Sept 14, 2009 - Kenai Peninsula - Soldotna to Homer

Check out the world record King Salmon (92 lbs) at the Soldotna Visitors Center - caught right here in the Kenai River, which is known for it's monster Kings.

Watch a native Alaskan cleaning his Coho ( silver ) salmon on the river walk along the Kenai River; carefully removing the roe sacks, to be cured and used for bait.
  Jeanne dreams of fresh fish today: "Wouldn't it be nice to get one a' those big ol' salmon to eat!"  (....in the trunk of her Buick is a fishing pole and tackle she has brought all the way from Georgia, but we have yet to try cast a line.) 

Driving southwest along the Cook Inlet, around Anchor Point to Homer.  The Homer spit hooks out into Kachemak Bay; Glaciers spill from the immense Harding Icefield and down the west-facing slopes of the Kenai Mountains across the bay;

 Stop in at the Salty Dawg Saloon on the spit, sample the local "traditional country ale"  of the Homer Brewing Co; Talking with a couple of the locals, who have been out on a halibut fishing charter, just stepped in to the Dawg for a coupla drinks.... "I gotta 110 poundza halibut in the trunka' my car...ya' want some?"....be crazy to turn down an offer like that! The menu at the Cook cabin the following evening features broiled halibut with lemon butter and roasted redskin potatoes....Jeanne is finally granted her wish for some fresh Alaskan catch!

 

Hired a water taxi to take us across Kachemak Bay to the Grewingk Glacier trailhead...the driver dumps us off on the beach...we follow the trail up and over a forested ridge and down to the shore of Grewingk Lake...looking across to the grey/blue fissured terminus of the glacier at the far end of the lake; Rays of sunlight spray through clouds to highlight the upper reaches of the massive ice sheet....ice bergs float in the lake. The Saddle Trail leads over another low ridge and descends steeply to Halibut Cove - a staircase leads down to the beach landing where our water taxi picks us up.