Cook Inlet

Well, we got sidetracked a little from going south after Seward. That's the fun of having the whole summer to do this! Pick a road and see where it leads!

In this case it lead to the far west side of the Kenai Peninsula - still south of Anchorage, but north west of Seward. We drove along salmon fishing rivers - we could tell by the number of fishermen we passed. Some of the visitor booklets tell us about the "combat fishing" that is used in this area where fishermen in hip waders stand almost shoulder to shoulder along the river. Sounds to me like it's the fish that have to do all the fighting trying to get up the river! I'm amazed we still have wild salmon.

When we hit the west coast we turned north to the Kenai Spur Road that ends at Captain Cook State Recreation Area. It's a large state park that has several day areas as well as campgrounds, and is right on Cook Inlet off the Pacific Ocean. We were able to go down to the beach and rock hunt and watch the birds. We also took the bikes and rode to another small lake that was away from the coast and had a very quick swim (it's still cold here!) Altogether it is a very peaceful place, other than the bugs, and so we ended up staying an extra day.

The next trip was right down the western side of this peninsula, and I understand it is as far west as you can go on a road and still be in North America. I'm even in a time zone later than Hillary and Warren! But the neat thing is that the land mass that is to the west, is volcanic. As we drove down Cook Inlet we could see 3 active volcanoes, which were behaving themselves and staying quiet.

We ended up in a town called Homer. Now, Homer is beside a bay that they say was created when a huge glacier melted away many, many years ago. This glacier left a "spit" of gravel and rocks - kinda like a marine breakwater - sticking out into the bay. The amazing thing is that it is 5 miles long, and they have built a highway on it, right down to the end. It is so big that there are 15 restaurants, 3 private RV parks and 2 municipal campgrounds in between all the charter and boating businesses. And a ferry terminal at the end. We are now camped on Homer Spit, where there were absolutely no bugs, lots of seabirds, but also no trees or shelter from the wind and you can see the bear when it is approaching. Sounds perfect to me.

W