Tues, Sept 8: On the road to the Kenia Peninsula

It is fair today with high thin clouds and some sun. It looks like a winter day. We get up and away by 10AM with a stop at the little Post Office to mail a DVD of lake house pictures to Rick. We are heading to the Kenai Peninsula for a few days. The weather is unsettled right now so we are playing it by ear.


There is road construction going into Anchorage so, even though the road is interstate quality, it takes some time. Once through Anchorage we head around Turnagain Arm,

a drive we always enjoy.There is a bore tide here, but the tide is going out this time. We actually saw the tide come in when we were here in a rented RV in 2002.

The original plan was to spend a night in Hope, an old, early 1900's gold mining town on the Kenai side of the Arm, but when we get there it is shut up tight. The campground is right down on the water but there is no one around to find out the cost. The sites have only electric and it is just 15amp power...not enough to really operate the rig and Dick doesn’t have the right plug anyway. Since nothing in the little village opens until Wednesday or Thursday, we move on after walking around.Carolyn is not in the mood to be self contained tonight!

Back up on the Seward Highway we take the turn for the Sterling Highway and head toward Homer along the Kenai River. This is a pretty, blue-green, salmon river. We see some boats out on the river and many people fishing along the shore and from bridges. However there don’t seem to be as many as in 2002.

We stop at a big Fred Meyer on the highway in Soldatna for eggs and baggies. They have fresh local salmon so Dick gets a big piece to grill tonight. Then we drive on to Kenai, originally a native village and later a Russian settlement. We stop at Beluga Lookout Lodge and RV Park, right on the edge of a bluff overlooking the mouth of the river,and the Cook Inlet and get a site right on the bluff with a great view. After enjoying cocktails, Dick grills the salmon and some corn and we have a nice dinner while enjoying our "million dollar view"!

The sun is setting earlier now so we watch the movie "Flyboys" before bed. It is good, but as Dick says...they really stretched the history a bit!