Day 63: Talkeetna to Soldotna

June 16, 2014

This morning we awoke once again to cloudy skies but no rain so Max and Barry went back to the Talkeetna Roadhouse to get our breakfast – more cinnamon rolls and today also a Rudy – a pastry with reindeer sausage, and cheese. We are going to have to get on the scale before we get in the airplane for our bear viewing trip and it just might be an eye opening experience. Oh well. We will get back with the program when we are no longer in vacation mode.

After breakfast we checked the forecast again and it had not improved. There is a very strong storm system coming inland from the Alaska Gulf that is predicted to cause strong wind and rain. We planed to leave Talkeetna, stop in Eagle River to resupply (Fred Myers) and then move on down toward the Kenai Peninsula, stopping in Girdwood today to do some sightseeing and hiking for about ½ day tomorrow. We decided to proceed with our plans and reassess the weather as we got closer to Anchorage. Just a short way before we reached Eagle River we saw a beautiful bald eagle. We proceeded toward Girdwood after our Fred Myers stop but by the time we got to the cut off for Alyeska Resort it was raining pretty hard so we all decided to just keep on driving south toward Homer.

Maybe we will stop and do the hike we had planned when we return to Anchorage before Donna and Barry fly out next week. The drive down the Turnagain Arm, through Cooper Landing was really a pretty drive although we know it would be so much better on a nice sunny day when you could really see the mountains. We do hope to get to make that drive again before we leave Alaska.

 

Today we saw our first combat fishing on the Russian River.

Combat fishing is where the fishermen are just about shoulder to shoulder in the river fishing for salmon. We knew the salmon must be in the river just by the traffic and number of cars parked along the river. Don't know how the fishermen keep from tangling lines. We still haven't seen the salmon in the river due to the rain today but we look forward to getting on down to Homer and watching and learning about it all. Tonight we are in Soldotna in the Fred Myers parking lot. The power is out for a large portion of the Kenai now, including this area, so the store is only partly operational. But we managed to buy a few things anyway. We understand from talking to them that they have a 3 day limit on RVs staying in their lot. Not a problem for us since we plan to move on down the road tomorrow. Hope the rain stops by morning although forecast still isn't great, and we should be in Homer by tomorrow.