July 8 – 11

Thursday morning we left Palmer and drove down the Steward Highway to a National Forest Camp Ground called Trail River. It is located right on the Kenai Lake, nestled in the surrounding mountains which are snow topped and beautiful. We parked the trailer about 20 feet from the water’s edge. The lake, because it is snow feed is a brilliant turquoise color and there are several streams which fill it with water and fish. Just had to walk 20 feet to see this:

John snagged a nice rainbow trout on Saturday morning, which he released.

On Friday we took the 8 ½ hour Kenai Fjords National Park Cruise out of Seward. It was a beautiful, cool morning going out into Resurrection Bay we could see Mount Marathon where they have an annual July 4 race. Hundreds of runners divided into Youth, Men and Women categories run up that trail and back again… look closely. It’s steep 1.75 miles with a gain of 2800 feet. We followed the race in the newspaper up in Palmer. The men do the race in 43 minutes, women in about 53. The same woman has won for seven years in a row and announced her retirement…I would guess she had tired legs.

Out in the bay we saw harbor seals, humpback whales, (which John caught blowing), sea lions, puffins, and lots of other animals—even the salmon put on a show jumping out of the water.

This is an image of Bear Glacier, one of many which are part of the Harding Ice Field. This glacier is now actually three joined together due to the melting of the ice. You can see the black lines which separate them. In the lower left hand corner there are some ice bergs which have broken away and sit in a lake which has formed.

We left the bay and traveled in the Gulf of Alaska to see the Holgate Glacier. Check out the size of it and the sail boat John captured. He also caught the calving, ice falling off the glacier in the lower left. The ice breaks off and just floats in the gulf until it melts. John wanted to hum the theme from Titanic!

Great day, cold and I worked hard as evidence below

On Saturday it was cool and rainy so we just took a trip up to Cooper’s Landing and from there followed Quartz Creek Road. In many locations where there are boat docks, there are kids life jackets available for people to borrow. As PDF Otter says “kids don’t float!

We are at the Diamond M Ranch RV Park until the 19th when we'll head north back to the "Top of the World Road" through Chicken, Alaska and into Dawson City, Yukon Territory.  Tomorrow we have charter to go halibut fishing at 10 am and on Friday we go salmon fishing at 5 am.  More later.