We stayed five days on the Keani Peninsula with Dawn, John, Jessica, and Dawn's Uncle Mike at Mike’s weekend home on the Kenai River. It is a magnificent home with incredible views and only 40 steps down to the fishing platform. Uncle Mike was a great host and a wonderful cook.

It was incredible weather while we were there. Not only was the sun still high at seven at night but Neil was in shorts only. We took a similar picture at nine. The sun was still high and it was still warm!


We had jokingly heard that the mosquito is the Alaska state bird so were pleasently surprised to encounter very few on our trip. Still, Jessica was prepared to defend us with her trusty mosqito bat in the evenings when they came out. You laugh, but the mosquitos were rather slow and lumbering due to their size.

The day driving to Homer, Alaska, was so scenic, looking out over Cook Islet and across at the mountains which are the beginning or the end of the Rocky Mountain range depending on how you want to look at it.

There might be cliffs to the sea on one side of road and then around the bend a beautiful stream.

Homer is on a sand spit extending into Kachemak Bay and it's the home of many fishing derbies and halibut fishing charters.

We watched the Buttwhackers (the 'but' is from halibut, ha) displaying and processing their huge 'but catches, and of course we had halibut fish and chips for lunch!

Out on the spit, the beach is flat black rocks deposited long ago by glaciers. (Fox Island doesn't have the only Skipping Rock Beach it seems.) The buildings are up on stilts protecting them from the high tides and storm waves.

We went on moose safari one evening. We heard there were some in the area so we borrowed Uncle Mike's four wheeler. We saw these four wheelers everywhere in Alaska!

...and we found a mom grazing near by with her baby. The baby was very shy and peaked out from under her.
 

The moose was right by the road and we enjoyed being so close and not downwind :).

We bought our fishing licenses Friday night and that night we were taught the correct technique for weighting, dragging, and flicking the line to catch red salmon running upstream along the edge of the river. No salmon bit our lines although a few were temporarily snagged.

The next day we focused on fishing but only John and Neil pulled one in. The salmon numbers were just not up, else we were assured we would be catching them left and right.

Our last day on Kenai, John learned his neighbor was also out on the peninsula with a boat. Neil and John joined Rob and his son Mike for dip-net fishing. Altogether they caught 52 salmon and came home with their share, 26 fish! We are still enjoying wild caught samon from the freezer.

When is the last time you were standing ankle-deep in fish you've just caught? That's where Neil was when he took the picture above.

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