Charlie caught his first fish!

July 4th, 2012

Woke up to several Happy July 4th texts today - always nice to hear from friends and family back home.  Started the day off quite nicely.

Charlie changed the oil in Bessie - we have already driven 6000 miles - whoa -

I made sour dough bread last night, so this morning I put it in the pans to rise again, and will bake it tonight.  It has been a nice treat to have while we are traveling.

I drove Didi for a while, mighty big mountains on this section and we decided to give Bessie a break from hauling Didi up and down all of them. It is a beautiful morning, clear blue skies, lots of fluffy clouds and all the mountains and streams....

Stopped in Fairbanks to go to the grocery store.  Went to a Fred Myer - they are a sister store to Kroger! so we used our Kroger card there.  It was a good store with good prices - we bought some fresh veggies and  a few stables and of course some fishing tackle and some Deet - 100% Deet....

Drove out to Chena Hot Springs, located outside of Fairbanks about 70 miles.  It was very quaint, reminded me of Mountain Lake.  They had a wonderful looking hot spring that you could use, horses, a pool, an RV camp, and cabins.  Thought I might come back the next day and just soak for a while in the hot spring, it is supposed to be 110 degrees - sounded wonderful to me.


We stayed at Rose Hip campground, very shady, cool, and next to a small creek or river.  Charlie caught his first fish in Alaska!!!!! A 12" Greyling!!! it was only catch and release there, so he put it back, but was very excited none the less.

We drove down and he fished at a few other places on the Chena river, caught another small fish, but was just happy to be getting strikes and bites!  We finally saw several moose on this road, they were on the side of the road and standing in ponds - a few were with their calves.  It was a perfect picture of what I thought Alaska would look like.

We were glad we drove out here, the road is ridiculously bumpy with frost heaves, but the lakes and ponds and rivers are picturesque and serene.

We had hotdogs, potato salad, and pasta salad for supper.  It was raining, so I just cooked the hotdogs over the flame on the stove - it worked and tasted like they had been cooked over the fire outside.