it didn't let us down, we lost one just when we hit the pavement. We met Luke, Emily, Martin, and Sveta at a campground on Paxson Lake and paddled across the Lake 5 miles to the start of the river. The bugs came out at our camp that night forcing us to put on our head nets for the first time this year. We ate freshly caught lake trout and grayling, with taco salad, and Luke made some cobbler in his Dutch Oven for dessert.
The next day included a quarter mile portage and about 8.5 miles of awesome class II rapids. To date this is the most challenging and fun section of river we have paddled. Our homemade spray skirt came in handy. Martin and Sveta filled their boat with water on one of
the rapids, Sveta described it as "taking a bath." We were all getting wet and cold, between the rapids and the rain, so we stopped and made a fire to warm up and drank some hot liquids.
Our campsite that night was on a bluff with great views of the river. Scott almost got lost coming back from the bathroom behind camp, after stumbling through the woods for 5 minutes, he came out a half mile downstream from camp. 
The river slowed down the next day and we joined up with some other forks of the river. There was motor boat traffic in the lower section all going after the Salmon. We saw some Kings jumping and Martin had one hooked briefly, but it got away. Another nice night camping along the river.
The next morning it rained on us on the paddle to the takeout. Crossing under the Alaska Oil Pipeline signaled our takeout was ahead.
Another river north of Fairbanks that has an easy car shuttle, we paddled it with Luke and Emily. The river was about the same difficulty level as the Chena River. There was some small rapids, rocks to dodge, and the occasional tree to maneuver around. We camped one night. A moose cow and calf splashed by our tents during the night.
While on a foot patrol Scott ran across some tracks in the mud.
Fortunately he was inside a vehicle when he encountered the other bear.
We canoed the Chena River north of Fairbanks with our friend Luke and some members of the Fairbanks Paddling Club. We are relative novices when it comes to paddling on tight little rivers with lots of rock dodging, however after some exciting maneuvering around obstacles and some tense moments, we are now calling ourselves experienced paddlers.
Scott caught his very first grayling, and Jen caught some too.
After we made camp we paddled across the river and explored a series of beaver ponds, until some downed trees blocked our forward progress
The first night of the trip we drove down to the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge and camped. We hoped to get the canoe wet for the first time this year, however we woke up to find that the lakes were mostly covered in ice. So we moved on to Homer with a dry canoe.
Homer activities included some hiking, a boat ride, a guided bird tour, and a lot of independent bird watching.
