Alaskan Salmon
Year 2020 - without words
Probably the saddest of years.
would you rather go straight to the photo album?
The planning
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After a long beobaTo compare the prices, I had booked our 2020 Alaska flights in January
For me and my Cosmo Frankfurt Anchorage on June 15th and for Renate on August 1st.
It should go back on September 15th
But then Corona came. .
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What nobody expected began at the end of January 2020.
The corona pandemic changed everything in one fell swoop.
It started "harmlessly" on January 27th, 2020 in China. Covit-19 spread quickly around the world and on March 17th we were declared a pandemic (Source Wikipedia). What followed is well known: lockdown, borders closed, hamster purchases, life completely restricted and the economy paralyzed.
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There were travel warnings, including for the USA until June 18th, 2020
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Our flights were canceled and still in good spirits, I easily rebooked my flight to July 2nd.
Then came changes - Anchorage could no longer be flown directly from Europe. So Condor "postponed" our flights, redirected us via Seattle and from there on to Anchorage with Alaska Airlines. That was a whopping 19 hours that we would have been on the road. Under these circumstances, of course, I would have left my Cosmo in old Germany - it certainly wouldn't have been for him for so long and I wasn't sure what would have happened with immigration to the USA.
The flight times were postponed again, but in the end the USA announced that they would not let any Europeans into the country until August 31, 2020 in order to protect the lives of their citizens. Here I abstain from all comments. Meanwhile, Mr. President has extended the whole thing indefinitely.
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Now it was clear:
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ALASKA 2020 CANCELED!
The Sockeye Run 2020
The first run on the Russian River in June went so badly that Fish and Game's "Salmon Fishing" had to be closed for 2 weeks. In the period from June 5th, 2020 to July 14th, 2020, just 27,100 Sockeye Salmon moved into the Russian River - compared to this: in 2019 there were 126,900.
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For those interested: Early Russian River Run 2020
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Things are a bit different with "Kenai River late run 2020". Here it started unusually early on July 1, 2020 with initially small numbers. Overall, however, it was a very constant, long-lasting run, with constant numbers between 20,000 and 50,000 Sockeye Salmon per day. In mid-August it was even possible up to over 130,000 salmon a day, but there are sure to be a lot of the "popular" humpback salmon (pink, humpy) skewing the number.
Anyway, the 2020 season has been a year of lots of joy and fun salmon fishing, great days fishing late into August with consistently good weather. But unfortunately this year it is only reserved for "resident" and "domestic tourists".
For the good end
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All the back and forth and the loss of our Alaska time makes us very sad - our house has been empty for two years now - friends look after it, but in the end they can't be "on site" all the time.
Yes, our friends.... we don't see them either for two long years. But thank God there is "social media", Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Skype.
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All that remains is to look forward to Alaska 2021
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Thanks to our Alaska friends for the pictures in the photo album