Sunset over Mt. Iliamna
This morning was very cold. Although it was clear, the sun didn’t strike our tent site before we left at 9:30, and the tent was very wet with dew when we packed it.
We drove along the Kenai River and saw some fishermen this morning. We then drove into Kenai and after buying a few needed groceries went on a walking tour of Old Kenai. There are some of the oldest buildings in Alaska there, though none are really old, except for the church itself which is from the 1890’s. We had a very hard time finding the cemetery. Although it showed on the map, we couldn’t find how to get to it. We walked by a road marked “Private Road” several times, which looked like it was the way to go, but couldn’t find any way through. We stopped at the Russian gift shop, and the clerk told us to go up the private road, which we did and found the cemetery.
We ate our lunch on the beach at Kenai, looking out over Cook Inlet to the west. There were clouds in the west, and the mountain tops were obscured at first, but just as we finished our lunch they cleared enough that we could see the top of the volcano, Mt. Redoubt. After lunch we drove down Kalifornsky Beach Road. On the map it looked like you’d be able to see the ocean, and you could occasionally get glimpses of it past the tree shrouded private houses. Everything along the beach is private property until you get to Kasilof Beach road. Here we could drive to the beach, to a free public area.
We next stopped at the Clam Gulch campground, but it isn`t much more than a parking lot. There were a few picnic tables and tent sites, but not many. We drove on to Ninilchik where there is an old Russian Orthodox church built in 1901. It sits high on a bluff overlooking the ocean, with a beautiful view of the volcanic mountains to the west.
Tractor loading boats at Anchor Point
We are camped in Anchor Point at Halibut Campground. Anchor Point is the most westerly spot in North America that you can drive to by a continuous road. The camping area is less wooded than those we have been at for the past weeks, but we have a nice spot in some of the few trees that are here. At this beach they launch boats directly into the inlet using large tractors. We saw several of the boats get hauled out. The boat radios in, then the crew on shore gets the boat trailer hooked up, backs it into the ocean, and waits for the boat to sail into the trailer. It is a remarkably quick operation to get the boat out of the water, and those in the boat never get their feet wet – not so for the person riding on the back of the tractor. The last time we saw anything like this was in New Zealand where they were using tracked caterpillar type tractors to do the same thing. However we watched that for over an hour and they still didn’t have the boat in the water. Here they are in and out in five minutes or less. We walked down the beach tonight and watched the operation. The man in the booth said they charge $58 for the put in and take out.
Tonight we watched the sunset over the volcanoes on the western shore of Cook Inlet. Steam is rising from both Augustine Volcano to the southwest, and Mt. Redoubt to the north. The sun set spectacularly directly behind Mt. Iliamna directly to our west.