July 29th..Ninilchik

We left Soldotna this morning and only drove around 50 miles to Ninilchek.  the pop. Is 853.  We are parked on the beach of Cook Inlet.  Lots of fishing here, looks like there are many charter boats, and lots of halibut caught.  I think Buck is going to go on a charter and I'm sure he will catch some.  He hasn't had to much luck with the salmon, tho he did catch a small dolly varden ( yes that's the name of the fish) it's from the trout family.

We have such a pretty spot here, I think we may stay all week.  We have some friends that live here in Ninilchek and winter in Quartzsite also.  They were just here visiting with us and will meet them for breakfast tomorrow morning.  Was fun to see them again! 

Looking out on Cook Inlet

The tide is out

Two eagles 

Sun going down at 10:00 

At 10:30 it's behind the Mt

July 25th

We are slowly working our way down the peninsula.  We found a RV park in Soldotna, it is right on the Kenai river.  Soldotna has a pop. of 4,000 and is only about 10 miles from Kenai, the pop. there is 7,000.  A little more populated here.  

Buck has been fishing several times, but no luck.  The salmon were running last week, but stopped.  Seems like we keep hearing that story.   And Buck just gat a pair of hip boots, so he is all set to get out in the water and do some serious fishing.

July 26th

We had a little bit of rain last night, and has been cloudy most of the day.  We went for a drive over to Kenai and stopped at the beach on Cook Inlet.  The tide was out so didn't get a very pretty picture.  

But it was a pretty drive.  

We had lunch in Kenai and then stopped at Walmart, was time to get my hair cut again.  Got out of there without buying anything else.

Don't plan on doing much the rest of the day.  See if I can talk Buck into a few games of cribbage.

The looser has to buy ice cream and I know where a couple of ice cream stores are in town.

I don't have many pics to post today....

This is a wetland close to Kenal.  Lots of all kinds of birds

Cook Inlet...you can see how far out the tide is

The walk down by the river at the campground 

Kenai river 

This is where Buck fishes from, right down the steps into the water.  You can see why he needed hip boots

July 23rd

We are still in the Hidden Lakes campground.  It was another beautiful day, was in the mid 70's.

I went with Buck over to the Kenai river this morning.  It's just a couple of miles from here.  He tried his luck at fishing again, but the Salmon haven't made it up this far yet.  They are still about 20 miles out.

The brown bear was out scaring campers this afternoon, but we didn't see him.  The ranger knew that we wanted to see him so she came up to tell us where he was, but I was in the shower and before we got there, she had to blow the air horn to scare him away.  I guess he was getting kind of aggressive and is not very scared. He had come right up to one camper and really scared them.  The guy had his shotgun out.  

Some more park rangers were coming to try and find it and spray him with bear spray if possible.  If that doesn't work, they shoot him with rubber bullets to try and chase him out of the campground.  The last resort is to put him down, which they don't want to do unless necessary.

The Kenai river 

Oops, I think he just hooked a tree, a big one too!!

I think he's about ready to fish in the river now...Yeah

I don't know what these are, but aren't they pretty

July 22nd

We left Seward this morning.  Had to dump the tanks and fill up with fresh water.  Then we stopped at a outside truck wash and got some of the road gunk off the RV.  We only drove about 60 miles and are about 10 miles south of Cooper Landing..it's on the Kenai River.  We found a campsite in a National Forest at Hidden Lake and is very nice.  Only 5$ a nite with a Golden Age Pass.  Can't beat that!

However there is a Brown Bear roaming around the campground.  They did warn us about that, I would like to see him from the RV.     

Buck was going to go down by the river and do some fishing, and some guys told him he might not want to go down the trail that he was on, as they had seen 2 brown bear and they didn't appear to be very scared of people.  He did find another spot and there were other people fishing there so he felt safer.  The Salmon are coming up river and the bears are wanting to catch them too.

We plan on staying here tomorrow night too.   It seems to be a good location for Buck to fish.  I'll probably just hang out here in the RV while he is fishing.    Of course we do not have Wi-fi, not even phone service.   

It got up to 81 today, feels very warm yet and it is 9:30

This is our campsite

This is Hidden Lake at the campground 

The fish that are caught out of the lake

July 19th

Today was cleaning day for the RV, we got that done this morning.  The inside anyway, we haven't been able to get it washed and we still have lots of The Alaskan Highway dirt on it.

This afternoon we went to the Sea Life Center here in Seward.   It's a huge aquarium and marine wildlife and rehabilitation center. We saw all kinds of sea life and birds.

The most interesting was the puffins, they can dive down to 200 ft.  We did see them from the boat the other day. I also found out today that I did have the wrong information on one of the pictures that I posted.  What I thought was penguins was Meeres.  Silly me, there are no penguins in the northern hemisphere.

Don't they look like penguins.   But they are Meeres

This is a Puffin

The puffin diving, I know it's hard to see

One of the Sea Lions

This Eagle is right behind our RV. We saw him fly down in the water and pick up a fish

July 18th

Today we drove up to Exit glacier in the Kenai Fjords National park.  It's just a few miles out of Seward. You can hike up to that Glacier, its a 1 1/2 mile hike. Or if you are really in good shape you can even go further up to Harding Ice fields, that is 4 1/2 miles.  I decided to just get a picture.  I think I could do the 1 1/2 miles, but didn't have our jackets and it is cold up there. Maybe another day.

We stopped at a lake and Buck did some fishing, nothing.

This is Exit Glacier

The lake Buck was fishing in and didn't catch anything!!!

My flower shot for the day

Another shot of the Lake, it was a pretty lake even tho there are no fish in it

July 17th.....our trip on the boat to see the glaciers

@ WToday was a fun day!!  We went on a cruise to the Kenai Fjords National Park.  It was 120 mile trip and took us 8 hours.  The ship that we were on would seat about 200 people.  They had a all you could eat buffet and I was only able to eat a few bites.  I ended up getting a bit seasick and food was the last thing I wanted. It didn't last long, I took a couple Dramamine and that helped.  We saw lots of wildlife and glaciers.  We hadn't even got out of the bay before we saw our first Humpback Whale, in fact it was just down a ways from where our RV is parked.  It was a Mother and her calf.  I'm hoping that we can see them again playing out here in the water. 

We also saw the Orca or Killer Whales and we were told that they will kill the humpback whales.  They were so big, was not able to get good pics of them but will post some anyway. Saw several more humpbacks.  The glaciers were fascinating to me.  It was so cold and windy up close to them and the boat would stop for 20 min or so beside them, so we could all get pictures.  

It was a great trip!!

That's the baby diving down

The Gulf of Alaska

I missed the Whale but got the splash

Can't see much, but this is the Orca Whale

Sea otter.  You will have to enlarge this to see him

This is one of the big glaciers.  It was so cold by it

Same glacier

If you can enlarge this you can see they are penguins 

This is a lookout post for the Military in WW2

These birds have nests built in holes in the rocks

Saw several Sea Lions 

Another whale

Glacier

Little icebergs floating around