Author: Steve

The morning view from the windshield.

A cool sprinkly morning; clouds drifting reluctantly past the trees.  They seem to want to stay but just can’t quite hold on.  It hasn’t rained here in a month.  This is a rainforest.  It’s supposed to be cool and rainy.  We seem to have adjusted.  Seventy-five degrees and sunny feels hot.  We’re fine with sixty-five and cloudy.

The big lump near the top of the lone birch is an eagle nest with two youngsters in it.  We sit outside and listen to the eagles talk.

The Chiswell Islands.

Rugged rocks.

We squeeze in tight in our little boat.  Vertical cliffs soaring straight up from the sea.

Seabird rookeries.

A cacophony of sea and seabird sounds.

What a place.

Maybe one more visit to Seward is in order.  I hope so, because we’re already here.

Kenai Peninsula

A walk along the Bear Lake trail.

And in the water, salmon.

The now-red determined fish still trying to make it to that just-right stream to spawn.

Some are done.

Some still making that last exhausted heroic effort to get there.

Through water only half as deep as they are.

In the effort, not only replenishing the salmon population, but bringing marine nutrients from hundreds or thousands of miles away to the entire food chain upstream, feeding everything from apex predators all the way down to bacteria decomposing the corpses, producing nutrients even for the plant community; an entire ecosystem that depends on healthy salmon runs up free-flowing streams.

We’re back in Whittier; this time for more than a day trip.

Kenai Peninsula

We got a room with a view.

(I might have overused that phrase, but I can’t help myself.)  Dry camping.  No facilities.  No problem.

Lou and Alma.  We found your work boat.

Uh-oh.

The fireweed is fading.

Who needs a marina and a boat ramp?  Want to get your boat into the ocean and there is no boat ramp?  Go with the tractor launch.

I didn’t get to see a boat launch, but I was there for a boat retrieval.  The tractor gets the call and heads down the bluff.

The boat approaches.

The tractor picks up the boat trailer

and backs into the water.

The boat gets closer.

…and locks in.

The boat gets dragged out of the water, through the sand, and back up to the top of the bluff!

Amazing but true!

Soldotna.

Kenai Peninsula

After weeks of weather in the 60s on the coast, we move inland a little and now it’s 80 degrees.  Back to one-shirt weather!  This feels pretty warm.

Nice little campground.  We’ll stay here a couple days.  It’s time for an oil change on the Jeep.  It’s certainly time for a new air filter judging by what the outside of the car has been looking like!  Soldotna is a big enough town it has a Jeep dealer *and* a car wash.

Before we left Homer, I photographed a bunch of boat tops not currently in use.

I thought maybe these were winter gear for working boats and they take them off during the summer while the weather is nice, like putting the top down on a convertible, and put them back on in the winter for shelter.  I asked someone who seemed to know though, and he said they were ways to outfit the boats for different kinds of fishing.  When they’re long-lining for halibut these tops have the right kind of drums and other gear inside.  When they’re handling nets, they need a clearer deck and this equipment comes off.