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Portage Valley → Homer 179 mi (288.1 km) |
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Greetings, everyone!
I woke up to rumors that the aurora borealis had made an appearance last night! I didn’t think that was possible at this time of year, so I’m going to have to keep an eye out for it tonight! First, though, we had lots to do during the day time, starting with a trip to Portage Glacier!
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Portage Glacier gets its name because early explorers and traders had to carry, or port, their boats over this high pass to get from Turnagain Arm to Prince William Sound! Not too long ago, the glacier stretched all across the lake, but now, after lots of melting, the glacier can’t even be seen without taking a cruise! So we set off along the tree-lined cliffs over a dead lake, so full of silt that fish and algae just can’t live here!
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Portage Glacier is dying too, creeping up higher onto the rocks where it will one day evaporate into the sky! It’s still lovely in its final stages, though. Glacial ice absorbs all colors except blue, which gives it a beautiful blue glow along the edges, and on the tiny icebergs texturing the water all around the boat. This visit to the ailing ice giant was all too brief, but I look forward to more glaciers and icebergs in a few months when I go to Antarctica!
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After returning to land, we continued our southward trek onto the Kenai Peninsula, named for the Russian word “Kenayskaya,” which is what they called Cook Inlet. This Alaskan borough is home to the famous Kenai River, a global destination for record-smashing king salmon fishing! That was our next stop.
We got out of the motorhome in Soldotna and headed down to the riverside. I haven’t been fishing in a very long time, and it showed. Within twenty minutes, I’d lost five expensive lures on snags. I felt so bad that I left my friends to their fishing and went to do something less destructive: check out local history!
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Luckily, we just so happened to be fishing around the corner from the Soldotna Homestead Museum! The museum was closed, but that wasn’t going to stop me from exploring the buildings!
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After four years of exploring places in California dating back into the 18th and 19th centuries, Alaska’s history sure seems young! While the Russians had been hunting seals and otters along the coast since 1784, most of them weren’t allowed to settle permanently. Soldotna, for example, got started long after the US purchased Alaska. It rose up in 1947 when the Sterling Bridge created a convenient place to cross the Kenai River. It didn’t become an incorporated city until 1960!
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I wandered around the quiet museum property, wondering if I was being watched in any way. The museum preserves many historic buildings from Soldotna’s early homesteading days: log cabins, a historic storage tower, period fishing boats, and Slikok Valley School, the Soldotna area’s last log cabin schoolhouse!
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My friends finished their fishing a little while later, and we all met back up at the motorhome to resume our journey. Next stop: Ninilchik! This little town was one of few where Russian hunters with native wives were allowed to settle. On a bluff overlooking the city, Alexi Andreev Oskolkoff built this exquisite Russian Orthodox church overlooking the smoldering volcano Iliamna! We took a break here in the quiet of a summer’s afternoon to enjoy the architecture and the views.
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From there, we motored along into the town of Homer, famed for its Fishing Hole, which draws in salmon at high tide and traps them at low tide! Pulling into the Alaska Heritage RV Park on the shore of Coal Bay, we set up for some serious relaxing. My friends started a fire in the pit, but the wood was full of tar and fumigated the whole motorhome! So, I took a stroll down the shore to watch the sunset.
An oncoming storm and its windy friends beat me to the sunset and swallowed it up! The gusts are pretty strong, and the forecast is for more wind coming up. I will have to hold tighter to my hat for the next few days of adventure!
Mucho gust-o!
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Total Ground Covered: 868.2 mi (1,396.6 km) |
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