Better Luck…But Still No Fish For Dinner.
In talking to grounds crew that came into Red Squirrel yesterday, Harry was told that were fish for sure at 48 Mile Pond, a bit further up the road, so that was our destination for today.
Ellen and I took a morning walk out to the other pond by the road and over to the river on the other side of the road. In addition to the ducks who were still there, we did spot a Townsend’s Warbler in the bushes and heard two different woodpeckers pecking, but couldn’t locate them. Ellen has been keeping up with at least a list a day, but they have been pretty sparse in the parts. I hope things will change when we get to the coast after Denali.
After breakfast it was off to 48 Mile Pond. There are actually two ponds there, on each side of a wide, mostly gravel, area between them. It is a day use area, but we interpreted this as a 24 hour day…after all, it never gets dark.
We found a nice flat area overlooking the smaller and and the hills behind it. It was pretty barren, but there were picnic tables. Once again, there was no one else around.
It was time to try fishing again. The larger pond was the stocked one, so we tried there. I managed to get a nibble twice, but no one took the hook. I could see the fish. I even got out my little telescoping casting rod and tried a lure borrowed from Harry that the local outfitter assured him was deadly. I cast it in front of a pair of trout and they just swam right by, one on each side of the lure. No fish for Steve.
Harry caught a small rainbow trout while I was at the other end of the pond looking at my fish, but it was too small and he released it. That was the only luck today.
After lunch we decided to drive up to the Chena Hot Springs, not much further up the road. The hot springs is a resort outside of the state recreation area. In addition to the hot springs pools themselves, the resort’s other attraction is its ice sculpture museum. It used to be an ice hotel, but by 2005 it became too hard to keep it from melting in the summer, so they built an insulated chilled building to house ice sculptures and also their “Ice Bar” where you can buy an Appletini in a martini glass made of ice.
At least Ellen and Sally were interested in giving this a try, but when we found out that it was $15 to enter the “Museum” and another $15 for the Appletini, this became a bit less appetizing. We did get to see the ice glasses though, someone had discarded a pair in the parking lot. They seem to have been turned on a lathe from a clear block of ice and were quite thick...and quite cold.
Everything was pretty pricey at the resort, even entering the hot pools was $13 for seniors. We’d thought about showers there, but not at $13 apiece. Using the hot pools on a warm sunny day didn't appeal either.
There were some interesting features of the resort. It was entirely powered geothermal energy. They had a geothermal powered electrical generator and a giant absorption refrigeration system (much like our van refrigerator) that kept the ice museum at 25°. Needless to say, all the facilities were heated by the hot water from the springs. They even had heated greenhouses that provided flowers and vegetables year around, using LED lights in the winter.
Having had no appletinis, we returned to 48 Mile Pond, tried a bit more unsuccessful fishing, watched a muskrat swim back and forth across the small pond our vans were facing and had another outdoor dinner.
No comments:
Post a Comment