Saturday 8/7/99
Day 10: Homer, Kenai & Anchorage
We left the hotel at 9:00 and drove downto the spit. There were tents along the beach they camp ont eh spit all of the time. The shops were still closed so we walked along the beach and let the kids play in the sand. It was cold and cloudy out but not as foggy as yesterday. You could at least see the water today. The only noise you could was thetide ocmingin a a flockof seaguuls that wer flying around.We walked back up to the boardwalk as the stores were starting to open. Each boardwalk has several bungalow with tourist shops/cafes/ice cream and charter fishing operators downstairs. Upstairs is usually a little apartment Jacob sat on a small toy boat on one of these boardwalks. I decided that I would take a picture of him and he jumped off as soon as he saw the camera. and made alot of noise. Some old lady who was sleeping upstairs peakerd her head our of her frint door trying to figure out what was going on. She gave us a dirty look and went back to bed. We all agreed taht I should of taken a picture of her so that I could of put her picture on the web.
We decided to go back to The Sourdough Express Bakery & Cafewe in town for lunch. This place was real busy but we assumed that is muxt be good it there were thismany people here. The place was started by someone who packed up a trailer full of baking suplies and sold stuff on the road who were taking tha Al-Can highway. Wehen the persongot to Homer, they set up shop in a tent. In just a few week the person had made enoughtmoney to set up business in a permanent building. They sell a line of coco & bread mixes by mail called Ah!laska. We had a good breakfast here and will come back again.
We left town around 1:00 and started driving back towards Anchorage. We wanted to stop off at the Russian village of Ninilchik first which is right along the ocean. It is another small fishing community as we went tinot a gift shopand picked up a map of the area. There is a small trail that we took upona hill that leaed to a Russian church with a couple small houses near by. It mad for anice picture with the flowers surrounding the building. We drove down to the spit where there was a Isicle Seafood Plant, small marina, lots of campers/RV's and cabins for rent. It looked like these wer mostlly caucasin/ Alaskins and don't kow if the Russians were connected with them
We got back onto the main highway and would turn left on Kalifornski Beach Rd as it looked like a ggod route to get to Kenai. It was off of the main highway and close to the ocean but turned out to be rather boring. It was a very straight road and couldn't see the water because of the trees and fog. We didfinally get into Kenai and first visited the two old Russian churchs. The oldest one is not longeropen but the other one is active and wew talked to the priest while wewere there. He said thathe used to live in spokan and thought it was nice that we take our family up here to explore the area. He gave both of the kids some russian coins and let me take some pictures inside. We went into town and stopped at the Kenai Visitior Center as they have a good tour presentation of stuffed animals, native artifacts, old tools and other topiics explaining lifeon the peninsula. We drove out to the baseball field where we watched a game two years ago and there were football players praticing. We found out that baseball season was over last week.
We left Kenai and drove thru Soldotna which is mostly a commercial/business district. It reminds us some of the urban cities close to Seattle, therefor we didn't want ot have anything to do with it. We continued north and stopped at the Portage Glacier which is close to anchorage. This is jsut a few miles off of the highway as it has a nice visitor centor and also can take a boat tour to get closer to the glacier. It was dreary out and raining but we did take some pictures of floating ice that had broken off from the glacier. We passed teh former town of Portage taht was destroyed in the 64 earthquake. There are a few buildings in ruins across form the train station. The train will take people to Whittier for the day but we didn't have time to go today.
We got to Anchorage around 5:00 and went straight to Tidal Wave Bokstore. we stayed there for an hour and bolught some books on Alaska and then drove around town for a littlwwhile. We drove out to to Earthquate Park which had a bike/walking trail with palques dexcribing the damage done by the '64 earthquake. It was a nice park as it was mainyl locals who visited it and had nice walking paths. It also had a view of the water inlet and Anchorage. We started looking for a place to eat and stay for the night We found the Inlet Inn in downtown area which wasn't great but we weren't going to find anyhthing else in downtown. thye recommended teh Brew House nearby for food as this place was kind of stuffy and had a 90 minute wait. We decided to take the kids to LeMex as teh food and service were great and the kids even founfd something that they liked. We put the kids ot bed aroudn 10:00 and went out for a walk around town for about an hour.It was still quite light out as we took pictures of flowers in a park and also stopped at some photo are galley's. We went to bed around 12:00
Drove 250 miles today and 3850 total