We got lucky with the Gallery Lodge in Kasilof. It's right on the river. We saw a moose swim across this afternoon. The owner loaned us waders so I took Kenny into Soldatna and he caught a ten pound sockeye salmon in the Kenai River.
Yesterday we visited the town of Kenai to watch the "natives" dip net sockeye. Between 50,000 and 100,000 are entering the river here every day.
On the way we saw a moose browsing on the roadside.
Another Kenai picture above.
Back porch of the Gallery Lodge in Kasilof. We're cooking steak tonight.
Something to do with an old shoe.
A Picture of Seldovia harbor.
We stopped in Anchor point to watch them launch halibut fishermen.
We also went to Ninilchik to watch people dig clams but for some reason it was empty.
We've seen a bunch of old Russian Orthodox churches everywhere we've been. The church was expanding aggressively into Alaska 200 year ago, before Seward purchased it from the Czar for 2 cents an acre.
This is Kirill I, the current Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church.
After two days of Halibut fishing, we take a boat over to Seldovia. They spend about two hours pooting around Kachemak Bay to see whales and birds and drop us in Seldovia for a little over two hours.
On the way we see this custom RV which is always at the Homer docks.
The bay is full of islands, mountains, glaciers, whales, birds and fish.
We try our hands at snagging salmon in the Seldovia slough, but lose a triple-gang weighted hook about every two casts and give it up as a bad idea. A blurb from Wiki explains the devastation of the 1964 earthquake on Seldovia, population 255.
The Cook Inlet's waters prior to 1964 would rise or fall 26 feet every six hours during the peak tides. After theGood Friday earthquakeon March 27, 1964, which registered 9.2 on themoment magnitude scale, the surrounding land mass dropped six feet. Seldovia's "boardwalk" was a thick wooden plank and piling, and the town's main street was built almost entirely along the waterfront. Most of the community's businesses, and many homes were similarly constructed upon pilings on either side of this "street". The sudden sinking of the land caused higher tides, peaking at 32 feet, to completely submerge the boardwalk and flood the homes and businesses along the waterfront. The waterfront was rebuilt (known at the time as "urban renewal") using fill from Cap's Hill, which was demolished to rebuild the town on higher ground.
The flower here is the fireweed. We've arrived in Kasilof today on the Kasilof River. We will try salmon fishing one more time...Our hosts have loaned Kenny waders and tell us that 50,000 sockeye salmon entered the river today. I got my salmon last year....hope he gets his tomorrow.
Kenny and I arrived in Anchorage about 7:00 PM local time after a seven hour flight from Atlanta. We picked up our rental car and spent the night in a motel about a mile from the airport. We had some drinks and Chinese food, slept and hit the road for Homer on the Kenai Peninsula at 5:00 AM the next morning. On the way to Homer we visited the tiny village of Hope and watched people catching "humpies" in Resurrection Creek.
We checked in to the Ocean House Inn. It's probably my favourite place to spend some nights. The view from our room on a cliff is of Cook's Inlet and a wall of mountains and glaciers.
We booked two days of Halibut fishing. This year the rules are even more restricted. Your limit is two for the day and four Halibut for the year. In addition, one per day must be under 28 inches. All those rules are new. We limit out for the year in two days and are very thankful not to have booked and paid for three trips.The Halibut charters take two hours to drive out into Cook's inlet, two hours of fishing and two hours back. Captain Cook explored these waters with his navigator and mapmaker, William Bligh, in 1778 on his third voyage of discovery. Bligh is the second greatest navigator of all time (next only to myself (blushes modestly))...
We have our fish flash frozen and vacuum packed in preparation for a Fed-Ex shipment back to the lower 48. Tomorrow we take a cruise over to Seldovia where we hope to catch some Sockeye, take a hike and eat some ice cream.
This is the first time Kenny and I have vacationed together since we spent a week touring Puerto Rico in 2005.
We went on the Spirit Sunday and the Jackpot Monday. We also hit the Nature center Monday morning I got some great picture there but managed to delete them. Maybe I'll go back. The Jackpot is the second vessel on the left.
These Halibut are all white side up....their eyes are on the other (dark) side....The trip reminds me of the resupply missions I used to fly out to the end of the Aleutian chain: Adak, Shemya and the Pribilof Islands...That was 50 years ago and far away...I was young then and full of life...
We end the day wandering along a back street in Istanbul where the real people live and only a few confused and lost tourists are ever seen. Walking is our main activity.
This abstract seems to be about whiling dervishes. We like it a lot. Maybe I'll blow it up and put it on the walls of the RV?
"Abstract art is a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled, to the utterly bewildered". ~ Al Capone on Zen Twitter....
We set the alarm and hit the "Blue Mosque" at the scheduled opening time of 0830. The crowds move quickly.
Tourists cannot come into the mosque during prayer times.
After the Blue Mosque we went to see the Istanbul Archeological Museum.
Cat in a chair.
Cat in alley.
Another cat.
Ancient cat head. We saw one mummy box in the museum where the mummified priest had made mummy of his cat and placed it in the mummy box at his feet. What is the name of a mummy box? I don't need Google, Mrs. Phred knows everything....
This guy is really scary. He's about ten feet tall and holding something or someone upside down. There is no explanation near the state or on the audiotape. I think maybe his name is Baal. The museum is high tech. You can use an iphone app where posted to get more information.
Part of the Code of Hammurabi is written on a tiny Babylonian Cuneiform tablet. The original code has 282 laws involving divorce, inheritance, crooked judges and other matters.
Cat on a Roman pillar. They have too much stuff to put it all inside, so a lot of it is laying around the yard.
Cat in the restaurant.
Cat with it's own house.
The GPS with the Turkey microchip comes in handy. We find another art gallery but it has been abandoned since our Frommer's was published.
Cat waiting for a train.
Fishing in the Bosporus from the Galata Bridge on a Saturday is a very popular activity. Lots of fishing. Not much catching..
The main street in Istanbul runs about two miles from Taksim Square to the funicular that takes you down to the Galata Bridge. The funicular is a short line underground. It's the third oldest subway after London and New York City.
The May Day protests here were violent. Today things seem peaceful but there are hundreds of riot cops ready to move if needed. It all seems very familiar to Mrs. Phred. I ask her if she misses her gas mask and gas mask bag and shoulder strap...."Hell No, We Won't Go..."...
We slept with the sliding glass door open so we could hear the surf roar in the night.
I love sleazy, tacky Florida beach motel rooms. This one is over the top with plastic palms festooned with colored lights. I had two margaritas and a sushi eel roll for dinner last night.
I get up at 5 AM and go into the bathroom to read so I won’t disturb Mrs. Phred. In the harsh florescent light I see that there are apparent bloodstains on the bathroom mirror frame and similar smears on the door jam...too much for a laid-back housekeeper to deal with.
The beach is white sand extending north to space shuttle at Cape Canaveral and south to Sebastian Inlet where they found Spanish gold bars on the reef. The sun comes up on the horizon in the morning on this side of Florida...We could go back to the other side and watch it set tonight...
My cousin and her two of her grandchildren drop by for a picnic. The day is perfect, about 72 F and breezy. My niece tells me that she is ten. I ask her when and she tells me next September. We spend about three hours getting knocked down by the waves. She shrieks with delight after each wave sends her tumbling in the surf...She feels something touch her foot and I tell her it’s probably a banana fish…
I give her my camera and she takes some good pictures. She catches a water-skier being pulled along by his own personal kite thing, a surf fisherman and several Hibiscus flowers. My nephew brings a SF book. We talk authors for awhile and trade books.
Strangely, my cousin and I both made the decision to join the Air Force in August, 1963. She was a WAF. I looked her up at basic training in Texas and we went to the movies together at the base theatre. We try to remember the name of the movie but nothing comes.
I spoke to the motel manager about the apparent blood stains on the door jam of the bathroom. He told me about the man who painted his Toyota red. He was the motel maintenance man. His name was Oliver. He had an old 1985 Toyota which he liked to paint red. The unusual thing was that he used a paintbrush and a bucket of red paint and did it about once a week.
The Toyota must have weighed an extra 1,000 pounds or so at the end of the first year from the inch thick layers of peeling red enamel.
They always asked him why he liked to paint his Toyota red, but he would only giggle and never gave an answer. He painted the tires, hubcaps, bumpers and everything red. Once he went too far and painted red over the headlights and the police stopped him when he drove to the 7-11 for a six-pack at night and gave him a warning not to paint over the headlights again.
Then he really went too far and painted red over the windows and got involved in an accident out on A1A. They arrested him and the judge gave him a stern warning not to paint his headlights, windows or rearview mirrors red any more.
One evening he was painting the Toyota red and a young college student named Leo who was on Spring Break from New York City came close to ask him why he was painting his Toyota red. She was wearing a bikini on her way to the beach.
He whispered something inaudible and she came closer to hear the reason. He began to paint her, holding her arm tightly as she screamed and dipping the brush in the bucket rapidly.
Leo ran into room 15 and called the Indiatlantic police and then locked herself in the bathroom. The other students that Leo was with told the police that Oliver had gone back into his darkened living quarters with the red paint. The police entered with flashlights and found him in the bathroom painted with red enamel from head to toe. He would have painted his teeth, but he forgot. He tried to paint his eyeballs, but it hurt too much.
They sent him too the state mental hospital in Chatahootchee for observation for six months. When he got out, he got a job distributing pamphlets for a Koreshan minister. Koresheans believe that we live inside a hollow sphere. They conduct frequent experiments to prove that the horizon slopes upwards.
Oliver did well on that job for about a month, but then he painted the minister and several of his parishioners red. Then he drove the Toyota to Webb City, Missouri and now lives near the public library, where he is considered fairly normal and is a good customer for the nearby Glidden Paint store.
Anyway, that’s how the red stains got on the door jam and mirror in room 15.
