Icewind's Ramblings

There’s a couple of old jokes that talk about various seasons in a northern climate. It’s not just an Alaskan thing as I’m sure other cold climate locales find themselves with the same thing. The first joke is something like this . . . “There are two seasons here in Anchorage . . . Winter and the Forth of July”. The second one is . . . “There are two seasons here in Alaska . . . Winter and Construction season.” Which brings me to tonight’s rant or irritated observation. On my way home these last few weeks there have been the constantly changing areas around town that is being worked on or repaved. There is always a lot repairs or construction to be done during our short respite from the harshness of winter. It is great that the City repairs the ruts (grooves) in the road caused by the studded tires on everyone’s rig or this year adding many ADA improvements to intersections. There is also heated sidewalks being added to E Street around the Town Park an...

I took Friday off to go fishing again and it kinda looked like it might turn into a nice day. It didn’t happen as by midday it turned cloudy, windy, and started to rain lightly making the fishing a bust. We headed to Jim Creek and found our way to water’s edge looking down at the Knik Glacier about a mile upriver. Another pretty place to fish with Pioneer Peak rising up from just across the river and the newspaper’s fishing report said the fish were in the last few days. That has been the story all summer . . . “you should have been here the last two days” . . . we talked to several people on the way in to the river who said things had cooled off and that they had not caught anything since yesterday evening and it had slowed down drastically from what had been great fishing. We were hoping to fish for silver salmon but the six hours we stood around legs in the water casting there was only one fish that was landed. We left Jim Creek ...