Post tx-week 21 Monday

We're back from Alaska and we had a blast with our wilderness company "Alaska Outdoors". We were there 10 days camping in the wilderness covering about 800 miles and hitting 4 national parks. Alaska is every bit as pretty as Hawaii, only it's not as hot. We traveled on a tour with a group of 10 plus a guide. Lots of cold and rain while sleeping in tents with a shower every other day. Our guide drove and cooked and everyone we were with were really nice and fun too. We had a young couple from Ireland, an older couple from England, 2 single women from the midwest, one with a PHD in geology and the other with a PHD in psychology, and a couple of psychologists from North Carolina.

Here's my fishing story. I asked the guide where we could fish while we were in Kanai national park. He said he'd drop us (the North Carolina peps & I) near a trail and we could walk in about 1.5 miles to a spot where a creek meets the lake, he swore there were fish there. He dropped us off and about a mile in we came to a fork in the road. There was a post but the sign was gone and someone had carved creek with an arrow pointing to the left and beer with an arrow pointing to the right. This would come to haunt us later. We hiked the 1/2 mile to the creek and sure enough there were big coho salmon everywhere. We also to great glee in the fact that there were fresh bear tracks
on our shore, we commented on how cute they were. The fish wouldn't bite on anything but there were so many that we could snag them with empty hooks, they would wiggle off because our hooks were too small and they were too big but it was a lot of fun. We looked up the river about 200 feet and there was a 500 pound grizzly bear swimming accross the creek. He stopped in midstream and stood up on his back legs and ate a salmon, holding it with his front paws and eating it like a piece of corn. After he finished, he went on the island across from us and we thought he was gone. Two minutes later, we hear a big splash about 60 feet away and to our dismay, he is swimming right to us and starring at us intently. We slowly back out of there and head about a quarter mile away and we hide out on a beach about 20 feet off the trail for 1/2 and hour. We decide that that was such a great spot to fish and we decide to go back as the bear must surely be gone by now. As we hit the trail, we notice a new bear poop which wasn't there 1/2 an hour ago. We walk along shouting "hey bear" so we don't surprise a bear and after about 2 minutes I see the bush about 10 feet ahead of me having an earthquake and soon I see two bear cups climbing a tree, the mother is holding her ground and this is a black bear. We are out of there before you know it and we are heading for the road as this place is wall to wall bears, no wonder the fishing was so good. It seems the "hey bear" probably saved us from an attack. We get to the post and we notice that the carved sign post actually read "death creek". As we head to the road, we meet a guide from another tour company and he has a huge cannister of bear mace. We mention that he should stay away from where we were and he mentions, "Oh, we don't let anybody go down there". When we were picked up by our guide Mark we told him our tale and he mentioned that the locals wouldn't go down there without a shotgun.....Thanks Mark!

Next day we did white water rafting, fabulous but very cold, and a few days later we went ocean kayaking to a glacier. We ended up in Seward for an all day wildlife cruise
and then back to Achorage and the flight home last night.

M's parents are here from Chicago for a week so tomorrow, were of to SF for a few days and then on the 9th we're of to NYC for 6 days.

All is well and bye for now