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We awoke to a beautiful, clear and warm morning at the Portage Valley RV park. Sleeping in late was a treat, as we did not have far to go today. After breakfast, we unhooked and started on our way. This section of the Portage highway is beautiful, with high, snow capped peaks and glaciers along the way. Out trip here two years ago was during two days of extremely heavy rain. We could not see any of the mountains or streams, so this is a pleasant surprise to us. On the Alyeska Highway, we headed south and joined the Sterling highway. This is an enjoyable stretch of road running along the Kenai river. It's a fisherman's heaven here, witnessed by the many fishing resorts we passed along the way. Well, maybe not resorts, maybe fishing camps. We stopped at Cooper's Landing and walked down to the river. Ray would have fished awhile, but this section is closed to fishing until June 11, due to the rainbow trout spawning here. This is a good section for Dolly Vardin and rainbow trout fishing. The river is a beautiful shade of blue, and almost appears to look unreal.
We stopped at Soldotna, at
a small mall in the downtown area, and had lunch out for a change. Very good restaurant, but we feared we would all be nodding off shortly with the amount of food we ate. After visiting a couple of shops we hit the road again, heading through Kenai and Nikiski and then into the Kasilof River area where the views of the cook inlet and the two prominent dormant volcanos came into clear view. Mts. IIiamna and Redoubt along with a few other volcanic mountains in that area have not had an eruption since 2009. It was a small event, but they say ash fell as far away as Anchorage when that occured. All appears to be quiet with them since then.
As we approached Homer, Kachemak Bay surrounded by the Kenai Mountains came into view. This area is known as "The Halibut Fishing Capitol of the World" and Ray along with four from the Naples group are going deep sea fishing tomorrow, hopefully bringing home tomorrow night's dinner. We decided on this trip to stay out on Homer Split, which is a long, narrow bar that heads out from Homer. It has a major dock facility for boat
loading, unloading, canneries etc. We checked into our campground, Heritage RV Park where we had a site reserved right on the waterfront, beautiful. The Naples group arrived shortly thereafter and we all decided to take a walk to the shops. This is a really neat area with many artsy shops, restaurants and of course fishing charters. Ray and I along with Diane and John decided to stop at "The Salty Dog Saloon" for a drink, and after going in realized where the name came from. Some of the sayings people have written on the walls are indeed quite "salty". In addition the walls and ceiling are literally covered with dollar bills which customers have left with cutesy sayings written on them. Then it was back to the RV park and cocktail hour. With the weather so mild, we sat on the beach for our drinks, then grilled some hamburgers for dinner at the Cunningham's. Went back to our RV and watched a little TV before retiring for the night.
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