Changes in Latitude

Last NZ summer took us deep in to the Southern Ocean to roughly 50 degrees south latitude. One of our sons, George, and I are just back from an Alaskan fishing trip to roughly 60 degrees north latitude. (None of this has much to do with Buffet’s song, but it sounded good so I used it anyway).

Nor does Alaska have much to do with Iron Lady’s present location in NZ getting a get home drive installed, but next year, our plans call for a trip across the Pacific from NZ to the Pacific Northwest – then from there to Alaska. That’s my excuse for including this post.

Anyway, plans called for me to fly to Chicago and meet my son who lives there and fly on together to Anchorage where we were to spend the night. Not to be. I got a call at 3 AM that my flight from Pittsburgh had been delayed by two hours. Well, I have been to this dance before so I went to the airport early and found out that the plane was on a mechanical delay and they were flying mechanics in to fix it. That sounded like away more then a 2 hour delay so I prevailed upon an agent at the ticket counter to rebook me. Good thing, my original flight was posting a six hour delay when I left Pittsburgh. Good thing, I got the last two seats on flights that would get me to Anchorage that day. VERY bad thing, my new routing took me from Pitt to Dallas with a 6 hour layover and then to Anchorage. Oh well – the joys of modern air travel. At least I made Anchorage that night with all bags because the next morning we were off to the wilds of Alaska on a Pennair flight to Dillingham.

Dillingham lies at the upper reaches of Bristol Bay and that is our departure point to Bristol Bay Lodge. The trip from Anchorage was beautiful and here are some shots of some of the mountains as we flew over.

And here is Dillingham International Airport.

From there, the folks at Bristol bay Lodge met us and took us for a 30 minute van ride to Lake Aleknagik. From there, it is a 40 minute jet boat ride to the lodge.

Here is son George.

And the lake.

And the Lodge.

There wasn’t much downtime. A quick lunch, get our fishing licenses and a overview by Lodge Manager Steve Laurent and we were suited up in our waders and off for an afternoon of fishing by 1 PM. Our first destination was by a Beaver float plane to Togiak. This was our ride.

Instruction before takeoff.

The Lodge form the air.

And the scenery on the way to Togiak.

(Yes – those mountains do have new snow and yes – they are much higher then we were flying – about 200 AGL) (200 feet above ground to you non pilots).

And Yes – that little stretch of river is our landing spot.