We started the morning by visiting the highly recommended bakery, The Moose is Loose, in downtown Soldatna. We waited in a line that stretched out of the door and around the side of the building. Fortunately, they know how to handle a lot of people and we moved very quickly to the pastry counter. Holy moly, it was better than anticipated and we would up with one of their famous apple fritter, two almond bear claws and of course, that old staple, a maple bar. The fritter was the best I have every eaten, it literally melted in your mouth. The bear claws were grizzly-sized and were also outstanding. The maple bar? Well I will wait until the next morning to try it.
Next, we headed to the Soldatna Saturday Farmer’s Market to check out the produce. There were yellow squash.
There was purple cauliflower.
There were beets in many colors and variations (I photographed these for Michelle).
Of course, there was Cathy’s favorite, multi-colored carrots.
There were fresh eggs in blue, tan, shades of brown, white and speckled (turkey).
And there was multi colored rhubarb, as if red wasn’t enough.
I wound up with a box of yellow raspberries and Cathy picked up the carrots and we headed back to the motorhome to put them in the fridge.
Next, we headed to the Funny River, driving to the end of the paved road, then the end of the dirt road to a locked gate before turning around about 20 miles in. This is the Funny River, a short distance upstream from its confluence with the Kenai. There were several salmon still in the river and we enjoyed watching them for a few minutes.
At the Funny River campground we headed down the trail leading to the Funny/Kenai confluence. We noticed these free-to-borrow life preservers available in most of the fishing spots along the Kenai. The river flows scary fast on it way to the sea and could be very dangerous if you lost your footing. Notice the yellow rope attached to this sign? It follows the shoreline for as far as you can see and is positioned there for you to grab if you lose your footing or somehow fall in.
After spending some time talking with the fishermen, we decided to return tomorrow, so we headed to the beach so Cathy could put her toes in the warm sand. We found a spot near the place where the Kenai empties into Cook Inlet and walked to the beach. It was a little weird, standing knee deep in the ice water with salmon jumping all around me, sometimes really close. I guess you just have to share the water here.
Here is my first-ever attempt at a “selfie”. I found out my little mirrorless camera has a setting just for this. Damn, this will probably also be my last “selfie”.
Well, after church in Kenai (at which they displayed a “happy” Jesus), we drove the spur highway to “the Moose is Loose” bakery to get some more of their pastries, only to discover they are closed on Sundays. We decided to return and try our luck at the Funny/Kenai confluence this afternoon. I caught this sockeye early on but only had a few hits in the next hour or so. We headed back to camp to take it easy the rest of the afternoon (and clean the fish). I would guess this guy weighs in at about 8-9 pounds.
After taking advantage of sleeping in, we decided to wash the truck and motorhome. This was the first camp where we have been allowed to wash vehicles on-site. Next we headed to the Moose is Loose bakery and . . . it is closed both Sundays and Mondays! Damn, I was looking forward to a healthy breakfast. After grabbing a not-so-quick breakfast in a local diner, we headed to the Soldotna Visitors Center to see the largest and second largest king salmon every landed, both from the Kenai river. They weighed in at 97.25 and 95 pounds respectively. They did not look like salmon, at least any salmon that I have ever caught. They were enormous!
We then drove over to the town of Kenai and visited their Visitor and Cultural Center. They had gathered a very good representation of native American artifacts and several video presentations on the local indigenous cultures. We watched these and finished up with a general video on Alaska. It was kind of neat that we recognized most of the places on the video.
After falling asleep watching the last video (old people do that), we headed up the Kenai Spur highway to the town of Nikiski. Nikiski was homesteaded in the 1940s and grew with the discovery of oil on the Kenai Peninsula in 1957. After fueling up in “town” where the gas is about as inexpensive as anywhere we have seen in Alaska at $2.93 per gallon, we continued to find the end of the road.
I had to keep convincing myself that this WAS a peninsula and there MUST be an end before we run out of land. The road turned to gravel, then we saw the ‘End of Road’ sign. Success! We entered Captain Cook State Park and crossed the Swanson River. There were several fishermen on this bridge, about 30 feet above the water waiting for the tide to recede. They told me that once the tide starts flowing out, the salmon will begin to swim upstream, right under this bridge. The Swanson River here is the end point of a world-class canoe trail system consisting of two trails, the 60-mile Swan Lake route, connecting 30 lakes and the 80-mile Swanson River route, connecting 40 lakes, both starting near the Sterling Highway just before Soldatna.
After spending several minutes talking with the men, we headed back to our camp. I had to stop in the road to let this moose cross in front of us. By the time I got my camera out, all you could see was her hind end entering the woods.
As soon as she disappeared, I turned around and saw this young one starting across the road, directly in front of us. Since I already had my camera out, I did manage to get a couple of photos, into the sun unfortunately, but that is where this calf was. That makes four moose observed in two days, none spotted when we were actually looking for them.
Travelling with the Schinglers 