Skilak lake

After our bear encounter, the ride across the lake was much less eventful than yesterday’s wild ride. For an hour, I sat on the front of the boat and scanned the banks for wildlife. We did spot a mother black bear and cub fishing on a rocky beach. Both went running deep into the woods [...]

Camping, Alaskan style

Our cabin was awesome. It had been refurbished since whatever hard-core, backwoods guy had built it, but the original frame was there. Skip got a fire going and I gladly traded my wet clothes for some new ones. We had steaks that were 2 inches thick and dripping juices into a sizzling fire. The smell [...]

wet, cold, and happy

Despite the near miss of both a record trout and spotting a bear today, I couldn’t help but smile. Here I was, in the middle of a lake in the back country of Alaska, and headed to sleep in a cabin built by a trapper in the early 1900′s. There was just one small problem…. [...]