I missed Holly's departure but I was up to chat with Doug before he took off for work at 6:30am. Now I was all alone once more. Most of my stuff was already packed from yesterday morning. My suitcase, battery charger, laptop and hygiene kit were all that remained. A light drizzle hid the sun. This is the summer solstice and I plan on spending it in Kenai for tonight. I'll be exploring the highway there. Should be plenty of bald eagles and the salmon should be spawning. I'm not much into salmon, but I might as well see the fish while I'm up here.
I'll be back in Nina's neighborhood by Saturday and we will do Summit Lake then. I finally drove away at 10:13am, after a rainy 2.2-mile loop walk around Vinewood Lane. Zeke didn't mind the drizzle, but Sadie looked tired.
My first place today was visiting Exit Glacier of the Kenai Fjord National Park. The glacier slowly comes into view along the 8.6-mile drive to the visitor's center. Markers depicting the year mark other documented lengths of the glacier that is clearly dwindling in size. I hiked up as far as I could go, taking in the impressive views of this receding glacier. Lots of Japanese tourists were sharing the path with me. If it hadn't been raining, I'd have gone down to the closest point possible, but the wet rocks made that attempt too dangerous. A quick exhibit on black and brown bears by a forest ranger Anne Fineman from Long Island completed my tour. I had spent over two hours at this busy park and I'm glad I got to walk the trail! The 2.6-mile route is just perfect for a leg stretcher.
The rain started letting up early in the afternoon, making my drive north toward Moose Pass easier. I stopped for 40 minutes at the I.R.B.I knife shop (that stands for "I'd Rather Be Independent") and met the jovial knife carver, Virgil Hunter. He carves knives out of high-grade carbon steel and attaches them to moose antler, Alaskan corral or anything else, and custom makes them according to customer's needs. "I don't get paid until I finish a knife" explained Virgil, showing me a $1200 knife and that one wasn't even his most expensive.
Hunter and his father moved up here in the mid 1960s from Idaho and built the log cabin store by hand. Outside he keeps wood carvings from another artist from New Mexico, and three mannequins that pose right off the highway shoulder. It's these mannequins that caught my attention. He showed me his military coin collection, talked about the rock band Aerosmith that stopped by and bought a knife back in the early 1990s, and showed me his old camera collection and police patch collection, mostly donated by customers and passers-by. Hunter was as interesting to talk to as his exhibit store. He and his store are probably in an Alaskan version of Off The Beaten Path roadside attractions.
I slowly made it to Kenai in the late afternoon, crossing a very scenic stretch of the highway going west through Cooper's Landing and Sterling before the landscape flattened out to marshy flats studded with scraggly black spruce. I wanted to see the historic Russian Orthodox church in Kenai, one of the oldest in Alaska. I found it near a bluff overlooking the Cook inlet, with apartments around it. I ended up walking another 2.7 miles with the dogs along the breezy coastline and through a municipal park, up the Meeks trail and back. A yellow warning sign reporting the last bear sighting as June 3 was posted in the park.
I finished off my day at the St. Elias brewpub in Soldatna, 12 miles east of Kenai. The area has everything for the traveler. Even gasoline was cheaper than in Seward: $2.85 to $3.05, with all the fast food franchises. RVs were lined up in the Fred Meyer parking lot but that is not where I wanted to spend the night. With cloudy skies above, I made the decision to drive down to Homer to watch solstice move in. That also was a pretty drive, with another Russian church in Ninilchik overlooking the bay. Clouds hid any sun set (not that I was expecting one) and at 10:30pm as I drove to the Spit and back, I could see plenty of people walking the pathway and diners enjoying a meal. The fjords to the south were visible from this location. The town wasn't bustling now as people were slowly ending their day's activities. The Spit was packed with RVers so I opted to get back on the mainland, parking at Bishop's Beach to watch twilight move in. The sun never did set. There were signs warning against overnight camping, but there were two other vehicles parked near the shore so I joined them. A cop car drove by around midnight but did not stop. Apparently it's an unwritten rule that overnight camping and dog walking are allowed as long as the campers and dogs don't get loud or aggressive.
It was a very peaceful night. The water barely made a sound. It was 50F when I fell asleep in the driver's seat, still in an upright position.
I drove 252.5 miles today, with a total of 4744 miles to date.
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