Alaska–Day 68

As we left the Scenic View RV park, our neighbors, Ken and Rosie, gave us two beautiful salmon filets. Ken has been doing a lot of fishing during their Alaska sojourn. We are delighted and know we will enjoy them. Thanks!
We have seen lots of people fishing the rivers here on the Kenai Peninsula and seen a fair number of vehicles with large round dip nets or gill nets on the top or back end. I thought I had a picture of one of those nets, but I can’t find one.  It wasn’t until today when we checked into the Diamond M Ranch RV Park in Kenai that we realized the huge impact of Alaska’s allowing all resident households to fish with those nets for sock-eye or red salmon at this time of the year.
We had a difficult time getting up to the office to check in today because of the traffic jam at one of the fish-cleaning stations. Just look at all these folks with coolers cleaning fish about 1:30 this afternoon.
 
I was just amazed when I saw these 3 large barrels of the leftovers after the fish are gutted and filleted.  The birds or bears will be delighted wherever these barrels are dumped.

Here are a few fish during the cleaning process.

If you take a look at this one RV site, you see the coolers as well as the waders hanging to dry after the morning fishing.  Alaska residents are allowed to catch 25 salmon for the head-of-household and 10 more for each family member.  Here is a link to the regulations for several locations here on the peninsula.



I saw some other interesting sights in the RV park while I was walking back and forth to do the laundry.

They have several llamas and some pigs in an area called the Pasture.


I suggested to these folks that they might find it easier to put the tent on the ground and get inside of it, rather than carrying it around.

You don’t want to hear about John’s attempt to repair our toilet this afternoon.  Trust me, you don’t want to hear.
PS:  the toilet still doesn’t work right.

Alaska–Day 67

On our way to fuel the truck, we drove to the beach near the Village of Ninilchik.  We saw a lot of people out clamming.

We thought it would be interesting to watch them at work.  However, that meant crossing the rocks, water and mud between us and them.

Look at the footprints through the mud.  Many people were wearing high rubber boots.

We saw one fellow who was walking in the mud and he walked right out of it!  He was forced to walk several steps in one boot and one sock before he could retrieve the boot and put it back on.  Here is is, carrying the sock as he makes it back to his vehicle.

One young person decided walking barefoot was the best way to get through the muck.  A trash bag doubles as a rain coat.

Since we weren’t wearing rubber boots (we don’t own any) and we didn’t want to go barefoot, we decided to wait for someone to come back to the shore where we could look at the clams.  Some people dig with a special shovel, others use a tube like this.  These are the razor clams dug with that tube.

Clams are dug while the tide is out.  Here are the boats in the Ninilchik River, obviously waiting for the tide to come in before they can sail out into Cook Inlet.

We spotted another eagle in a tree.

This gull seemed to like modeling for the camera.  I think it is a glaucous-winged gull

Alaska -- Day 66

Most of the morning it was foggy and rainy, including during our drive to Homer, making for some interesting pictures.

The tide was out when we reached the small boat harbor, creating a very long boat ramp and a lot of steps down to the boat slips.














We planned to do some bird watching. We did see some gulls

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We also saw some bald eagles and a sea otter, but none of the pictures were worth sharing. We saw so many other interesting sights, however, that the trip was definitely worthwhile.

Both of these fellows caught small halibut at the same time.


















There were a lot of people fishing from the shore and others cleaning their catch.

We walked by an old boat graveyard with lupine growing around the decaying shells.



We visited a farmers' market and a marine Gear Shed with interesting items for sale. We saw a wood-sided motor home, pretty flower baskets and wooden fish.



The decorations in front of many of the shops on the Homer Spit were very attractive. One tent camper had a stone wall as a wind break. And I think we saw a tsunami alert siren. Can anyone identify the tall item with white disks in the middle of this collage? We saw several along the water front.