Day 8 and 9

We had trouble finding Jeff's luggage, but we called Sarah and she helped us sort that out. We went to the wrong baggage claim terminal. Then we ended up in the wrong parking lot and couldn't find the truck. We finally figured that out and hiked to the truck and hit the road.

The temperature dropped 17 degrees from Anchorage to Girdwood. We stopped at Coal Creek Mine on the way back. A kid was giving a panning demo. He made me feel pretty inadequate! We might go back there. It would cost us $60 to setup the high-banker for the day. All the old mining buildings are still there and that would be interesting to see. That would cost us $15 each. There was a wedding going on there under the covered area and it was RAINING hard.

We got Jeff's stuff dropped off at the cabin and had some food, then we went fishing. We ran up to the Kasilof Mercantile and Jeff got his fishing license. Along the road we saw a moose cow and calf. I got a picture of the butt of the calf running away. Jeff got to see his first moose though.

We finally got to fishing on the Kasilof about 7 PM. Jeff caught a Dolly Varden first. The I hooked a big silver that took at least 25 minutes to land. It was about 2 feet long and weighed about 12 pounds. My scale stops at 8 pounds, so that's just a guess. Jeff has a bigger scale along though, so now we can go catch really big fish and be able to weigh them.

We met Paul this morning. He's Cliff's son-in-law, Laurie's husband. He's been fishing for halibut for a few weeks. He got home about 2:30 this morning. He told us where to go fishing for halibut and where to fish the lake for silvers. He's also going to check with a friend of his about a guided trip on the Kenai for us. It turns out that salmon heads are the best halibut bait, but we threw all those away. I guess we'll have to catch some more. Paul told us about getting robbed at the docks. They didn't get his money and he sent one to the hospital. Paul's got some pretty good scrapes on his head where they hit with a pipe, but he still came out the winner. It seems that the out of work fish processors like to rob the fisherman after they get paid. It's been a bad year for fishing, so there are a lot of out of work fish processors. He also told us there's a bear den 150 yards from the privy. I guess we'll keep an eye out for that bear!