7-3/4-2020 Alaska

It’s always exciting to come back to Alaska, we lived in Alaska for over 30 years and have great memories and friends here. To give you some back ground on this trip when we lived in Alaska, I was the Carhartt representative, one of the greatest jobs I ever had. I still have some great friends from my Carhartt days that would come up every couple of years to do a float trip, one of my all time favorite thing to do. What is a float trip? it is when you take a raft, canoe or Cataraft down a river, generally a remote river and it can be a combination of things, sometimes you can drive to the headwaters of a river, other times you fly in to a lake where the rivers flows out of it, then we usually float for five days and then get picked up by plane, boat or a hired driver returns our vehicle to where we get out. Once we get off the river we head down usually to the Kenai Peninsula for fishing on the Kenai River and Russian River. This year’s trip is a little more difficult as I’m not living in Alaska so preparing for this trip takes more planning. We are so thankful for Jamie & Terri Storter as we used their home as a base camp and Jamie as a gear coordinator. Packing for this trip is strategic, making sure all my personal camping gear plus my 44 magnum are included. Alaska Airlines is very used to oversized bags and firearms so checking in was no big deal. The view out the plane window is always spectacular. Jamie picks me up at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and then we head over to my friends house (Fito) where I have been storing camping gear just for these trips. Now its lunch time and one of my favorite places to go is the Arctic Road Runner, I have been coming here since 1974 and was the first place I ate in Alaska. Dick Sanchez the owner is no longer with us but it is still a family run operation, I am a burger connoisseur and they are still one of the best. Dick always wanted his customers to bring in a picture of themselves so he could put them on the walls of his restaurant and yes I’m up there holding a steelhead I caught on the Anchor River.

Its the fourth of July and Terri & Jamie invite me for a BBQ at their son and daughter in-law house, Johnathon & Abby. Its a beautiful sunny day and Johnathon & Abby live up on the hillside. The Storter’s are known for their get together’s and the food is of course all homemade. After our picnic on the hillside, we returned to the Storter’s to sort through all the gear to see what we needed and what we can do without, the one thing nice about a float trip is you can carry more gear opposed to backpacking. Don’t forget the pee bottle so, you do not need to get up in the middle of the night to pee in the woods. Later this afternoon I will pick up my buddies from the airport and head to an Airbnb we have rented for the night. Tomorrows a big day getting the gear in the truck and heading up to Paxson Lake where the head waters of the Gulkana River is. We have chosen the Gulkana River this year as it can be driven too and we have done it once before 15 years ago.