Holiday weekend 1

I'm tired. What should have been a jaunty 2 hour drive home turned into a slow 4 hour crawl. Our highway heading south from Anchorage is basically two lanes with occassional pullouts and extra lanes for passing, and apparently everyone was heading home after the 3-day weekend. It wasn't all bad though -- the skies were clear with bright sun and the temperature hovered around 69 degrees (even at 9 in the evening!) And no flying cargo boxes either, so everything is good.

The weekend in a nutshell: lots of fishing, sun, HOT weather, good food, great company and fun times all around. Oh, and I was able to nap in a hammock - does it get any better than that on a warm summer day?

Thanks Don & Mim for the tasty meals!

Everybody wants to hurry up and get to the fish, but first you have to walk from the campsite to the stairs leading down to the river, then over a trail of boardwalks before taking on the river crossing and another long trail to the best spot -- all in heavy waders and boots! Of course on the way back it's all uphill (hopefully with a pack full of salmon filets!) With the temperature in the (high?) 70's, I was ridiculously hot in all my gear.

The actual Russian River, before it meets up with the Kenai at the confluence. D likes to take Drift down to cool off and get some exercise in for the day.

Hanging out on one of the many stairs over the bank. At the end of the day, it felt so good to slip our feet into the water and cool down a bit ourselves.

This run of fish is waning, which meant slight relief from the crush of other anglers. We had a little more room to spread out. This area here is the ferry landing where people pay to park and catch a short ride over to the other bank - it's spendy, but more convenient than the couple miles we usually walk.

Oh yeah, and some other stuff happened this weekend too...