Aug. 11-13. The weather has not been great, but it hasn’t been awful. There are intermittent rain showers, but so far not enough prevent us from getting out and exploring. The main problem is that the low clouds prevent the sort of dramatic mountain views that Alaska is famous for. We got off the ferry at Whittier, on the east side of the Kenai Peninsula (which juts south from Anchorage) and went through a 2 ½ mile combination train and road tunnel. It only allows westbound traffic for the first 15 minutes of each hour and we were lucky enough to make it by 7:10 and avoid an hour wait. We stocked our refrigerator in Soldotna and got to our reserved site at a small and forested commercial RV park in Kasilof by 3:00 PM.
Kachemak Bay from Homer, AK
The next day we drove down the side of Cook Inlet to Homer. This is the stretch where in good weather you can see a string of active volcanoes on the western side of Cook Inlet, but no luck for us. At Homer the clouds had at least lifted enough to look across Kachemak Bay, but we decided the weather wasn’t good enough to take water taxi across the bay for a hike to one of the glaciers. We visited the nature center and had a short walk along Beluga marsh. We also visited the Pratt Museum that focused on local history and art. We did have the obligatory fish and chips lunch and on the return visited an historic Russian Orthodox church at Ninilchik.
On Saturday we retraced our route to the north towards Anchorage, stopping for a hike in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge near Soldotna, but the only wildlife we saw was a red squirrel. With plenty of time available, we decided to head down the east side of Kenai to Seward. We found a nice Forest Service Campground on the way, then went for a visit to the Exit Glacier (part of Kenai Fjords National Park), which is about 10 miles from Seward. (See the feature picture at the beginning of this post). For me this was the highlight of time on Kenai. We joined a ranger-led hike, observed signs showing how much the glacier has retreated in the past 100 years, and got close to the edge, although not on the glacier. After a stop in Seward itself for pizza dinner, we returned to our USFS campsite, where it has been raining all night. We are hoping there might be a bit of relief as we make our way to Anchorage today, but if not, we can spend time in the various museums there.
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