as he calls it right now. I call it take a nap.

Tomorrow we are taking a five-hour cruise to see the fiords, seals, otters, whales (I better see a whale), and the glaciers. We sail at noon on a catamaran with at least 100 people (they best not get in my way when I’m taking a picture or they may go overboard) and will be back in port at 5:00. And, because we find ourselves with a little extra time, after the cruise we are going to Whittier, which is on the Prince William Sound. We may make our way back to Anchorage tomorrow night and stay there through Tuesday night. There are some interesting museums I read about, and I want to “look” around. Translation: Shop!

Well, supper is over and I don’t have words to describe how good the salmon was. I seared it in a skillet with one of our favorite seasonings until it was rare. We had mashed potatoes and halved grape tomatoes drizzled with soy sauce and olive oil. We’ll be having salmon for breakfast too since I cooked extra. This was a memorable day for sure.