Kenai, Alaska

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Another cool, rainy day. Stayed in most of the day. Jim and I walked up to the office of the RV park this morning. The owner of the park has 10 acres here and his parents own 80 acres around the park. The parents moved here in the 70's. The owner's father was at the fish cleaning station with his grandchildren. He was fileting a skate. A skate is a member of the sting ray family. This one was about 3ft across. They only filet the top part of the wings. He also had just finished fileting a shark that was about 2ft. long. He offered us some, but we passed. I need to make a correction about last night's blog. I mentioned that one man had got 95 salmon and he was entitled to 35 for himself and 35 for each member of his family. I said this was called "substanance". It is called "subsistence". I guess no matter where you go people have a hard time trying to make a living. I know in Illinois the farmer's are having a bad time this year because of the drought. Here in Alaska, the set netters, the commercial fishermen who have their nets set in the water are not able to set the nets because there is a shortage of the King Salmon and when the fishermen set their nets, they catch all kinds of fish, including the King Salmon. So, this causes a big hardship on the commercial fishermen. But, this has been great for the dip net fishermen because they are able to catch the salmon that the commercial fishermen would be getting. The dip net season is over July 31 and the State is having a special hearing then to decide whether they will let the commercial fishermen back with their set nets. I am sure that this is very frustrating to these fishermen and causes a hardship because now is the time to catch the fish. They mentioned on TV that this was the first day of practice for the high school football season. Last year's champion, Seward, will play their first game in Honolulu, Hawaii for the Fire and Ice game. That's a good distance to travel to play football. Barbara gave Becky and Ruth a permanent today. She said that she was tired, as she now has the cold that we all have been passing around. Hopefully tomorrow will be better weather as we are planning to go further south on the Kenai Pennisula to Homer.

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