Keani to Valdez

While staying at the Kenai Princess RV park, we took a hike on Saturday to the Russian River Falls. Bob caught a 15 inch rainbow trout. I kidded him that this was his $50 fish. (the cost of the fishing license for two weeks.) We then moved over to the Quartz Creek campground on Kenai Lake. We pulled in at about 11:45 just when someone was vacating a prime lakeside spot. We spent one day there. Bob went fishing and Connie took a bike ride. It was a really beautiful campground – although rather fishy smelling due to the number of spawning salmon.

It was finally time to leave the Kenai Peninsula. We headed back into Anchorage so that we could take care of some banking matters, get the oil changed on the truck, and get the RV slide fixed. We did this on Monday and Tuesday. We then headed for Palmer which is about 30 miles east of Anchorage where we spent the night in an RV park.

On Wednesday, August 24th, we spent the day driving east on the Glenn Highway. This is a really pretty area – very scenic. We stopped at a nice rest stop overlooking the Matanuska Glacier and took a 1 mile loop walk. We drove to Glennallen, and then headed south on the Richardson Highway towards Valdez. We stopped at an Alaskan State campground called Squirrel Creek. This was to be our home for the next 3 nights. On Thursday we drove 33 miles of paved road, followed by 59 miles of gravel into the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. It was quite a drive. Once at the road end, we unloaded our bikes and road 6 miles to the abandoned town of Kennicott. There is an old copper mine here that is being restored by the National Park Service. It’s a very interesting area along with a beautiful view of the Glacier. Then another 94 miles back to the fifth wheel. It was a long day.

On Friday, we drove down to Valdez. This is a stunning drive through Thompson Pass. We stopped at the Worthington Glacier on the way to Valdez. We wandered around Valdez, viewed a video about the 1964 earthquake, and then drove out to a place where I could hike and Bob could fish. I came back from my hike and Bob had only managed to snag about 6 spawning (almost dead) fish. I told him he was having chicken for dinner since he hadn’t managed to catch a fish. I went to get the truck, and as I came back, discovered that my threatening him worked. He had caught a very nice silver salmon. We leave for Tok on Saturday. More on our travels in the next blog.