Icewind's Ramblings

Today’s catch . . . 25 pound King Salmon My friend Scott and I after the catch . . . This was a relaxing way to spend the night and following day . . . fishing one of our ‘local’ spots without much driving. Five of us went for the overnight trip, Scott, his son Bob, Steve, my brother in law, Mike, and me. It is great as there were about 150 people there fishing in the twilight of summer. Going back in the morning . . . for more. Let the ‘smokin’ begin . . . more pictures later. Ice

Tonight, of course, is mid summer's night in Alaska and fabulous things can happen on mid summer's night. According to my calendar, tomorrow June 21 is the first official day of summer. Going by the temperature here today, 78 degrees when I left work, summer is a day early as things are heating up in the northland. The sun rose at 4:20 am this morning and will set here tonight in Anchorage Alaska at 11:42 pm, giving us 19 hours and 42 minutes of sunlight. I can't deny it any longer. Summer's officially here. After last year’s summer of cold and wet weather, let me just say, “Excuse me while I go melt.” I'm already longing for autumn. NOT!!! In one of the few places on earth where our summer weather forecast: “Mostly sunny for the remainder of the night.” . . . Right now there is about 4.5 hrs of what could be called twilight in between the “day” and the next day - no real night per se. It is like this . . . you get in your rig to go ...

I know I haven’t written much lately as it has been a madhouse here over the last month or so. I think it probably is that tweaking of mindset getting ready for summer after a long dark winter. As we approach the summer Solstice on Thursday and the time gain each day has slowed to a few seconds now we move into that high gear mode of an active summer. We are in our period of ‘full light’ now with only a couple hours of twilight during the middle of the ‘nighttime’ hours. It seems everything is moving faster now with more activities to fill everyone’s time each day. Fishing season has begun again with a quickly put together trip to Homer last weekend. It was great with summer temperatures here again around 68 degrees. It became windy while we were fishing during the ‘night’ high tide so it was a little breezy with my light shirt on. Who needs cold weather gear while we are in summer mode? It might have been more comfortable but I still had a great time anyway. ...