Day 21--And the Alaskan RAIN continues!

Sunday July 25, 2010. It just continues to rain with no end in sight. Whatever you want to do it better be fun to do in the rain! WOW I am REALLY sick of the rain!@!#

Nothing much happening with my schedule today. Larry and Jim got their gear together this morning to go fishing for sockeye salmon. They also call these 'Reds'. It's hard to keep track of all the species and their nick names. Tom mentioned this yesterday that they all have nick names and he even found it hard to keep all the names straight when he first came to Alaska. Jim and Larry did not leave until about 11:00am for their trip. They went up to Sodotna, which is about 60 miles north of Ninilchik.

After the guys left, I started doing laundry, talked to both my girls, answered my emails and baked some bran muffins. I was just getting ready to do a little cleaning when Barb from the RV next to us knocked on my door. She came in and we talked for a long time. I was still doing laundry and had the sink full of dirty dishes so after she left I started cleaning but didn't get much done before Larry and Jim came home at about 6:00. They had quite a day. Larry hooked a sockeye but could not get it to shore before it got off the hook. Jim kept casting his line and bringing up carcases of fish that someone had cleaned and thrown back into the river. Larry finally got one on and pulled it to shore only to find he had hooked it in the side and had to throw it back. The rules and regulations on fishing up here are varied. You cannot keep a salmon unless it has been hooked in the mouth. This seems to be a strange rule as I would think if they are hooked elsewhere they could be injured enough to die once thrown back into the river. I guess there must be more to this rule than I understand.

Barb gave me some names of campgrounds at Denali so when Pete and Leslie arrive we can move up there for a few days. She also said they are leaving here on Thursday to go to Valdez and she talked to one of the RV campground's there and they told her to decide when she wanted to reserve a site soon because August 1st the salmon will be running down there and the campgound will be like a fish camp with no spaces available.

The guys put their gear away and I ended up baking a meatloaf for our dinner. Was pretty disappointing not to have fresh salmon but since we are leaving tomorrow it seems unlikely I will have one soon! I'm not sure where we are going tomorrow except somewhere around Anchorage. We need to be making plans as the campgrounds are all very busy right now.