Nine out of eleven ain't bad...
Thursday was one of my favorite days and by far my favorite night. Let’s go in chronological order.
We got to sleep in a little bit, but had trouble getting up anyway. By this time, we’d all pretty much gotten more sleep either in a car, in a boat, or on a plane than any of us had in a bed. We were going on adrenaline, though, and happy to do it. Thursday morning, we headed up, altitudinally, to a mountain lake called Skilak (it sounds much more Klingon than it is). The water was like glass – or as the locals say – you could ride a bike on it. There’s a Christ-on-a-bike joke in there, but I’ll leave it for now.
Anyway, Skilak Lake was everything you’d expect an “Alaskan mountain lake” to look like, only bigger. Expansive, powerful, calming, the stuff of rugged car commercials. This was right before we took off.
John wasn’t the first to catch a fish (actually Louis was schooling us at first) but his was the biggest at 24 inches. These were rainbow trout, by the way.
I made up for a shitty couple of days by catching the most trout that day. I hooked eleven, and brought in nine all told, one more than Lou. Unfortunately, these tasty little buggers are protected, so we were solely catch and release all day long. We caught a couple of Dolly Varden, too, but same deal.
Later that night, after dinner, we bonded with the other families staying at the TRL. The old guy below was known as Old Joe, and was there with his son, Young Joe. Not in this pic were Sonny, his son, Mike, and Mike’s sons, whose names I’ve forgotten. We all got toasty off of these bottles of port, and dad even managed to score four pre-Castro Cuban cigars.
Good times were had by all, and it wasn’t long before we hit the “I love you man!” portion of the night.
Cameras really should be outlawed at these things.
Waking up the next day was tough, but worth it. Click here to read about Friday.
We got to sleep in a little bit, but had trouble getting up anyway. By this time, we’d all pretty much gotten more sleep either in a car, in a boat, or on a plane than any of us had in a bed. We were going on adrenaline, though, and happy to do it. Thursday morning, we headed up, altitudinally, to a mountain lake called Skilak (it sounds much more Klingon than it is). The water was like glass – or as the locals say – you could ride a bike on it. There’s a Christ-on-a-bike joke in there, but I’ll leave it for now.
Anyway, Skilak Lake was everything you’d expect an “Alaskan mountain lake” to look like, only bigger. Expansive, powerful, calming, the stuff of rugged car commercials. This was right before we took off.
John wasn’t the first to catch a fish (actually Louis was schooling us at first) but his was the biggest at 24 inches. These were rainbow trout, by the way.
I made up for a shitty couple of days by catching the most trout that day. I hooked eleven, and brought in nine all told, one more than Lou. Unfortunately, these tasty little buggers are protected, so we were solely catch and release all day long. We caught a couple of Dolly Varden, too, but same deal.
Later that night, after dinner, we bonded with the other families staying at the TRL. The old guy below was known as Old Joe, and was there with his son, Young Joe. Not in this pic were Sonny, his son, Mike, and Mike’s sons, whose names I’ve forgotten. We all got toasty off of these bottles of port, and dad even managed to score four pre-Castro Cuban cigars.
Good times were had by all, and it wasn’t long before we hit the “I love you man!” portion of the night.
Cameras really should be outlawed at these things.
Waking up the next day was tough, but worth it. Click here to read about Friday.
posted by Mike Garvey at
10:59 PM
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