Easy Peasy Salmon Carbonara

This might be a little healthier than Carbonara with bacon.

Ingredients:
8 oz spaghetti
1 tbsp butter
4 oz heavy whipping cream
2 eggs
3 tbsp  Parmesan
6 oz salmon fillet
package frozen Peas

Cooking:
Cook the spaghetti, the salmon and the peas. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a pan Remove from the heat.

Lightly beat the cream, eggs and half the Parmesan in a bowl. Stir in the cooked salmon flaked well.

Drain the pasta well and return to the pan with the melted butter. Add the salmon mixture and peas, then toss well so the heat from the pasta lightly thickens the sauce. Serve with the remaining Parmesan and plenty of black pepper.

Afterthought: It might be a good idea to heat the mixture enough to be sure to cook the raw eggs onto the spaghetti and thereby avoid the possibility of Salmonella poisoning.

Goodbye Alaska, Hello Seattle

Blog Number 1,001

Ok...so I didn't retire after the 1,000th blog after all.....There was such an outcry from my loyal readers that I feel obligated to continue....I call this picture "seals on the rocks"....

 This is a tidewater glacier...the other types are alpine glaciers and I forget the 3rd type.

 We kayaked in this mess a few years ago...

 We saw a lot of Orcas in Prince William Sound.

 Nothing special here..just more scenery...

 They say that sea otters have about 1,000,000 hair per square inch...they used to make good hats until they became endangered...now they're all over...

 Caribou are called reindeer when they are domesticated...you can't buy caribou meat, but reindeer sausage is ubiquitous in Alaska....I beat Mrs. Phred playing scrabble last night by two points...it's not all skill...the luck of the draw plays a factor...

 Brown bear in Denali...we saw 12 bears...our bus driver kept up a constant patter although the website promised that the 14 hour trip would not be narrated...it was obvious from the way that she yelled at the passengers that she spent the winters as a school bus driver.

Sue and Les look at bear photos on the bus.

 These two moose (mooses?) locked horns and left their skulls behind.

Sheep in Denali.

Sue and Les say goodbye in the Anchorage airport. I had two pomegranate mojitos...the tab for those was $30...my dad always told me to get a price first...

 The whole crew preparing for a raft trip on the Kenai River.

Views of Alaska

More About Alaska

This view shows the Homer Spit with mountain and glaciers in the background. The view is from our four bedroom apartment on a cliff in Homer.

Mrs. Phred, Danny and Doris took this float plane over Cook's Inlet to land in a lake and watch bears trying to catch salmon.

On the bus for the 14 hour ride though Denali National Park.

Resting place for a Japanese mountain climber who was lost on Denali. His grave is in Talkeetna.

Les and Sue had an oversize companion in the middle seat on the flight from Houston to Anchorage.

Dip netters on the beach in Kenai scooping up their 25 allotted sockeye salmon.

Fishing bear.

Same bear?

Where are they?

This humpback whale jumped about 14 times. There are many theories to explain this behavior, but the whales aren't talking in a language that we can understand. The day trip out of Seward explored some of the fjords and glaciers of Prince William Sound.

I achieve my lifelong ambition of landing a 10 pound sockeye in the Kenai River...now I can hang up my waders for good.

First Days in Alaska

That old white line
is friend of mine
And it's good time
we've been making
Right now I'm rollin' down
the open road
And the daylight
will soon be breaking.

-Neil Young 

We stop in Hope on the Kenai Peninsula on the first day to watch people fishing for the incoming salmon.

 In the afternoon we take a three hour raft trip out of Cooper's landing on the Kenai River.

 So today I walked seven miles in the morning down a lonely frontage road near Ephrata, Washington on I-90.

We discover in Homer that halibut fishing is not possible without a reservation this year, so we take an all day trip to the fishing village of Seldovia.

 Carol, Danny, Doris Les and Susie. Danny and Susie are my younger cousins.

The tides in Seldovia can be 20 or more feet.

 The Ocean House Inn in Homer has a nice view of the Homer Spit, Cook's Inlet and mountsins with glaciers.

We take a drive up the Skyline drive looking for picyures.

Danny and Doris at Anchor Point leaving Homer.

North to Alaska

Ephrata, Washington

Tomorrow we catch a JetBlue flight out of Seattle for 11 days in Alaska. We have packed one carry on suitcase and one backpack with clothes, fish pole, toiletries, cameras, phones, chest waders, a spinning reel, lures and a fish net....

We're meeting my cousins, Sue and Danny Robinson, and their spouses. Les and Doris to explore Homer, Soldatna, Seward, Talkeetna  and Denali National Park. Mrs. Phed, Danny and Doris are taking a bear flight over Cook's inlet to a remote lake one day, while Les, Sue and myself angle for sockeye in the Kenai River.. We're doing the 14 hour bus ride into Denali and an eight hour boat ride on Prince William Sound out od Seward.

 We've been a lot of places lately without a blog. Flathead Lake, Coeur D'Alene, Spokane and Ephrata, Washington. No blogs in Alaska. I'm packing too lightly for the Notebook or Ipad....In fact, this is blog number 998 over the last ten years....I'm thinking seriously about retiring for good when I hit 1,000.

The picture above is Spokane Falls near the site of the 1974 Spokane World's Fair. The one below is from a 5AM walk up the Going-to-the Sun road in Glacier National Park.

Coeur D' Alene, Idaho

 Even Cowboys Get the Blues

 I had a high school buddy who lived here in Idaho. I had planned to at least call him again on the way though, but the Internet says that he passed away unexpectedly on April 30, 2014. He left behind children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. He was a lot of fun way back then.

It was bad enough losing good friends to car accidents, motorcycle fatalities, combat, brain cancer, and early heart attacks. Losing them to old age and natural causes is just flat depressing....apparently I will live forever and suffer either survivor's guilt or survivor's elation.

My older cousin Everett organised his 50th high school reunion back in 2010. He told me that 50 percent of his 1960 high school classmates were dead for one reason or another. He was born 12 days before me...apparently December, 1942 was a fecund period.

We're in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. It's a really nice place with public tennis courts, good shopping and movie theaters....we just saw "Minions"....it was available in 3D, but I was in a hurry.

We did the Going-to-the-Sun Road again back in Glacier. The snow pack at Logan's Pass sometimes exceeds 80 feet. The road sometimes doesn't open until mid-July. They have snow removal equipment that can move 400 tons an hour, but some days they only advance 500 feet.

One morning this week I got up at 5AM in Glacier National Park and hiked about four miles up the Going-to-the-Sun Road...I took a lot of early morning pictures which are still on a Sim card somewhere...

We had a moose run past our RV here in Coeur D'Alene...I asked Mrs. Phred to take a picture, but all we got was the legs...

Mrs. Phred has a lot of horseback riding stories...there was one time when she was riding an Arabian  in Israel which jumped the fence and bolted toward the border. It got hungry and came back to the stable......two weeks later she was near the Wall in Jerusalem and her hat blew off. When she chased it, an Arab fired a round at her feet...

Kootenai Lakes

Waterton National Park, Alberta

We decide to drive up to Waterton Lake in Alberta for the day.

I book us on the International, with a 10AM departure and a 2:35PM return. The International is an American registered wooden passenger vessel built in 1927 by the Great Northern Railroad company. In the winter they pull it up in Goat Haunt, Montana. It goes on railroad tracks into a boathouse on the American side of the lake.The International is certified for 149 passengers. It makes the seven mile trip from Waterton to Goat Haunt, Montana four times a day.

When we dock in Goat Haunt, two uniformed American customs and border patrol (CBP) agents get off first and check our passports so we can take the hike south to Kootenai Lake.

Before the boat leaves Waterton, we have time for breakfast. I order a Belgian Waffle.

The six mile hike to Kootenai Lake passes some very good moose habitat. I won't lie to you. We didn't see any.

This moose is from another trip....I could almost just start skipping these trips and mail in a report from stock photos....but that would be wrong....

The Prince of Wales lodge in Waterton was also built by the Great Northern Railroad Company....

Lots of wildflowers.