Letter 16 Kenai, Seward, Soldotna

Friday, June 24 we left Ninilchik and headed north with no destination in mind. We knew we wanted to be in Seward on Saturday, but no plans for the night.

Our daughter Teenya connected us with one of her the customers of her beauty shop, back in the spring. During this trip Olivia had been corresponding with a her. We had figured we should meet or pass this day.

We stopped in Sterling to eat at Susie’s. The food was wonderful. We split a seafood platter. It was more than enough for the two of us. As we finished Karen called. Sure enough, they were to camp on the Kenai River close to Cooper Landing. We were headed that way so we had a destination.

The drive along the Kenai where the Russian River joins it is a very popular place to fish.

We pulled into the campground just off the highway and parked. Karen, her husband and their traveling friends came right behind us. After they parked they brought their chairs, because we had the only space with shade. This was the warmest day in weeks. The temperature rose to near 70. So we sat and had a good time becoming acquainted. The two couples are traveling together and are from Colorado.

Their mission in this trip is to catch salmon. They plan to stay on the Kenai peninsula until they have their fill. Roger found out where to go and planned to get up at 2:00 am and go when it wasn't crowded.

Saturday, June 25 as we were going through our morning ritual we noticed Roger’s truck was back. Seems he got up at 2:00 o’clock and found it was dark, so went back to bed and started again at four. He fished for several hours before finding the fish, but ended up with three sockeye salmon. Fred said they were beautiful. The meat was such a wonderful red color, his mouth watered. Good for him. As it turned out the fishing was spotty. Very few catching fish.

After having coffee with Karen and Gary we told Jane and Roger goodbye and maybe we will see them again, but first there was good weather predicted for Sunday in Seward and a boat trip to see the glaciers from the water in Kenai National Park.

We found a parking place in the Municipal Campground in Seward right on the water. It is a huge parking lot with back in spaces and a place for the car for $15 with no hookups. We took the last of the spots. Olivia can look out the slide windows and see the water with the mountains in the back ground. Too bad they were covered with clouds. We were keeping our fingers crossed hoping for the sun.

We drove to see Exit glacier and in the visitor center found this whole area was mountains and in the higher elevations it was covered with an ice field. As the ice field grew each year with more snow the edges started moving down the valleys, causing glaciers.

The relief map in the center showed what this looked like from the air.

Sunday, June 26 we were on the dock at 9:15 to get our boarding tickets for our Kenai Fjords National Park full day cruise. This park has thirty-eight glaciers. The weather forecast had been sunny for this day, but they miss it!

We weresocked in.

We traveled to the Kenai NP where wildlife was abundant. We covered 120 miles seeing Eagles, otter, horned puffins, before we came to Bear Glacier. We saw it at a distance with it’s icebergs. The NP ranger told us all about the area and all the animals. He brought around a picture of Bear Glacier from the air, as it’s lake has a moraine blockingour entry closer to the glacier.

Glaciers begin humbly, as moisture. Clouds gather off the Gulf of Alaska coast, where the Aleutian Low, a low atmospheric pressure system, spins counterclockwise. Wet weather bathes the coast in jewel green colors. Colliding against the coast’s steep mountains, it also rises and cools as it moves inland, becoming snow. The low spends steadily, the snow gathers, its largest reservoir the 700 square-mile Harding Ice field that mantles the National Park. Instead of melting seasonally, the snow compacts into thickening layers of ice. Time allows the ice to condense until it is nine times denser than ordinary snow. Gravity allows the ice to become a true glacier. A glacier that plows all the way into the sea calves there, noisily. The boom and echo of splashing ice can be heard from miles away. The Harding ice field is the largest ice field located entirely with the US.

Around the point we saw the three hole point and the water became very rough for about an hour. Several on the boat became seasick. Fortunately we had taken Dramamine and were ok. Then we entered the Holgate Arm where the crew started serving the all you can eat buffet. Salmon and prime rib, rice and salad.
We started seeing the Holgate glacier. Olivia put on her raincoat, but not her big coat before going outside on the bow of the ship watching for the glacier to calve.

This was on Olivia’s bucket list. Holgate glacier is
600’ high above water and 300’ below water. The picture is blurry because that spot was rain.

Several times it cracked like thunder and a few small pieces broke off, but no big ones. The boat stayed near this glacier about 20 minutes and Olivia stayed outside the whole time. It was cold and rainy. BRRRR! Olivia was ready to come back in to warm up and eat her lunch.

After lunch was cleared the crew announce they had retrieved a piece of the ice from the glacier. This ice was over 200 years old. They served
margaritas over this ice to those who wanted to pay $6.00.

We hurried over the same rough water and back to Barwell island off Resurrection Peninsula. Barwell was one of the USA’s protection places during WW2.
Resurrection Bay, like all fjords was carved by ice. When the glacier receded and sea levels rose, the U-shaped valley became a steep-sided bay, like many other fingers of water into this land.

The Captain started finding wildlife and the first were several whales very close to the island, then Kitty Links, other birds and
Stellar sea lions.
It was a nice trip, but would have been much better in the sunshine. We are so thankful the Fulton’s gave us a coupon book they hadn’t used as it saved us $149. Thank you!

Monday, June 27 was a lazy day. We slept until nine am and took it easy. About noon we decided to poke around town. We ran into Safeway to pick up a few items and found the power was out. Not just for the store but all over town.

Since we were staying in the municipal park with no hookups we didn’t realize the power outage was upon us. Safeway had backup for the cash registers so we didn’t have a problem checking out. Fred’s cappucino was the next stop and the power outage was a problem. The machines didn’t work. We waited a few minutes then drove around the town. Seeing the lights on the filing station we went back to get cappucino.

A little road attracted us to see where it led, so we drove to
Lowell Point and found two RV parks/campgrounds, the sewage treatment center and a bunch of junkie stuff. The drive was pleasant thought. Back in town we visited the Sea Life museum’s gift shop, then browsed the stores of down town. We did see some nice items, but nothing we couldn’t live without.

One of the shop owners told Fred just what we suspected. This was unusual weather. The normal daily low for this time of year is in the upper 50s with highs in the seventies. We had been having lows in the low 40s and highs in the fifties. This might sound awfully good to our Texas friends, but we are wishing for some warmer weather. Our shorts go unused!

Tuesday, June 28 we drove west back to Soldotna hoping to find some salmon running and a place to spend the 4th of July. We nested at the city’s Centennial park backed up to the
Kenai River which is a popular place to catch Salmon. They don’t run here again until about the middle of July. The city has set up ramps and ladders to the banks for fishermen. We found the unusual weather has affected the timing of the salmon run. We say runs because there are multiple runs during the summer for kings, sockeye and pink. They usually don’t run together.

We scouted out the fishing in the Kasilof river south of here, but it didn’t look promising. We did see a yearling moose beside us which crossed the road.

Wednesday, June 29, we cleaned our trailer and washed clothes before we decided to see the town of Kenai and visit with Karen and her bunch. They were camped on top of the bluff and had been fishing from the beach, without any luck . They plan to go clamming further south.

Thursday, June 30, this day was a shopping day, groceries and propane. We stopped at the visitor center to find out about fishing and 4th of July activities before returning to the Kasilof River where Crooked Creek comes in. We saw people fishing and actually witnessed a King salmon caught. They released this big fish and we were told it was because he was so red, the meat would be mushy. It had been in the river too long. Others fishing in the river had caught a few sockeye and they were also red, but they were keeping them.

We need to tell about the hours of daylight here. Olivia woke up at 11:00 pm and took a picture of thesun shining in the window. It sets about 11:30 but doesn’t go very far below the horizon causing light until about 2:00 am. Then it starts being light again about 4 am with sunrise at 4:30 am. Fred thought he would have difficulty sleeping with so many hours of light. Well he thought wrong, as usual he sleeps like a log.

Another fact we had heard is true. The cost of everything is much more than in the lower 48. Example: our high fiber cereal, if the flavor can even be found. At home we buy it for about $3.00 a box. We paid $3.50 in Oregon. It is $5.50 here.
Gas is around $4.25 on the Kenai, $4.15 in Anchorage and it goes up away from those areas.

Friday, July 1, we were at loose ends and didn’t have anything to do this day but read. We did have some coupons for buy one get one free donut so we went to get Fred’s cappucino and the donuts. We explored the Funny River road and didn’t see anything funny. Back at the trailer we decided to have lunch on another buy one get one free. This time at Acapulco's for Mexican food. We hadn’t had any in a long time, knowing it wouldn’t be the same as at home or New Mexico. It wasn’t the same, but the flavor was close. Thanks again to the Fulton's for the coupons.

Back at the campground we walked the trail along the river all the way to the boat ramp where we met the guide boats coming in. We saw one king salmon being filleted, then another fresh out of the boat
with the proud fishermen, then there were three on the ground. It was interesting to see a State of Alaska staff measuring the salmon and taking a sample of each king.

So now we see the second king salmon run has started even before the sockeye run is going good. This is unusual.

Saturday, July 2, we woke up to a slow steady rain and it continued until after lunch. Going into town for cappucino and gas we decided to follow up on a flier Olivia picked up in the visitor’s center. It was from B.E.A.C.H.M. Fishery in Kasilof (ka-sea’-lof). The prices in the ad were too good to be true. Fred called and we headed south. We found their processing plant next to their home. It turned out to be a commercial fishing operation. The fishermen had just arrived with the morning catch—276 sockeye from the bay. They catch, then sell. They do very little processing.

They were so nice to us. Fred decided ontwo fresh sockeye salmon and the crew processed it. The lady on the right was the owner and the rest were college kids working for the summer.

They came from Oregon, Montana, Tennessee, Georgia and Wisconsin. They said it was hard work, but was fun work. The owners treat them like family and feed them well. The students talked about how good the salmon was. This experience was more fun than fishing and a whole lot easier.

Even though they don’t normally process fish, they happily agreed to what Fred wanted. They filleted the fish cut them into individual serving sizes and shrink wrapped them. We were charged $2.45 per pound of live weight for the fish. The live weight was 15 pounds. They gave Fred the shrinking and ask that we tip the hands. We gave them $40 for about 11 pounds of processed fish. It looked wonderful. The owner told us that king salmon had much more fat than sockeye, so it was harder to over cook kings. Sockeye should not be over cooked. Their effort to attract retail business to this out of the way location had not gone well. We were the only customers—maybe the only ones for the day and they treated us royally. We got a super deal.

If you want a great summer job for your grandkids—call 907 262 3233 or visit on-line at—www.alaskasbestwildsalmon.com.
Some of you may wonder why Fred didn’t catch his own. The answer is complicated.

First you can catch river fish from the bank or from a boat. Fred has no boat so he would have to hire a guide for about $135. Or he could buy waders and the right bank equipment. That’s not a problem. Most all river fish have already started dying and he believes the taste and texture would be degraded. The biggest problem is the fish just have not cooperated and we are not here at the right time. They have run in such small numbers that fishing for them would be very iffy. Fred is okay with not fishing besides he has a head cold and doesn’t feel like fishing. Eating them is best part and we have done that.

On our way back to the highway we sawanother moose. This one posed for us.

All around our camp spot was ground cover like plants with little white
four leaf flowers. Olivia said, they looked like a dogwood flower. She looked it up and sure enough it is a dwarf dogwood, with the purple center being the flower, and the white the modified leaf. It is also called a Bunchberry as the centers turn into a tight cluster of bright-red berries in early August. Too bad our timing is wrong for them too.

We would love to hear from you, so email us by clicking on
Olivia@bobheck.com or Fredharrington@yahoo.com

Letter 14, Tok, Anchorage, Soldotna

Monday, June 14, we took it easy in the morning then, about noon, headed to the gas station with a free car wash. We were too tired to do a real good job, but it sure looks better than before. A quick stop at a gift shop, which had

lawn mowers on the sod roof, we don’t know who else would use one up here as no one has lawns. The visitor's center had a fist full of literature on our destinations in Alaska, then off to another see more sights.

We didn’t travel far, before stopping at Porcupine Creek State Recreation area. It wasn’t much, but did have a place for us to stay.

Tuesday, June 15 we found ourselves in

burl country as many of the spruce trees had burls. Locals do all sorts of fancy things with the burls like bowls and tables.

We were traveling toward Anchorage on Hwy 1 or the Tok Cutoff. We crossed the Copper River after driving parallel to it for miles. One rest stop told of the Alaska Road Bureau which in 1956 was called by the Alaskans, the “Bureau of Parallel Ruts.”

At Glennallen we remained on Hwy 1, but here it was called the Glenn Hwy. Along the way we saw many

red cones and barriers with warnings of frost heaves and dips.

Construction followed, but it wasn’t as bad as ruts.

We passed many areas with short often crooked trees with shrubby clusters of branches. We found these were black spruce and are generally found in poorly drained areas, such as wetlands and permafrost.

We attempted to stay in two off road spots, but because of the sprinkles caused too much mess. We decided this wasn’t for us that night. Moving on we passed the

Copper River and the

Nelchina Glacier.

Before the gold Rushes…
Before the Copper Mining…
Before the highways…
Before the Alaska Pipeline...
This land was inhabited by the Ahtna Athabascan people.
To this day, the land is the heart and soul of the Ahtna people, who treat their land, fish and wildlife with the utmost respect and it is this respect that has allowed them to maintain the lands’ pristine nature. They welcome visitors to their region and request they treat our land with respect, leaving no trace so others may continue to enjoy all this land has to offer.
We try to leave no trace and take only pictures of this fabulous land.
A few miles further we saw

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“The notch” or “gunsight,” The big mountains were hidden behind the clouds. We had passed Mts Sanford, Drum, Wrangell and Blackburn all above 12,000 feet.

We looked at several other pullouts and passed a few lodges including Sheep Mountain Lodge that sponsors the Fireweed 400 Bicycle Race to Valdez which takes place July 8-9. We were glad we will not be in the race’s way at that time.

Finally we found a home for the night near the

Lions Head at Grand View Café & RV park. It was a small park with a view of the
Lions Head and we hoped for a clear day to see the mountains later.

Wednesday, June 15 too bad the clouds were right on top of us when we awoke and the weather forecast didn’t hold any promises to improve so we moved on. Temperature was in the low forties with a forecast for the low sixties for a high. About the same as we have been experiencing. The road toward Anchorage was a pretty drive and thankfully didn’t have any frost heaves. We came around a curve over Cariboo Creek and as we headed up the other side, the clouds were right down on us.

We could see a long stretch of snow to the left on the other side of the canyon. When we arrived down stream we discovered it was the Matanuska Glacier. We bypassed the state recreation site for the glacier as we had the trailer with us, but it did look interesting.We followed the Glenn Highway along the Matanuska River through canyons, all the way into Palmer. Too bad the clouds followed us. It did lighten up in Palmer to allow us to see part of the mountains overlooking the town.

We hightailed it to Walgreens in Wasilla, where we found a long line. Walgreens is the only chain drug store in the state and there are only three stores. The tech was very efficient in taking our information and promised to have our meds ready in the afternoon. We gave her some leeway to wait until morning.

Fred looked at each person he met to see if it was Sarah Palin, but no luck, no Sarah. She is from Wasilla.

Stopping at a Chevrolet house we had the oil changed at twice the price of home. Yikes!

Thursday, June 16 today tourist prices went up, just for us! This is the season.
We picked up our meds and a few other items then headed up the

Knik River toward the Knik glacier. This was because we read Michner’s Alaska. One of the stories he told about was the Matanuska Colony. We were currently in the Matanuska Valley and it covers a huge area.

In 1935, when the dust bowl had been devastating the mid-plains states and the depression was crippling the nation, President Roosevelt initiated many programs to ease the burden. To help get people in the states off the relief rolls, add to the population of the territory of Alaska, and get the territory more self-sufficient in farm products, the government decided to send a group of farmers to the Matanuska (Mat-Su for short) Valley to “colonize.”

In the spring of 1935, 202 families from Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa were sent by train, ship and train, again, to start the new colony. At the railroad siding called “Palmer,” six miles north of Matanuska Junction, a tent city was built for the Colonists by CCC workers from California. For a 30 year loan of at least $3,000, each farmer got at least 40 acres of land and was promised a house, a barn, a chicken house and a well. It was hoped the colonists would develop small vegetable farms and sell their produce locally.

While the colonist plans did not work as hoped and expected, the project did increase the population of the valley by nearly double, and some of the original colonists and their descendants live in the Matanuska Valley today.
This valley is very fertile. The sandy loam is great fror truck farming. Twenty plus hours of light during the 100 day growing season helps also. If you have ever seen a picture of a cabbage head taller than a ten year old kid, it probably came from here. Too bad the season isn’t right for us.

Our mission for the day was to find the area in which they settled. The area was along the river and appeared to be a great get away place. None of the original homes were still there. We think they moved into a different area, but the main character of Michner’s story’s family is still giving tours of the glacier.

Continuing our tour we stopped at a Reindeer farm.

At the insistence of the visitor center host and a ranger we drove up the valley on
Fishhook Road following a little river. At the head of the valley was a gold mine and the start of Hatcher Pass, which was still closed because of snow. It opens July 4. The mountains nearby had a new dusting of snow.
On the way back down to the Mat-Su valley we could see past the lodge,
the flat area around Turnagain Arm, then the mountain on the opposite side.
On our way home from Palmer the sky opened and almost cleared the tops of the mountains looking south.

What a beautiful drive!

Friday, June 17, we retraced our steps to Wasilla for the remainder of our meds, then packed up and headed to Anchorage noting the highway sign stating
201 Moose had been killed crossing the road we were on this year!.



As we neared the capitol Olivia exclaimed, there’s a mountain with snow all the way to the ground! Later we found it was Denali, 200 miles away! Wow! We had no idea it would ever be visible that far away or Olivia would have had the camera clicking..



We found our cheap park, cheap as in appearances not price, then went downtown to see the sights. Our first stop was to see the virtual movie about the 1964 earthquake. They showed the

affects of the quake and this was where
we were at that moment. Now it is all repaired and built back, but it had dropped the street level a whole story.

The street vendor’s had interesting menus and we enjoyed the tourist traps on the way to the visitor’s center where we learned about Denali, so after supper at Phyllis’s where Fred had Copper River salmon, delicious! We tried to get a picture of Denali, much to Olivia’s disappointment, the only view was hidden by trees on the hill opposite the bay. We know it looks like cloud, but it was the real thing!
We hope it will show its glory when we reach it’s base.

Saturday, June 18 we attended the Saturday market and saw quite a few local arts including antler carving, flutes, glacier silt pottery along with all kinds of jewelry, food and t-shirts. Back to trailer we packed up and moved on.
We departed Anchorage to Fred’s delight to get out of the big city and headed south along thescenic route of Turnagain Arm. We drove right beside the water with mountains all around us rising sharply from the shoreline to heights approaching 4,000’. Some to our left were big with rock climbers scaling the walls. We decided the tide was going out and in this waters the tide can be as much as 40’ difference. Only in the Bay of Fundy are they larger.

We found our next campground on the parking lot of the Alyeska ski resort, with a pay slot for $10, in Girdwood where we enjoyed watching people

parasailing from the top of the ski lift.



We would have probably passed this community up, except Dr. Jon Williamson our dentist had told us to be sure and eat at the

Double Musky. When Olivia looked it up online she found their menu contains classic New Orleans dishes done with Alaska Seafood, such as crab meat dressing stuffed halibut, served with Creole burre blanc sauce among other delicious items. It sounded too good to pass up, so for Fred’s father’s day and our 48th anniversary we really splurged. Go to www.doublemuskyinn.com to find out more, then put it on your bucket list.

The restaurant opened at 4:30 and we arrived about 4:15 to see a line waiting for the doors to open. We were impressed with their trophy case, especially being named by the

food network as one of top ten restaurants in the USA.

While we waited we met a very friendly lady from Montana. We only chatted a few minutes before being seated. Olivia realized later she was sitting alone, not far from us, and we wished we had known and asked her to join us. We told her and later she sent over part of her appetizers, mushrooms with scallops. Wow were they good. Then Fred asked the waiter to give her a desert on us.

Olivia had ordered the

specialty of the house and Fred a

white salmon. Both were very good. We both had enough left for at least two meals.

As we left we introduced ourselves and Sharon invited us to come to Butte, Montana for some grilled Alaskan fish in Montana. We invited Sharon to come to the trailer. She had not eaten the desert and we shared it over coffee. Come to find out she works for AAA and reviews hotels and restaurants. She told us all about the Kenai peninsula and recommended a whole page of places to eat and where to ship fish home.

Meeting new friends is one of our favorite parts of traveling like we do. We don’t think we have ever met a food critic before. It was fun!

Sunday, June 19, Happy Father’s Day all you fathers. We awoke at 9:00 am! Surprised both of us. Sure was a good night sleep. We packed up and headed down the road. We missed the visitor center for Portage Glacier and Whittier, thank goodness we can do it on the return trip. This highway to Homer on the south point of the peninsula is a single road trip. We don’t know if it was because of a pretty Saturday, Father’s Day or what, but the traffic both ways was horrible.

Olivia thought Fred wanted to fish at Hope so we drove out and found out we didn’t really want to be there, so we turned around and headed to Soldotna. Arriving there we immediately found Fred Myers store and their nice attitude to RVer’s. They welcome us for two nights at no charge. We are on the

far right end. There are also more on the opposite side of the store. Since the national and state parks don’t have any hookups, this is just a good, just minus some scenery.

We visited Soldotna’s visitor center and enjoyed their passionate for her job volunteer. She told us all about the peninsula, whether we wanted to know or not.

We love hearing from you, so please write to
Olivia@bobheck.com or fredharrington@yahoo.com