Heading Back North on the Kenai
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Following the Sterling Highway north out of Homer and then onto the Kenai Spur Highway, we made our way to the far northwestern point of the Kenai Peninsula… where the road ended… at Captain Cook State Recreation Area and the Discovery Campground. There were lots of open sites to choose from.
There was no camp host and as a result, folks kind of did as they pleased. Generators droned on all day and night. Rather than cutting campfire wood, some campers dragged whole logs onto the fire pit and lit them on fire. Some folks played extremely loud music and partied through the night. There were several trails, but none were maintained and thus heavily overgrown and unwalkable through brambles and thick underbrush. We contented ourselves with walking to the road’s end and admiring the magnificent view of the mountains and volcanoes across the Cook Inlet.
Our campsite was fine surrounded in Devil’s Club aka Devil’s Walking Stick, huge leaved green plants about shoulder height with heavy, thick stalks. Mosquitoes were particularly thick and vicious and after one night of mozzies and noisy generators and neighbors, we had no interest in staying another.
We returned to the town of Kenai and spent a couple of hours walking through historical Old Kenai. We stopped at the Visitor Center for a self-guided tour map and began our tour at an old log cabin built and previously lived in by Moosemeat John and his family. John Hedberg, a homesteader, was well known for hunting moose to feed his 13 children. Moosemeat’s cabin has been reclaimed and repurposed by the Kenai Historical Society.
The nearby Burger Bus was doing a land office business selling burgers out of a repurposed skulie.
Following the map, we found the Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Russian Orthodox Church. Built in 1894, this building is one of the oldest standing Orthodox churches in Alaska and regular church services are still held here.
Nearby is the Chapel of St. Nicholas built in 1906 and in sad disrepair.
We trudged up a gravel road to find the overgrown Russian Orthodox cemetery.
We celebrated David’s birthday with lunch at the Kenai River Brewing Company and a free campsite at Engineer Lake in the Skilak Wildlife Recreation Area.
Lin had sent a box of gifts which we’d saved to open on the special day. The kids called with birthday greetings. There was a special card from his loving wife and we’d picked up a couple of bakery treats. Lin had even supplied candles. Not much of a 75th birthday celebration till you consider we’re touring Canada and Alaska for five months… that’s kind of special.
Back in Soldotna, we did some food shopping and then spent a couple of rainy days and nights at Swiftwater Park Campground ($29/day) on the Kenai River, a hotspot for salmon fishing. The campground offers boardwalks along the riverside as well as several stairways with access to the river.
We did not participate in the salmon fishing… it requires quite a bit of gear which we didn’t have like waders and poles and nets and tackle. Not to mention, we’d have no place to store our catch if we did catch anything. We were probably the only non-fishing people in the entire campground. We did, however, watch the multitude of salmon fishermen who were out there, rain or shine, hauling in the silvers.
We’ve been in a sluggish mode lately with little ambition to do much. With the rain and dreary skies, everything is damp and muddy. We go out for short walks with all our rain gear, but that’s about it. We’re waiting for the sun to return. The forecast is for another 2-3 soggy days. Bah!
It was our last night here, and just after we’d shut off the lights for the night, both phones blared a tsunami warning. It was unnerving, to say the least, until we figured out we were in a safe area. Read about tsunamis and earthquakes in David’s recent Blue View here.
On our way out of town the next day, we visited the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center which offered several exhibits, lots of information and several short, but pretty albeit wet walks within the refuge area midst the drizzle and downpours.
We were in no hurry since the forecast showed gray skies and rain most everywhere. We headed back to the Skilak Wildlife Recreation Area along the Sterling Highway and found a free campground at Petersen Lake. I found this campground to be one of the most lovely we’ve stayed at. There are only four campsites, one of which was occupied. We snugged up parallel to the beautiful, tranquil lake. This was an area conducive to meditation, quiet pondering and introspection.
We watched lesser yellowlegs scamper along the shore.
Loons were calling in the distance. We later saw them taking a swim with the family.
Neon pink fireweed was in bloom along with goldenrod, purple lupine, white yarrow and tiny blooms of lavender aster-like fleabane.
We walked along the gravel road past a burn area with new growth reclaiming the scorched earth.
The next day dawned gray and drizzly once again. We needed to get out of our sluggish funk so we made tracks back to the Seward Highway and headed north to the Alaska Conservation Center ($20/pp) in Girdwood. We’d missed the Center on the way down and stopped now to check it out. The drizzle continued and the walking paths and roads within the center were extremely muddy with huge puddles difficult to avoid. A sanctuary for the preservation of Alaska’s wildlife, many of the animals here are rescues. There’s a special thrill when we spot animals in the wild, so seeing these creatures in captivity didn’t seem all that special. Still, we made the rounds of all the animals enclosures. Take a look at what we saw.
In retrospect, we probably could have given the Center a pass. It’s always so hard to know in advance if something is worth the dollars spent. If you don’t go, you never know. There are so many things to see and do, but all, of course, at a cost. It’s $20/pp here and $30/pp there or $$$ for tours to Juneau or boat trips to the Kenai Fjords. It’s sometimes hard to decide which to see or do because we just can’t do them all. I suppose if we were here for a two-week vacation, we’d have it all planned out and prepaid maybe, but for a 5-6 month tour, we really need to be a bit more selective. So we’ll miss some things and opt for others and hopefully not regret our choices. So far, so good.
Back on the Seward Highway, we made our way back to Anchorage to replenish the larder. We stayed at the same RV park to take showers and do laundry and generally catch up… a recurrent theme. David managed to get reservations for a campground site in Denali National Park in one week hence and we made plans to fill in the time in between.
Join us next time as we head up the George Parks Highway to Denali State Park with a stop at the Iditarod Headquarters along the way.