Soldotna and Kenai

7-7-09

We went to Kenai on Saturday morning and saw the parade. It was interesting and also the first parade either of us has seen in a lot of years. Again we stayed at the Elk's.

We saw some Russian buildings ( a church and some houses) in Kenai. While Margaret was out driving she saw a moose and her calf.

All of the cities we have visited in Alaska seem to have an unusually large number of churches. We can only conclude that there must be a lot of sinners in these parts.

We went to the visitors center in Saldotna. They have a fish walk that is visible from the building. It amounts to a large boardwalk where people can fish or just set and read a book. Unfortunately no one seemed to be catching any fish. However the lady in the center told us that the week before a few miles away on another river they were so many fish that the limit was raised from the normal 3 to 6. We were told that the fish management people count the fish with some type of sonar as they enter the river and apparently can somehow tell the difference in the various types of salmon. That's kind of hard for me to believe.

It has now been determined that Pat has an aneurysm in her brain that measures 1 ½ center meters, not good news. She and her husband are determined to continue the trip and seek medical help when they return home. Sounds very dangerous to me, but they didn't ask for my advice

Today we moved to Seward,where their are lots of docks and fishing boats. We watched them clean some very big lingcod, the biggest probably 30 pounds. I will attach picture of the fish that one group brought in, however I will point out the the halibut in the picture are small and were not considered keepers in 1992