July 24th

We moved back up to Soldotna and are back in the same campground where we caught all our fish. We took a different route back up north just to change up the scenery a bit. A road called Kalifornsky Beach Road! How’s that for an address! The locals call it K-Beach road. It’s about a 20 mile stretch that winds along the Cook Inlet. It would have been very pretty except… you guessed it! It’s cloudy, cold, and threatening rain. The high has been 58. As we traveled along we noticed a “For Sale” sign on a piece of bluff property. It is a wooded lot with road frontage and the back of the property drops off into beach front property. Gorgeous! The cliff is about 80 feet high above the Inlet which looks out across to Mount Redoubt and the Aleutian Range full of glaciers. So our curiosity got the best of us and we called the real estate agent selling the property. How does $165,000.00 for 1.3 acres grab ya’? HA! We thanked her very much and got off the phone quickly before she could ask for our names & phone number! So much for our great idea of buying property, leaving the RV parked and flying home.

We visited a fish cannery that was in operation back in the 1920’s to process fish in this area. One sign said they could filet 4-6 fish per minute! Can you imagine…. That’s approximately 300 fish per hour. Incredible. The deck in the back overlooks the mouth of the Kenai River and there were a ton of boats moving in and out. The ones that caught my eye were the small boats who were dip-net fishing. Something I’ve heard about since we got here and have seen the monstrous nets that are used for sale along the road, but I’ve never seen it in action. It was interesting. The fishermen drop the nets down next to their boats and then travel along slowly, close to shore while fish swim directly into their net! That’s fishing???? Okay, the other day there were a few dip-net fishermen that arrived back at camp and said they had caught 22 fish in one day.

So Gary needs to catch 5 fish to fill our 2 boxes to go home and then we can continue on our way from here. Until then, here we sit.