As Ricki organized the car… again. I went to the local home depot to purchase some anti-rain supplies. I found a larger tarp and some more rope (everything a man needs to survive in the wild). We headed towards the Captain Cook State Park looking for our campground to call home. Arriving at the only campground there was, the prices were too steep and the sites were terrible for setting up a tarp. We decided to pack up and back track to the Sterling Highway. Kenai did offer a lot of sights for us and we are a little disappointed to have skipped them, but we both agreed that they wouldn't have been enjoyable in the pouring rain. Along the Sterling highway we diverted into the Skilah Lake Park along the Kenai Wildlife Reserve. Here we found what we called home at 10 pm. The sights were a little small but they were free and the trees were perfectly placed for our tarp. There is a nice blue lake which we could have camped beside but we decided to take the sites that were a little more secluded, providing us more protection from the wind (we are learning). As Ricki prepared dinner I set up our new tarp. It ended up being a lot bigger then expected and we are now able to cover the tent, both sides of the car, and about 16 ft of sitting area behind. Bring it on rain.
Ricki cooked our chicken that we bought to be used later. We had mushroom, sweet onion and Gruyere cheese topped chicken burgers with stuffed jalapeno peppers for dinner.
Continuing our trip through the Kenai Peninsula we made our way to Seward. Along the way we stopped at Cooper Landing where we hiked along the Russian River to the Russian River Falls. This was a beautiful viewing area for the spawning salmon at the end of a 2 hour hike. After watching the many Salmon trying to jump up the falls we finally got a picture of it in action. Here is the shot of two salmon jumping up the falls.
After the hike we made our way into Seward, looking for a campground with both showers and laundry we stumbled upon what looked like home. After learning it was $26 for a tent not including the cost of showers we decided to go elsewhere. On Seward Highway we noticed a campground on the side of the road which had free showers and laundry, we decided to backtrack the 20 minutes and spend the night there. Once we showed up we learnt that the campground only had RV spots and did not allow tents (a bear in the area). For some reason my argument of spending our last three weeks camping in bear country wasn't enough. The camp host didn't really understand that the tent was on top of the truck, we left, puzzled. Driving back into Seward we stayed at the local municipal campground. There were coin showers down the road which we used in the morning and actually worked out alot better then expected. While our campsite was fairly exposed it was cheap and our large tarp gave us a dry place to hang out while we waited out the usual evening downpour and ate our delicious fresh prawn alfredo.
In the morning we had breakfast and watched a large freighter ship turn around in the bay and head out to sea. After cleaning up the site and enjoying a long hot shower we checked out the Alaska Sealife Center. Here we watched Sea lions playing in the massive aquarium, it was quite the sight to see them swim in the underwater tank. At the center there was also a little baby seal playing outside, crazy looking fish, jelly fish, puffins and other birds and sea life from the pacific region. While we did feel a little sorry for some of the animals we were happy to know that most of them were animals that were rehabilitated from the wild or the Exxon Spill and were on their road to recovery in the safe hands of the Sealife Center personnel. It was a very exciting and educational experience. =)
