AK aholics

 This trip was in the planning for a couple of years.  Mason and Danny's classmate, Jon, lives and practices dentistry in Anchorage AK, and was kind enough to help us on this trip of a lifetime.  It was truly amazing.  This is us after a long day of travel getting to Anchorage.  The first flight out of St. George was cancelled and so instead of getting there at noon and going fishing for the rest of the day, we were delayed and re-routed through Seattle and didn't get there til 10:30pm.  Exhausting day of travel.

We slept at Jon's house that night and made it up for church the next day at 11am.  Their church shares the parking lot with the Anchorage temple.

The remainder of that day was spent taking in the sights and beauty of the surrounding area.  This is Alyeska - a ski resort in Girdwood AK.   Here we are waiting for the tram to take us up the mountain.

From atop the Mt.

Across the bay is the Kenai peninsula where we would be doing a lot of fishing over the next few days.

That night we made our way down to Seward.  This was at our bed and breakfast.  Very nice stay that night in preparation for our charter fishing the next day.

That night, we treated ourselves to an amazing meal on the harbor at Ray's.  We had a window seat and this was our view.

Monday morning ready to start the fishing.   We headed out for a full day of fishing with Puffin Fish charter.    The weather and scenery were awe inspiring.  This day was the anniversary of Dad's passing, and I frequently thought of him and how much he would have enjoyed being there in person.

The first stop was at the mouth of a river fishing for Silvers (salmon).  We all caught our limit in less than an hour.  It was crazy.  There were ten people fishing on our charter, and people on either side of me were yelling "fish on, fish on" before I had even dropped my line in the water.  30 silver salmon in under an hour!

This is just one of Kyle's.

Our next stop was an attempt at some trophy halibut.  It was slow.  No one actually brought in a halibut at this stop, but Mason reeled in the largest fish of the day - this good size lingcod.

I'm not saying that Kyle caught this fish, but this was one of the bigger halibut that our boat brought in. We all caught our limit of halibut at the next hole...one way or another.

This was our boat's haul for the day.

One of Mason's silvers.  

So after fishing all day and not getting to Sterling (our next stay for Kenai river fishing) until about 9:30pm, we were completely exhausted.  That's when Jon joined our crew and said, "Let's go fishing." So we got our gear and fished the Kenai river all night long by headlight until 5am.

At some point we made it to Exit Glacier.  Below is an actual sign posted at Exit Glacier State Park.

Sound advice

Bing's landing on the Kenai river - at 11:30 at night.

Danny bringin' em in like it's his job.

On Wednesday (I think), we crossed the river on the ferry for some fishing upstream.  This was where we actually did have somewhat of a bear encounter.  Kyle saw tracks and then made tracks of his own straight for the river.

Me and my brothers on the Kenai

Relaxing at the Red Fish Lodge

Final day fishing.  This day was more for entertainment than to bring home more meat.  The river was smaller and so clear we could see the fish swimming by and try to snag them.  So fun.

Played hard the whole time and came home exhausted.  Between the four of us, we brought home over 170 lbs of fish and a lot of great memories.  

(Thanks Shana, for letting me go.)