Rev. 07/15/01

Alaska & beyond - continued 7/15

Fairbanks

Today, since I had to stick around until Monday, I decided to 1. do my laundry, 2. pay my bills (via Internet), and 3., since the sun was shining, go fishing.  Found a Fly shop.  Buying flies entitles you to ask where to fish.  Sam, at the fly shop, suggested the upper Chena River, about a fifty mile drive.  The Chena is the river that runs through Fairbanks, .  He said the Grayling fishing was good and it was "catch and release."  Sounded good, so I bought an assortment of flies, including my favorite Renegade.

The road to the upper Chena goes through rolling, timbered hills with many small lakes and ponds -- moose country.  About ten miles from Fairbanks, I met Mighty Mister Moose, up close and personal.  He came out of the brush from my left -- my tires screaming -- a pickup truck coming toward me in the other lane -- he made it past the pickup -- I hit him a little left of center -- my front mounted spare tire acted as a "moose mit", cushioning the impact a bit -- but a moose, flying through the air, is a scary thing to see -- would he go through the windshield?  -- then he was past me.  I stopped, put on my emergency flashers, and went back to where the impact was -- no moose.  The pickup stopped -- to see if I was OK -- he was an Alaskan -- the moose, no big thing.  Damage to the RT?  Left side panel, where the CB antenna is mounted, and possibly the hood, definitely a major moose mark.  If it wasn't for the "Moose Mit" I'd probably had a mighty mangled motor.  We'll see Monday when I take the RT to the shop.

The picture is not him, but it looks just like his brother.  Thinking about it afterward, I was lucky, only going 45, instead of the posted 55.  There are a lot of moose on that road, today I saw seven or eight -- on a dirt access road to the river, I came around a bend and there was a moose coming toward me, about fifteen feet away -- he pivoted around and ran back up the road in front of me for a hundred feet or so --  turned off the road and jumped into a pond.  Swam across, looked back at me, and ambled into the brush.  Close encounters of moose kind.   Yaaah, OK, I'll quit the mangy moose jokes.

The upper Chena is a nice river to fish.  I'd not caught Grayling before so this was a first.  They are scrappy fish -- small mouthed and with the big dorsal fin like a flag.  They take a fly just like a trout does.  Size, they ran 10 to 12 inches, nice fish.  I haven't mastered the art of taking a picture of the fish I catch and not dropping the fish, or my rod, or the camera -- practice.

Fishing one stretch of the river where I was fishing, I saw a beaver swimming.  But he didn't waste any time getting out of there, before I could get my camera out.

There is a couple camping next to me riding motorcycles.  His name is Wolfgang and her's is Inga -- they're from Germany.  I shared a bottle of  "Three Island" wine, from Glens Ferry.  They were impressed with the quality.

They said went up the road to Prudhoe.  But ran into bad mud between Arctic Circle and Coldfoot and had to turn back.  That stretch was pretty bad, I wasn't sure about it myself coming back.  Now they're headed for Inuvik, same as me.  Told them I'd probably see them on the road.

We talked about traveling on a motorcycle.  They'd read "Jupiter's Travels," one of my favorite books.  They eventually want to get down to the southern tip of South America.

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