June 12--Sterling Highway toward Homer

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Sunday, June 12th Captain Cook Inlet State Park partly sunny 51 degrees at 10:00 Starting mileage at 9729

The state park was named for the inlet which was named for Capt. Cook who explored this area in 1776.

At various visitors’ centers we have picked up lots of pamphlets and brochures on the local area. One of the maps we have on the Kenai Peninsula gave the supposed location of places to see various wildlife. We have been driving to various locations and following their suggestions but haven’t had a one pan out. This day, we drove up gravel Marathon Road out of the town of Kenai, which was supposed to be the best place in Alaska to see the herds of caribou on the tundra there. Found the tundra, no caribou or anything else.

With that excursion a bust, we decided to drive toward Homer until we found a place we liked, to camp at---15 state parks between Kenai and Homer, most of which were on the Cook Inlet beachside. As we worked our way south, and checked several campgrounds, we encountered 6493 fishermen and women arriving and parking and heading down paths to the rivers.

Most all the campgrounds are where a river comes into the Inlet---there is flat land there for a road and campsites. Some are positioned on the river itself. Anyway, we learned later that the reason so many people were out was because it was the last day to be able to catch king salmon. As we ate lunch at one of the spots, we saw the boats and herds of people with poles and huge nets and other equipment, but saw no one coming up from the river path that had actually caught any fish---even asked if anyone had caught anything and got a “no” in reply.

Continued to poke along the coast heading south and since it turned into a sunny day, you could see the mountains clearly across Cook’s Inlet. Several of these mountains are active volcanoes. Only one Indian village is shown on the map on the other side of the Inlet and the only way to get to it is by boat or float plane.

As we neared the community of Ninilchik we saw two female adult moose on the side of the road. Couldn’t stop as, as usual, the animals do not show themselves near a pull out and on this narrow 2 lane road the traffic was heavy.
Continued south as we didn’t see anywhere we wanted to stop, especially with the crowd of fishermen, and made the turn east at Anchor Point toward Homer. Found our way down to a narrow spit of land that sticks out into Kachemak Bay and camped on the beach at a city campground for $15 a night.

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