Exploring the Kenai River and Ninilchik on the Kenai Peninsula

Along the Kenai River


Our next stop was the Kenai River in the towns of Kenai and Soldotna. The Kenai is known for great salmon fishing and Alaskans, as well as anglers from all over the world, come to catch salmon on the river. The “dip netting” season opened for Alaskan residents the day after we arrived in town. Alaskans can use HUGE nets to scoop up the salmon at the mouth of the Kenai from July 10-31. One person told us they netted 85 salmon in just 2 hours! Alaskans catch as much fish as they can during this time and freeze it and can it to eat the rest of the year. We watched them dip net from their boats and also from shore right at the mouth of the Kenai River. We stayed at the Fred Meyer super store so no adventures with bears – just lots of noisy fishing trucks! At least it was free to camp there!

Razor clamming at Deep Creek Beach in Ninilchik

We drove 35 miles south towards Homer and had planned to stop for the night at a beach campground – we ended up staying 4 nights - it was a fabulous campground! We had an incredible view of the volcanoes across Cook Inlet plus we saw 100’s of eagles flying around near our campsite and seals and sea otters swimming along the beach right in front of Rose! The best part was the clamming - There are only 4 beaches in the US where you can find razor clams and we were lucky enough to be camping at one of them at the very lowest tide of the year when it's the best time to dig for the razor clams! We met a really fun couple at the campground from Fairbanks – Joanie and Rod. They invited us to go clamming with them and showed us how to use a "clam gun" (We didn't know that clams moved so fast that you need a gun to catch them!).   We had so much fun learning how to spot the clams under the sandy beach and dig them up with a “clam gun”!  The four of us dug 103 clams in 2 and a half hours! Joanie fried the clams and invited us for a delicious clam dinner! Plus they loaded us up with clams to take home with us - wonderful Alaskan hospitality!

On the same beach the sport fishing charters launch their boats using a tractor so they don’t have to wait for high tide to go fishing. It was fascinating to watch dozens of boats launch each day.

Highlights of Kenai:

• Watching the Alaskans dip net

Click on the arrow to see the video of Alaskans dip netting
• Seeing a Mama and baby moose at Captain Cook State Park

• A glimpse of Mt McKinley across Cook Inlet

Highlights of Deep Creek Beach in Ninilchik:

• Razor clamming and clam dinners with Joanie and Rod

Click on the arrow to see the video of razor clamming at Deep Creek Beach

 

• Watching the tractors launch the sport fishing charters from the beach

Click on the arrow to see the video to see the tractors launching the boats at Deep Creek Beach

 

• Watching 100’s of eagles on the beach and along the cliffs above the beach

• Beautiful views across Cook Inlet to Mt Redoubt and Mt Illiamna – both still active volcanos

• An old Russian Church from the 1800's

Our next destination is Homer – the southern most port on the Kenai Peninsula. Homer's the halibut fishing capital of the world so we’re hoping to get some fresh halibut to eat while we are there and camp on the Homer Spit with a view of the ocean and the mountains! Fingers crossed!

A most unusual camping experience.....

We traveled the Glenn Highway from Wrangell National Park through the mountains to Wasilla where we celebrated the fourth of July in Sarah Palin's home town– just outside Anchorage. The traffic is getting much heavier and we are seeing LOTS more RVs than we have seen before – summer travel appears to be in full swing in Alaska! It seems that many Alaskans celebrate the fourth of July by camping and riding their 4 wheel ATVs – we’ve never seen so many people pulling a trailer with 4 wheel ATVs on it – at least 2 and sometimes as many as 4 on one trailer!

We celebrated Fourth of July in Sarah Palin’s home town….

We celebrated the fourth of July in Wasilla. They had a good old fashioned home town parade and a picnic afterwards. No sign of Sarah though and as hard as we tried – we couldn’t see Russia from Wasilla ! The weather was about 50 degrees at 11am when the parade started – pretty chilly for the fourth of July! Some of the spectators had on jackets and winter hats while others wore shorts ( just pretending it’s summer)! We still have to turn our heat on at night and have worn jackets almost every day since we left home on May 10! The fireworks shows in Alaska are on July 3rd because they have to wait until after 12 midnight when it’s a little darker – it’s still not dark enough to see them very well though! Amazing the differences from the lower 48!

Our most unusual camping experience yet!

We camped in Portage Valley at a very lovely and quiet campground in the national forest. At least we thought it would be quiet! We took a walk with Molly around the campground only to discover the campground is on a major fault line, in an avalanche zone, right below a mountain with a hanging glacier and bear alert and bear danger signs posted around the campground. Risk takers that we are – we decided to stay anyway!

We stayed four nights without an earthquake or an avalanche but we did have an encounter with a bear!!!

All was peaceful the first night. On our second night all of a sudden we heard several car horns honking simultaneously …then all of a sudden the family in the pop up camper across from us came rushing out of the camper, jumped in their car and drove off. We were wondering what was going on and then we saw the bear…. It was a big black bear that had obviously smelled some really good food around their campsite. We saw the bear walking around the camper and then the bear stood on it’s back legs and looked in the screen window of the camper – just like in a movie! The family must have gone to get the campground manager – he drove up and yelled at the bear – the bear ran off but came back again several more times. Finally the bear left and didn’t come back that night but the family in the pop up didn’t come back either. Thankfully the people and the bear were not harmed – it was so entertaining – who needs a DVD to watch!

The drama wasn’t over yet……

The next night the campground manager and a state trooper drove up to the campsite. The manager knocks at our door and warns us that we may hear gun shots that evening because the state trooper is going to try to lure the bear back to the campsite with food and shoot it. We were so upset – how could they do that to the bear – we’re in his home. Fortunately it started pouring rain and got really windy so the state trooper left – the bear was spared, thank goodness. The next morning we went to the national forest office and talked to the manager, expressing our concern about what was going to happen to the bear. She explained that is was another agency that controls what happens in this type of situation but she agreed to call them and talk to them about possibly relocating the bear instead of shooting it. Well – we don’t know what the outcome will be for the bear but we do know that the state trooper did not come back the next night and the forest service put up a notice at the campground about keeping food in a bear proof container, not in a soft sided camper or tent. So….we hope the bear will have a good, long life deep in the woods somewhere eating salmon and berries!

Highlights of Wasilla/Palmer area:

• Experiencing Fourth of July celebrations in Alaska

• Hatcher Pass and the Independence mine

• Visiting the headquarters for the Iditarod race

Highlights of Portage Valley:

• The bear encounter at the campground

                                         

Click on the arrow to see the bear looking for food at the campsite

• Moose in the campground

• Portage Valley with 6 glaciers visible in the mountains surrounding the valley

• Forest service whistle stop train ride through the back country to Grandview – beautiful scenery

Next stops: The Kenai River – famous for salmon fishing and Ninilchik on the Kenai coast – famous for halibut fishing and razor clamming and also views across Cook Inlet to the active volcanoes – Mt Redoubt and Mt Illiamna….

The further north we go the rougher the road gets!

The road got rougher the further north we traveled…....but at least we don't have ferries to get on and off of any more!


We traveled the Haines Highway from Haines, Alaska to Haines Junction in the Yukon Territory. The road to Haines was beautiful – snow capped mountains, wildflowers, glaciers, waterfalls and grizzlies!

Click on the arrow to see the video of the mama grizzly with her 2 cubs!

We were lulled into thinking that the roads in the Yukon and mainland Alaska have improved and wouldn’t be as rough as we had heard they were. We soon found out when we crossed the border into the Yukon that the roads lived down to their reputation. They were full of frost heaves, ruts and pot holes. We crawled along for 130 miles through the northern part of the Yukon and into mainland Alaska where the roads weren’t any better. Fortunately we were rewarded along the way when we saw a mama grizzly and her 2 cubs. We hiked to Soldier's Summit - the location where the pipeline was completed and opened to transport vehicles to support the war effort in Nov of 1942 after 8 months of construction and 1525 miles - building 8 miles per day. Plus – it was such a thrill to cross into the Alaska mainland from the Yukon on the Alaska Highway after driving 3,400 miles! We made it!!!

Our destination was Valdez – the end of the pipeline and the gateway to Prince William Sound. We were looking forward to a boat trip on Prince William Sound to see the fjords, whales, glaciers and my favorite – the sea otters! What came as a wonderful surprise was the campground we stayed at on Allison Point across from Valdez town. Allison Point is a campground for the fisherman. They come to catch the pink salmon as they travel to their spawning creek every summer. We had a fantastic time watching the commercial and sport fisherman and the seals, sea lions and eagles ALL fishing for pink salmon – it was incredibly entertaining and we learned a lot about salmon fishing! We were there four nights and every day there were more fish that attracted more fisherman, seals, eagles (literally hundreds of them) , sea lions and the furriest fisherman – a mama grizzly with 3 cubs! ! It was so much fun to watch all of the fisher people and animals as they fished and caught LOTS of salmon!

The fisher people were from all over North America – they all came to Valdez for one purpose – to catch salmon! We met one man from south Georgia named Jim Moore ( no relation that we know of but a really nice guy) who brought a freezer in his van and 12 dozen mason jars. He drove all the way to Alaska to fish and planned to stay until he filled the freezer and the jars with salmon before he headed back to Georgia! He was kind enough to share his salmon with us – we enjoyed two of his filets cooked on our grill – delicious!

Valdez highlights:

• Watching the salmon fishing at our campsite on Allison Point

• Seeing a mama grizzly and her 3 cubs along a creek

• Boat trip on Prince William Sound - sea otters, whales, sea lions, glaciers and beautiful fjords!

Click on the arrow to see the video of the cute sea otters!

After four fun days in Valdez, we headed 90 miles up the Richardson highway to Wrangell/St Elias National Park – the largest park in the US – 13.2 million acres with over 100 glaciers and 16 of North Americas tallest mountains – a few of which are dormant volcanoes still spewing smoke! The mine hasn’t been active since 1938 but there are still people living there without electricity, water or any other conveniences. In fact they get their mail by bush plane twice a week and also do a lot of summer gardening since they shop only once a month in Anchorage. They also use a homemade fish wheel to catch sockeye salmon in the Copper River. Amazing to see such alternative lifestyles!

Next stops:

A drive up the scenic Glenn Highway to Wasilla ( Sarah Palin’s home town) for the fourth of July parade - wonder if she'll be there????, Anchorage and then on to the Kenai Peninsula - it's a hopping place right now because the salmon are beginning to migrate into the rivers to spawn. We still haven’t encountered the state bird ( the mosquito) yet. We know it’s coming but we are thankful to have been in Alaska almost a month and be “bug free” – a really pleasant surprise!