If it is true that fall begins in Alaska on August first then it would be fair to say fall dawned clear and cool.

When we washed the other day we only did two loads. Today I did two more. While the machines were doing their job I got on the DSL hookup and checked email, looked at our investments, looked at the weather at Coldspring and the Houston area, checked the fish count at the sonar station near Kenai, looked at a website in Australia and corresponded with David Matthew about what lures we needed to buy off that website. We will need those lures when we get to Colorado in a few weeks and start fishing for trout. I suggest this is a great way to do the wash.

When the wash was done Onie and I kept our daily appointment with the reds. Many were hooked but only two were landed, one six pounder and one that weighed eight and a half pounds. Our time was limited by the fact that we had to get home for the Friday night cookout. Tonight was the triple kay treat, King Krab Kookout.

The cookout was scheduled, as before, to begin at six thirty and the drill was the same, potluck. The camp was not furnishing the King Crab, a little pricey you know, so Onie and I had ordered our two pounds before leaving to go fishing. We would settle our bill tonight at the campfire, before eating.

Our contribution tonight was venison/feral hog/jalapeno sausage cut bite sized served with honey mustard. It was well received however I did see a little fellow about five years old taking three pieces and I tried to warn him it was hot. He didn’t respond to me but went to find his Mom. Moments later I saw him walking around with his mouth open blowing air out of it and saying "Its hot!" When no one seemed to be sympathizing with him he ate the other two pieces.

Dennis got out his Cajun Cooker and fired it up. Inside the stainless steel pot was a special rack, divided into three sections. The rack was for steaming. The crab legs and claws were already cooked but frozen. Four minutes in the steaming cooker was all that was needed to thaw them and make them hot again.

Onie and I were starved so I grabbed our bag of crab and hustled off to Dennis to be sure our crab was among the first cooked. The four minutes seemed longer but at last the crab legs were deposited on our waiting plates. Dennis’s daughter came by our chairs with small containers of hot butter. We were in business. Many foods are over rated as far as I’m concerned and are just a way to take the wrinkles out of one’s stomach and stay alive. King Crab does not fall into that category. It is highly rated and deserves to be. For the next few minutes Onie and I ate in a silence that was only broken by the sound of smacking lips. In fact King crab would probably never taste so good served in a clean air-conditioned restaurant. Here we sat in canvas chairs on gravel surrounded by new friends and cool; smoke filled air under a clear Alaskan sky. Yes life is good and particularly so for Onie and me. God is good. After we polished off the crab we went to the table holding the food prepared by campers. There was red beans and rice, potato salad, green salad, corn biscuits, and assorted other dishes. Next to each other sat banana cake with a white frosting and a blueberry cobbler. Remembering what Granny had taught me, as a little boy, "I like both and I’ll take either," I blurted out in my confusion, "I like either and I’ll take both". Oh how I enjoy my poor memory.

The ladies had returned from their canoe trip, during the meal, and now husbands and families gathered round the adventurers to hear the harrowing tale of daring do. They had paddled many miles the first day, made camp and drank half their supply of beer. The next day they broke camp, paddled and drank the other half of the beer. They were so happy to see Mike at the end of their journey, he had brought, more beer. The girls were sunburned but happy and their families were glad to have them back. I thought that was nice.

As the party wound down I told Dennis we would be here another week so we could participate in two more campfires, fish and crab. This would be the last of the crab for the year so there would be nothing to keep us here as the red run was also coming to an end.

At the house I made a few notes before picking up my book. Onie watched TV and played spider, I kibitzed on the spider from time to time, ‘til bedtime.

Fall is bringing us cooler temps along with more sunny days. I noticed yesterday, on the way to the fishing hole, that the night rains have brought the fire danger down to moderate. Perhaps autumn will bring more rain. The fireweed has bloomed out and is now beginning to lose blooms, from the top and bottom of the stalk.

In a few more days we will see the red appearing on the stems and then we will have to seriously begin thinking of heading south. The riot of color from hot house flowers that decorate many homes and businesses hasn’t faded but seems to be gaining intensity as if putting on one final burst of glory before being relegated to the fireplace when the frost comes. Youngsters are riding hard, all day long, on their four wheelers and dirt bikes as they feel the nip in the air and know that freedom from school is just about gone. The dirt bikes and four wheelers will give wave to snowmobiles and skis. The tank tops will be replaced by down vests and insulated underwear. Everywhere we can see and feel the approaching winter. For now we choose to read and relax.

Week nine is ready for Onie’s touch including the insertion of pictures. That seemingly easy task, for those not doing it, occupies quite a bit of time.

When that job is completed we collaborate on some spider working for a low score. Onie plays slow and methodically while I blaze through. I suppose we make a good team.

We decided to stay here at Moose River another week so we went to the office and settled our latte and washing tab as well as paid for the next seven days. Sometime between now and then we will decide what our next move will be. For now we are enjoying all the comforts, full hookups, one hundred fifty TV channels and the DSL line. We are still going through our music, alphabetically and managing to catch some fish along the way.

As a matter of fact we went to the river today and managed to catch a red and three trout. The first trout I threw back, the next two went on the stringer, for dinner, but one managed to escape. The red became fresh fillets for our refrig.

Onie did her seasoning thing after I cleaned and split the trout. While the campfire burned down to coals we enjoyed the warmth it shed in the cool evening. Our long sleeve shirts and light wraps fend off the cold now, instead of the mosquitoes that have quietly exited the scene. The salad and cabernet sauvignon went well with the smoke that got in my eyes as I tended our main course.

No cooking for Onie tonight.

When the cook fire was but embers we walked the short distance to the coach where our nice warm bed waited.

On cool mornings the warm bed is hard to leave and Onie was the first one up today

With her coffee at hand she went back to the job of selecting pictures for week nine. Later when I woke I sat next to her and we made the final decisions about what pictures to use. Once that was done she resized and cropped as necessary. I wrote, as what she does is totally foreign to me. As she worked away I wrote some more. When she was ready we went to the office and hooked up to the DSL connection. For the next hour and a half we uploaded the stories and pictures to the website, checked email and roamed the web. When we tired of that we went home to get ready for dinner.

The bass in Kickapoo Creek will have a more formidable foe when we return. We are eating enough fish that we are beginning to grow scales, or else our skin's getting really dry, and we feel we can swim better and perhaps even think a little like a fish. All this leads me to simply say we had fish for supper.

After that we devoted ourselves to a movie or two before checking into our bed.

I have no idea what it would be like to be Catholic but I’m glad I’m not, at least for today. I’m sure I would have to say at least twenty "Hail Mary’s".

We were blessed with another clear cool day.

After breakfast we set about doing a little maintenance. Our roof vents weren’t functioning quite right so a trip up on the housetop was in order. In addition the holding tanks needed attention. A loose screen needed tightening and the floors needed cleaning. This retirement can really be a grind, devoting a couple hours a week like this, to work. After that we had to pay bills, deplete the old bank account, pay the piper, whatever, it takes up good fishing time.

We managed one red and one trout. The trout was foul hooked so he went back in the river where he immediately turned turtle. What great laws we have.

The red was an entirely different matter. Onie introduced Alaska to fishing Texas style when she caught her red. Ever since the invention of the fishhook, whether it was bone or metal, the object has been to catch the fish in the mouth with the hook. Onie has progressed past the hook stage. She now lassoes her fish. When she yelled "fish on" I dutifully put my rod down, grabbed the net and assisted her in landing the fish. When I went to take the hook out of the fish’s mouth I discovered it wasn’t hooked into the flesh of the mouth, at all. As a matter of fact if wasn’t hooked anywhere. Onie had managed to lay the hook inside the fish’s mouth, pass her line completely under the jaw, bring it back into the mouth, loop it through the hook and then snug it down so that she tied, or lassoed, her fish on the line. She started to explain the sophisticated technique required to land a fish by lassoing but I interrupted her mid-flight and told her I was quite sure I could never master it. We took Onie’s red, 6.8 pounds to the processor and headed home.

Onie fixed our evening meal, salad and baked red. What a culinary delight it was but the piece de resistance was yet to come. Dessert was blueberry cobbler topped with whipped half and half served with a glass of cold milk. The meal was absolutely sinful and we are so glad we aren’t Catholic. We are sure twenty "Hail Mary’s" would really cut into our playtime. George Strait kept us company with his music during dinner and later on while I finished my current book.

The coach was cooling off inside so we toddled off to bed. Yes, it is definitely getting cooler.

This morning I braved the cold and got up early. What is early? To us it is eight or eight thirty. Okay? Anyway I got up early to do agency work. The house was cold but after I made tea and coffee I settled down in my heavy robe and fuzzy house shoes to get some data entry done.

Later Onie joined me and I took a break for breakfast before continuing with my work. A few phone calls were in order and were made. More mail arrived and that was opened and handled.

Onie went to Soldotna to shop and I stayed at the computer.

When she returned near dinnertime I had completed the work, for now. The next batch of mail next week will bring more.

Once Onie was home she prepared an enchilada casserole for tomorrow night’s potluck dinner before serving us our salads and baked sockeye.

After dinner we watched movies before bed.

You’re right. This isn’t a very detailed description of the day. For those of you who are truly interested what data entry and bookkeeping for an insurance agency is like please ask me next time we see each other. For the rest of you I will simply say it is as exciting as watching mold grow.

We find as the world turns these are the days of our lives with all our children on our minds, even when we rouse at a late hour as we did today. We told ourselves we still haven’t recovered from the whirlwinds created by our visitors. Early to bed and early to rise may make one healthy, wealthy and wise but late to bed and early to rise makes one tired as all mischief.

After having some blueberries on our cereal we read a little and then sat together to combine our talents for a couple of games of spider.

When we could no longer stand the leisure Onie worked on the floors and I made a few notes before we both returned to spider for a little longer.

Even though the day was progressing there was still a chill in the air. It reminded us that we needed to be making plans for a trip south. We have exactly thirty days before we are due at Antlers in Creede, Colorado. That is about three thousand miles, I guess. Onie got out her maps and we both pored over them as we figured routes and drive times. We finally decided on hiways and byways that will require eleven days of driving eight hours a day to reach Creede. We wrote the cities where we change hiways into a spiral notebook and Onie highlighted the roads on the maps. That chore was done.

We will leave Moose River RV Park, here in Sterling, next Sunday and drive to Anchorage where we will spend the night, probably on Wal-Mart parking lot. The next morning Onie will take the Subaru into the dealer for some recall work and I will take the coach to a dealer for some work on the generator radiator and to have the rear tires checked for possible problems. When Onie is finished at the Subaru dealer she will go have the dings in the windshield repaired and then meet me at the RV place. Where we will spend the night is undecided. The next day we will have the new fender panel installed and then we should be on our way to Tok after getting our new tire. That will replace the one that blew out on the Parks Hiway. With the planning out of the way we were able to return to spider. I also spent some quality time with my laptop before it was time to go to the campfire potluck dinner.

Trying to stave off the forty-six degree morning we lay in bed waiting for warmer temps. What we got was a call to get out of bed, shake, rattle and roll with those pots and pans. During the night we thought we had felt a few earth tremors. Now that it was daylight and we were fully awake there was no doubt. The earth was moving and we were at least a foot apart from each other. We lay there and waited for the tremors to subside. They did and then they returned. Once they were gone for the second time we got out of bed and decided to rattle the pans on our own.

Salmon, eggs and onion were great for breakfast.

Work was still on the agenda so I made a few calls and spent more time on the computer. When I went to my laptop to write Onie played a little spider before getting ready to go fishing.

We went to Trustworthy Hardware and bought the tackle necessary to catch silver salmon and then drove to Eagle Rock, in Kenai, to fish. The river aroma that met our nostrils when we opened the doors of the toad can only be described as "ripe", the smell of a real river. We rigged and fished for quite a spell without so much as a bump before deciding that the Golden International was a better bet. The river had given up nada, zero, nyet, nothing but the Chinese restaurant wouldn’t disappoint us.

After dinner we made the short drive home to our laptops and the satellite stations.

Not too much later we were back in our bed hoping that the earth wouldn’t move while we tried to sleep.