Russian River to Soldotna

The second day of our trip to Homer was not as fruitful as far as mileage goes, we only made approximately 39 miles and wound up in a Fred Myres parking lot in Soldotna for the night. As we stated in a previous post, Fred Myres is a large store very similar to WalMart. Talking about being RV friendly, this Fred Myres has a dump station, fresh water and large trash containers for the RVers. The road from the Russian River to Soldotna was a very good two lane highway with good scenery leaving the mountains and continuing to travel South through the Kenai Peninsula. Parts of the highway followed the scenic Kenal River through the peninsula. There were several really nice FREE campgrounds along the highway that had no hookups; however, they had clean pit toilets, fresh water, fire-pits, and large picnic tables. These campgrounds were convently located on lakes that had boat ramps and the shores had access for fishing. According to postings around the lakes, the lakes were full of Rainbow Trout, Dolly Vardon, some Greyling and Northern Pike of which they were trying to eliminate. Once in Soldotna, you could almost feel the excitement in the air of the pending run of Sockeye Salmon (REDS) up the Kenai River which runs right through town. Everywhere you went, whether to eat, shop or site see people were asking have you heard of any REDS being caught. All the places in town that sold fishing tackle had a continuous stream of people in and out purchasing what they thought would take the REDS. However,if you're not in Soldotna to fish, there are still a lot of things to do. On weekends they have a large craft fair/farmers market at the city park on the Kenai. There are ample shopping places and several great places to eat. A couple of our favorites are Sal's Klondike Diner and the Moose's Loose Bakery. Sal's has One Pound cinnamon buns and Moose's Loose has a variety of pastries of which my favorite was the "apple Ugly", the best I have eaten. I know it's hard to believe guys, but better than the Orange Blossom. Life in Soldotna must be great, we read this statement in a paper: Soldotna: City of Optimism - 4 Recreational Parks & no Cemetaries

These are fish cleaning stations along the Kenai in Soldotna at a private camp ground. You can tell the fish are not in, there are no fishermen...

These pictures were taken at the Soldotna visitors center. You can tell where they focus

This is a carving of the world record King Salmon caught in the Kenal river at Honeymoon Cove on May 17, 1985. The King weighted 97 and 1/4 pounds. An actual replica of the record fish is in the visitors center.