July 26th, 2024

It poured last night! And continued throughout the morning. It’s a good thing we had only planned to do laundry today. So Gayle and I spent a few hours there while Gerry and Gary visited some fly shops. It’s our last day with the Dukelow’s. They head out to explore and discover there’s more to Alaska than just fishing! They plan to visit Seward, Whittier, ride the Alaska railroad and visit Talkeetna. 

So we thought we’d show Gayle what dip netting looks like. We had a spot in mind but it has been closed down since 2016. We drove around looking for a good spot to see them working their craft and stumbled upon a beach that stopped us at a kiosk. Gary explained we only wanted to get a glimpse of the dip netters. She replied, “oh, yeah, I can give you a beach pass so you can take a look.” I started to ask the question, “will we be driving on the beach??!!” while Gary grabbed the pass and we were on our way crossing a sandy beach. It didn’t take him long before he stopped and put the truck in four wheel drive. 

Our adventure took us about a mile along the mouth of the Kenai River until eventually we came upon a little community of tents. We were able to get right up close to where they had their huge nets in the water. We watched them land fish right on the beach. The ocean was wild due to the 30 mile per hour winds we were getting. I don’t know how they tolerate standing in the cold ocean waves for hours. 

After a delicious meal of salad and spaghetti we took a last stroll along the fishing boardwalk as we talked to different fishermen whom we had become friendly with and reminisced over the events of the past week. 

We topped off our night with a drink that was shared with us in 2016 that we don’t know the official name for so we call it the Kenai Spritzer. It’s been fun to share a portion of our trip with good (eternal) friends. We caught loads of fish and made a ton of fond memories.