We really couldn’t ask for more beautiful weather for July!  Each week has been sunny and warm, fun and happy and full of life.  Considering my recent heart scare, I’m grateful for every day and consider each one a special gift.  The salmon are really here now, so there are hoards of tourists everywhere.  There have been extended commercial fishing periods almost every day so Peter has been gone for a while.  I still cook food for him and his deckhands, but just leave containers in the freezer for whenever he can get home to take stuff to the boat.  I hope they are getting lots of fish even though their allowed area is often reduced.

My old Airstream has been perfect, except for a few things.  I did get safety chains welded onto the hitch, and extended the wiring for the lights, but then noticed the truck throwing out clouds of black smoke.  Turns out the O2 sensor had flatlined and thankfully the shop was able to fix it the same day.  We couldn’t wait to get out of town but learned that all the area campsites are completely full.  Then I discovered a place off the beaten path where we could go for free, so Janek and I went camping at this small lake in Kasilof over the weekend and it was wonderful.  We get along amazingly well together, and do a lot of laughing.  He adores playing in the water with Cheyenne and there were a few other locals there, even children to play with.  Unfortunately at night we had a problem with the door handle and got ourselves locked in!  After a few anxious minutes when I began to crawl out a window, a woman came by and managed to open the door for us.  On Sunday our local locksmith fixed it and now we can go adventuring again.  Turns out the decades-old mechanism was seized up with solidified grease, so maybe I could have gotten it apart to clean and re-grease it myself and saved the house call.  But hopefully it won’t cause any more trouble, although I’ll keep looking for a replacement door knob for the 50+ year old hardware.  Because of the new medications I take, my blood is so thin that any thumps turn into big bruises, so just imagine the black thigh I got from trying to climb out that little window!

Here are some photos from the past week.  Unfortunately none of them include me, but you can see we’re having fun.  That is, as long as we remember to put on mosquito repellent a couple of times every day!

Having Janek here has been a lot of fun, and apparently I’m not quite as old and decrepit as I thought I was!

It looks like the fishermen are happier now that the salmon are here!

And Janek finally found a big King Salmon! and an even bigger mosquito!!