July 15

John left early this morning to go fishing in the Kenai River at Centennial Park in Soldotna. He said he stood in the water for four hours without a bite. Cold feet, lots of competition and so he came back. Here is a shot he took at the boat dock.

I walked around the campgrounds, which is a working ranch with horses, emus, goats, chickens, gardens, barns, old vehicles and farm implement tools. While John finds bears in the woods, I find roosters.

And check out the garden…yep, those are old tires with veggies growing in them. Keeps the veggies up high so the critters have a more difficult time helping themselves.

We went to the UPS store to fax and print things and something I needed had to be notarized. Their notary was off and so they suggested a DMV location. Went there, their notary was off, but, the worker CALLED her and she drove about 20 miles just to notarize three documents. Can you believe that customer service? Wow oh wow oh wow!!!

The City of Kenai is just about 10 miles from our camp and so we visited the Kenai Visitors and Cultural Center. Saw a film about bush pilots—you may think that all you need is a plane, however, in Alaska it has to be fitted with wheels, skis for winter, and floats for water. The film was beautiful showing all kinds of wilderness locations and lots of bears eating lots of salmon. We haven’t seen that yet!

When the US purchased Alaska from Russia in the 1867 there were a lot of Russians who moved here and along with them came the Russian Orthodox Church. John took this image of the Holy Assumption Orthodox Church which was built in 1895-96. It is still operational with an active congregation.

Another good day-no rain and about 60 degrees. Someone on the weather channel said it was going to be a “sweltering 72 degrees” tomorrow in Anchorage. Wow, how do you guys in the lower 48 feel with your past 6 weeks in the 90s? Lots of room to migrate to Alaska, you only need to become accustomed to 19 hours of daylight, here in the south and highs in the 60s now and highs in the -20s for six months of the year. It’s wonderful here!

Tomorrow we go salmon fishing at 5:45 am on the Kenai River.