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Humvee expedition

Banf Film festival in Anchorage Alaska. My son to Me to one night of the festival. I had the privilege to get to watch this film.
After I got home I made that purchase and have that disk setting here. Every once in a while I will pop it in and go for that journey once again.
During the festival showing, the scene of the bar back in the bush and wild lands, showed a little more of what goes on in that pub. 😹😹😹


And the trailer.
 
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@Big T
This is all about fly fishing. I do not know how You have not made this journey.
OKAY, this train is far enough into the river, Reed Point Montana comes to mind, and, a lot of bridge under the water. 😹😹😹
Get back on track.
Oh, just one more thing.
The preferred bait these guys is using is a fly that has the form of a full size mouse. My son tells me they are called a hemmorhoidal Mouse. Now the spelling may be off but it gets You the headed the right direction if You want to tie a bunch of them before traveling over to there.
 
@Big T
This is all about fly fishing. I do not know how You have not made this journey.
OKAY, this train is far enough into the river, Reed Point Montana comes to mind, and, a lot of bridge under the water. 😹😹😹
Get back on track.
Oh, just one more thing.
The preferred bait these guys is using is a fly that has the form of a full size mouse. My son tells me they are called a hemmorhoidal Mouse. Now the spelling may be off but it gets You the headed the right direction if You want to tie a bunch of them before traveling over to there.
Have a friend in Florence, MT who’s going on an Alaska trip this month targeting large rainbow trout on mouse flies. He’s a retired Fire Chief from California who spends money like it’s water.

My wife have been unable to travel these past couple years due to care of aging dogs, plus medical issues for both of us. We’re going to do some travel and she instructed me to specifically set up a New Zealand fishing trip.

Here’s a pic of my wife fly casting on my recent Montana trip just a year after shoulder replacement surgery:
IMG_4341.jpeg
 
More closer to home, I am overdue to book this trip to fish Bull Trout on the upper Kootenai River above Cranbrook in BC. It’s an October fishery as the bull trout feast on Kokanee as they spawn. Work and seemingly annual foot surgeries have gotten in the way, but I am due.

 
I’ve seen some amazing wild open land. Never been to Alaska or Hawaii. Can’t even fathom the amount of space throughout Russia or Australia I have seen on tv.

Trying to comprehend the vastness of the earth and how big it really is, I remember always hearing if the earth was an apple, how thick the earths crust is would be thinner than the skin on an apple. This thought came to mind again so I fired it into the search bar. Where this redit result popped up:
npearson
•4 yr. ago

Thickness of the skin of the apple I'm eating for lunch =0.4mm, diameter of the apple = 77mm. Skin to diameter thickness =0.00519
Thickness of the the thinnest part of the Earth's crust=5km, thickest=50km, average diameter of the Earth= 12,742Km. Thin crust to diameter ratio=0.000392, Thick crust to diameter ratio=0.00392.

So the comparison is within an order of magnitude of the thicker crust of the Earth which is pretty good, assuming my apple is representative of most apples.

It really says something about the actual size of the earth to me. And now I have a new quick reference in my head about the scale of things.
 
I think that the earth's crust is thinner than an apple peel. If you increase the apple to the size of the earth, the thickness of the skin will be 82 km (60 miles).
 
On the fishing side- I went several times with my Dad as a kid and once after I got married before his health got to where he couldn’t go. Whenever we would go he alw asked “are ya hungry?” When my reply was no, we would be there for hours just relaxing and enjoying the scenery. Whenever I said yes he would start out by sending me for firewood. By time I came back and had the fire going, there would be a fish (or two if small) hitting the pan. One time when I was 16, he asked like always and my answer was not hungry. After some hours he motioned me over to him and asked again, again I replied no. So he says something like lets cast out one more time then head out after that.
As he reeled in and was about to cast I noticed he had a big sinker on his line and nothing else. “Dad, ya lost your hook & bait.” He looks at me confused, said “I thought you said you weren’t hungry?” No I said, and he said “well then we’re just fishin, were not catchin.” As he casts out again and I see him landing that sinker right in a perfect spot of tale tale bubbles.

I brought up this story at his funeral, his brothers and sisters just laughed, his Mom says “Yes, he could catch a fish in a dry river bed.” Born in 36, during the 40’s they didn’t have enough money, Dad would keep his mom and the siblings fed on fish most of the time.

It was in my late 40’s i was cooking a fish dinner and my one year younger sister staying at my house ran to the store to get me some tartar sauce as she noticed we were out.
I said ya didn’t have to bother, and she laughed it off. My wife says “we rarely eat fish” As were eating dinner, two bites in I am grabbing the sauce and I said “I could swear i like this fish more than this” and on goes the sauce. That’s when my sister informed me
“You don’t like fish you only like the tartar sauce, you never have.” I protested-I always loved fish when camping or fishing- and we rarely had tartar then.”
She replies while shaking here head “Silly, you enjoy the time outdoors with people, especially Dad, the fish was just part of a good memory- you don’t really like fish.”

I have 3lbs of salmon in my fridge right now, I also have two bottles of tartar sauce…
Amazing how memories focus on the greatness of the past and the downfalls fade away.
 
After a lifetime of fishing, I am convinced you are born with the gene for it and the rest aren’t and don’t care. Same with hunting.

I have to be careful with guests, realizing they may not have the same level of gusto for fishing that I do. For me, fishing is a sport. I pursue it with the same energy that I did with water polo or tennis. Even though I got a foot that’s not 100%, most people would have a tough time keeping up with me while wade fishing a stream or river.

I am fortunate to have a wife who loves the outdoors and also grew to love fishing. I think she’s intimidated by me, but she does pick it up an holds her own. I mean we’re talking about a woman who holds 4 (3 still current) International Game Fishing Association (IGFA) line class world records, including a 95 lb thresher shark on 8 lb test, achieving a better than 10:1 weight to line test ratio. There’s a lot of skill involved in that accomplishment, not to mention her Captain husband who orchestrated that.

Unfortunately, life has interrupted a lot of the fishing quests, but hope to get back to that soon.
 
Few years go a friend of mine and I had a rule, when we travel we had to try to fish at every body of water we come across,
And we did, some successful and some not,

I remember one particular day in 2018, we came across bunch of small ponds and lakes that day and we tried all of them without any success,

The last lake we got to, I said I am gonna try here,
She said no way you will catch anything here.

The first cast was a trout on it, so is the second and third,
That pond in the middle is deep desert end up being one of the best fishing spots we ever cam across,

It was about 50 miles off road to get to it, we got there by accident.
I am definitely not into hunting, for me it’s more pleasure to see the bear alive than see it die for for my meal.


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That’s amazing enough 😍
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
One day my friend one day for sure I am gonna be doing st. Petersburg to Kamchatka drive,

Have your fishing gear ready 😁

There is no road to Kamchatka, only to Magadan (Road of Bones).
Not driving, but back in 1992 for their honeymoon, my late father and his second wife took a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railroad from it's western end clear across Russia to it's end. This was just a few years after the Berlin Wall fell, Yeltsin was in charge and the former Soviet Union opened up to tourism. It was on a private train that was part of a private charter excursion trip for American steam railroad fans, pulled by a steam engine. Made multiple stops at various towns/cities along the way. Everybody had their own private rooms on the train with a personal porter. Dad picked up some interesting souvenirs for me on the trip, my being an Armor Officer in the Army at the time. Like I have a Soviet Army Tank Officer's watch, a tanker's helmet with built in earphones and microphone, and the really cool Soviet Army Officer's field mess kit that has the ultimate Swiss Army Knife on steroids in it - imagine having the usual corkscrew, can opener, bottle opener, file, etc, AND a full-sized tablespoon, fork and knife such that you slide the knife handle side bolsters off the center knife section and now you have the individual full-sized spoon, fork and knife with their own handles for your dinner set, each with a tool or two built into their handle!

I'll go dig it out and post a picture of it some time, it's way cool!

Amazing the things you can trade for when you bring along several pairs of extra Levis with you on the trip!
 
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It takes a week to travel by train across the country, from Moscow to Vladivostok. (Boeing 777 flies 9 hours) In a 2 or 4-seater air-conditioned privat compartment (18 or 36 seats in a train car). Visit a restaurant car, order food in a compartment, walk around the stations of big cities. Regular stops are 5-10 minutes, in big cities about an hour, you can a leisurely walk. it's a nice trip especially if you like to read.
Most of the passengers travel for a short distance in economy class, 54 people in a train car are just partitions.


An invariable attribute of the train is tea in a metal cup holder.
Always in any carriage, even in the cheapest one, they will bring you tea in a beautiful cup holder.
rzhd_new_2.jpeg
 
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You can get to Russia through Turkey. Fly directly to Sank Petersburg. walk around the city for a few days. Then take a high-speed train (3-4hour) to Moscow. You can stay in my apartment in Moscow. walk around Moscow for a few days. Take a train ticket from Moscow to Irkutsk for 4 days way. Visit Lake Baikal, you can rent a yacht, or book a boat trip/fishing trip. a few days in the wild on the deepest and cleanest lake on the planet. Then by train from Irkutsk to Vladivostok 3 days journey. From Vladivostok to China and then by plane to Alaska or LA. This is how you travel around the world. US Embassies in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok. Many speak English, no problems with the language.
 
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I speak Russian and English, language won’t be a problem, my friend Ulia is in Urals I have to go pick her up and continue
, I want to ship the hummer to France then drive as far east as possible, off course spent at least a month in Baykal.
 
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