Sam And Saundra's Year Long Adventure - Part 152

Sam And Saundra’s Year Long Adventure – Part 152

Alaska

7/16/09-8/8/09 Soldotna/Kenai River

We stay at the Edgewater Campground at Soldotna for an extended fishing and whatever adventure.  Our son, Joe, flew in to join us for a week on 7/21 and returned home on 7/28. In addition, four friends/past co-workers of Sam’s (Russ, Ed, Brent, Allen) flew up from Portland on the same plane. Joe is staying with us and ‘The Boys’ are staying at the Soldotna Inn.  I am pretty sure that they were working a little fish oil into their eyes as they flew into Anchorage. Russ made us a deep fried salmon strip dinner one night.  It was very, very good.

Fishing – continued:

Once you are ready to fish, the next step is to decide is where. The Kenai River is our target river.  It has limited public access spots, as private owners have bought up most of the river property and it is private all the way to the river’s edge.  In addition, the State is aggressively out to re-establish strong, natural vegetation along most of the public access spots to insure riverbank stability.  They are doing a good job, but it makes finding fishing locations harder.  To provide more obstacles to we fisherpersons, the river has been experiencing very high waters due to heavier than normal rains, as well as unusual glacier meltings.  Several of the more public fishing spots have deck-like pathways made of wood or metal, and include steps down to the river.  Once you get there, you normally wade in and spread out, leaving the actual bank alone. We had several fishing spots. Beginning down stream of the Soldotna Bridge:

The Path Keepers

1)  Pipeline Road:  Turn right at Kalifornsky Road, right at E. Poppy Lane, left at Poppy Ridge Road, right at Bonita and left at Elizabeth.  Go to the end of the street (should see a faint sign about pipeline road) and find a place to park.  Sam, Joe and I went there for one day of intense fishing fun. We gathered all our fishing gear, I grabbed a walking stick and we hiked to the river.  The path was dirt, but well trod.  We were stopped not too far along the brush/tree-lined passage by a mama moose and her two wobbly offspring.  They had taken over the path, split up, and we did not want to walk between the mom and her babes.  Nope we did not.  So we waited, as did a couple from the river-side of the path who were ready to leave.  We stayed in this ‘wait’ mode, until a young lad rode up on his bicycle and announced that these moose had been in this neighborhood for the past several weeks.  He cracked a piece of brush off of a dead plant and beat the bush with it, while verbally requesting that they move. They did. So did we. Clever lad. While we were fishing, the calves would occasionally and quite temporarily, take our attention from the fishing, by coming up behind us, munching the grass and pretending they were going to fall over. We did have one conversation while standing hip deep in the milky green waters of the Kenai.  We determined that the proper name for more then one moose had been lost to the English language years and years ago.  We strove to recreate the most likely plural form of the tall, skinny, somewhat comical looking moose.  Meese was out.  So was mooses and moosaka.  I came up with the name that was so obvious, we were amazed that the ‘universal we’ had ever forgotten it.  Moose-a-many.  Perfect huh?  All in all, the afternoon fishing experience was a test only.  We caught and lost several, and decided to go elsewhere.

Pipeline Spot