fresh fish

I had the busiest weekend ever. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were filled with wedding stuff from morning until evening. Sunday was the wedding day, and we woke up to pouring rain. And yeah, the ceremony was supposed to be outside. So classic for Alaska. But the bride and groom were flexible and the wedding was moved inside without much fuss.

The rain came down but we still had a great time in the lodge...
Saturday we took some bridal portraits so that Briney could try out her hair and make up for the big day...
what a gorgeous girl!

Around 7:45 pm, I left the wedding and headed down the 7 mile gravel road to pick up the dogs at my house and head down the Seward Highway to Cooper Landing. By the time I stopped at the house, organized the Jeep so the dogs wouldn't trample everything and navigated across town, it was already 8:30pm. The highway was great in my lane, but still a pretty stressful drive because of traffic in the other lane. There was literally a steady stream of bumper to bumper traffic coming from the Kenai Penninsula the entire 90 miles of my trip. I eventually made it to the cabin my family rented in Cooper Landing around 10 pm. The guys and Margaret weren't even back yet from their fishing trip, but they arrived about 45 minutes after I did with 12 fat red salmon filets and big smiles.

The next morning we piled in the vehicles and headed towards Soldotna for another attempt at fishing.
Steve was in and casting at about 12 noon.

Margaret happily netted the first fish of the day and carried it up to the bank to bleed it. Uncle Jerry caught the first one about 10 minutes after wading out into the river.

Then Steve caught his first fish, and it was a real feisty one. Good thing Margaret was able to wade out and net it for him.

By this time, everyone in our little group had a big smile on their face, including Steve...

...and Ivan.
Jerry hooked another one and Steve and Margaret were right there to help out.

Vanya kept count for us..."3".

"Four"


"five!"
I was having a blast watching the fisherman and taking pictures...

Vanya liked carrying the fish around and then showing me the slime on his hands..haha.

Then he pretended to be our biggest catch of the day.

All in all it was a great weekend and we got to head back down the highway with 10 fat fish in our cooler and smiles on our faces.