Living in Alaska - Life in the Last Frontier

(Part Two of Three)

Part one can be found here.

As I was re-reading Part One of this three-part series, I realized that I forgot to mention the biggest news of all! Steve DID catch a King Salmon while out fishing with Bill White! A good size one too - about 35lbs!  He had Bill take some photos of him with his catch, but they’re on the video camera and I have to wait for him to download them before I can share one.

Steve left the fish with Bill, so that he could clean and fillet it, package it up, and freeze it. He made arrangements for us to pick it up when we passed through Sterling on our way out of Soldotna on Sunday morning.  We met Bill and his son (also a guide) at a local diner along the highway, and Bill handed over the king salmon fillets. They totaled about 15lbs. I did a little online research and saw that Kenai River King Salmon fillets currently retail for about $50 for 2.5lbs.  Steve definitely got his money’s worth from this fishing trip.

As an added suprise, and because Steve is a repeat customer of Bill White’s (and perhaps because he felt terrible about Steve’s luck with Steve McClure), Bill threw in another 15-20lbs of Red Salmon (sockeye) fillets! So, all in all, despite the two fishing trips that didn’t pan out, Steve brought home enough fish to make it all worth while. Our freezer chest doesn’t look so empty anymore.

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We left Soldotna around 10am, and began our drive to Seward. We made plans to stop at the Russian River Campground, and hike the Russian River Falls trail. We’ve always wanted to do that, but in past years we couldn’t find a spot to park in the campground because of all the fishermen in town.  I don’t know much about the salmon runs, but I don’t think they’ve reached the Russian River in full force yet, so we were able to get in. Unfortunately, because the combined length of our truck and camper is more than 50′, we had to park in overflow parking - which was .6 miles from the trail head and right next to the entrance to the park.

The trail itself is 2.3 miles to the falls.  It’s an easy to moderate walk, with some slight uphill climbs both coming and going.  Even with my issues with asthma, I didn’t have any problems. There were quite a few families hiking the trail with small children. The trail is gravel, wide, and well marked.  Here’s a trail map I found on line:

Parking is $11 for the day, if you’re not camping there. However, because we were told to park in overflow parking, they didn’t charge us (that was a nice surprise!).

The scenery was gorgeous, and changed constantly.  The trail begins beneath towering spruce, aspen and poplar trees, and then comes out into an open area surrounded by tall grass and mountains, before going back into the woods for a while. At several points during the hike, you can hear or see the river below.  At the falls area, there are two observation decks overlooking the river. The sound is deafening as the water cascades down the valley and into the area where the salmon weir is set up (they count the salmon here).

This area is also where bears have been known to fish, but we didn’t see any on our walk. We later heard that a black bear was sighted on the trail. We did see plenty of fish jumping up the falls, trying to make their way back to their spawning grounds. It’s a beautiful waterfall, and well worth the hike if you’ve got a couple of hours to spare when traveling through this area.

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(Part One of Three)

It is so good to be home! Traveling is great, but there’s nothing like getting home to your own home, bed, and familiar surroundings. Unfortunately, there is smoke here in the Interior. We saw heavy smoke from the fires as we passed through Nenana. Last night, the air wasn’t too bad, but today it’s horrible. In fact, it’s so bad, that I canceled my plans to run errands. I’ve had to use my asthma inhaler several times since arriving home. The windows are all closed to keep the smokey air out of the house. At least the sun is shining - not the best consolation though.

I finally edited, resized, and uploaded the many photos I took over the last two weeks, but because there are so many, I’m going to break my journal entries into three parts: Soldotna, Travel to Seward (and in Seward), and Travel to Talkeetna (and Home).

Soldotna

Our drive from Homer to Soldotna was under rainy skies. We hoped that the weather wasn’t going to stick with us the entire time we were there, but the forecast didn’t look very good for fair weather.

Soldotna is only about 60 miles from Homer, so we had an easy drive. Because of this, we stayed as late as we could at the campground in Homer, and stopped at a rest stop in Ninilchik to make sandwiches for lunch.  By then, the rain had stopped, but skies were still gray.

When we arrived at our campground in Soldotna (Klondyke RV Park), we were happy to find that the site we booked was still ours. (The campground owner is notorious for moving folks from the spots that they reserved to other locations) However, there was no picnic table at our site, while everyone around us had a table. We asked about moving one of the tables from the open sites to our camper, and were told that we didn’t ‘reserve’ a table when we made our reservation. Who would have thought that you had to request a picnic table?  Fortunately, she did agree to move a table once we were set up.

We took Sedona for a walk near the woods of the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. The sun wasn’t shining, but at least it wasn’t raining. I took some photos of the wildflowers I found blooming along the way:

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Just a short journal entry to let you know we’re almost home.

We’ve been without internet for the majority of our trip (Oh No!!!) so I couldn’t update.

Things didn’t go as well as we hoped. Besides missing the bear trip, we had so much rain on the Kenai Peninsula that we pretty much lived in our rain gear.

We did have a few hours of sunshine in Soldotna, and we also enjoyed a visit with Linda and Rich Kauffman (readers of this journal, who are traveling around Alaska this summer). While Steve fished on Saturday, the three of us drove up to Captain Cook State Park. The sun shone until we got back to Soldotna. And then the rain came again.

We made a stop on our travels from Soldotna to Seward, to hike the Russian River Falls Trail. It was 6 miles roundtrip and skies were actually sunny! The falls were gorgeous - but no bears fishing. (I guess we just weren’t meant to see bears) We hit rain as we got closer to Seward - and not the drizzly kind either.

We went on a glacier/wildlife cruise on seas that were so high and choppy, that many of the passengers spent the entire cruise with their faces in a barf bag. Thank goodness for Dramamine and also some piece of ginger root to chew on. I had a slight case of the queasies, but managed to keep it together. On a good note, we saw whales, otters, dall porpoise, sea lions, and plenty of waterfowl. Skies could have been clearer, but what can you do? I took photos of what I could see, and will share them in a later entry.

Then today, from Seward to Talkeetna - rain for a while, then overcast skies. Now it’s a hazy evening, and we’re getting ready to have dinner. I can’t wait to get home to my comfy bed and hopefully no rain! (I hope there’s no smoke either)

I’ll write in more detail when I can. I have hundreds of photos to sort through too.

Until next time…