Soldatna to Ninilchik

Day 14--Thursday, August 1, 2002, 46.12 miles

Because we were sleeping in a windowless room, we were fooled by the darkness and did not get up until close to 9. We made a spinach, mushroom, tomato omelet, and boiled a couple of eggs for lunch in the Central Emergency Services kitchen.

Their new chief, Jeff Tucker, was back on duty and we got to meet him. He is one of the OSU Fire Protection Publications IFSTA family as he worked on the validation committee for the Fire and Emergency Services Instructor book a couple of years ago. This year during our Validation Conference, he was moving his family from Florida to Alaska and his new job as chief of Central Emergency Services. When we arrived last evening, Terry, the receptionist, and Randy, the shift officer, had welcomed us and made us comfortable.

The CES is an impressive operation and is on call for any rescue or emergency medical situation on the peninsula, as well as area fires and haz mat operations. They coordinate with the State Troopers for helicopter service but have recently acquired a state of the art water rescue boat. They handle everything from swift water and ocean rescue to bear maulings, of which, Randy told us, they get 4 or 5 incidents a summer season.

After breakfast I took off for the bike shop and Jess ran to the P.O. and the grocery. The guy at the bike shop told me that my problem was with my back spokes. The heavy trailer had "detensioned" them. He fixed them and made a few other adjustments and I'm no longer sounding like a rust bucket as I pedal down the road.

We got away from Soldatna around 11. The road to Ninilchik was up and down all the way, but the day was crystal clear and sunny—probably in the high 70s, low 80s. We could eventually glimpse Mt Iliamna, Mt Spur, and Mt Redoubt (three active volcanoes) rising independently and seemingly from sea level across the Cook Inlet. Iliamna was venting some steam.

We also stopped to observe the courtship behavior of two large sandhill cranes. They were in a marsh beside the road, and Jess took a photo, but even with her telephoto, they will probably look like specks. [Yes indeedy. See below.]

One thing that we've been expecting to see but haven't is moose. We've seen many "moose next so many miles" signs but none of the real thing. Denny, our campsite host, says that a cow and calf were bedded down behind the fishing boats (we're at a fish camp) the night before we arrived and that a big bull moose wandered through the site that night also. We saw nuttin last night. 

Roadside daisies near where Jess had her flat

The Russian settlement of Alaska is becoming more evident as we travel south down the Kenai Peninsula. Soldotna is Russian for "Soldier," as its location was once an early Russian military encampment. Ninilchik means "peaceful settlement by the river" and began as a retirement community for the American-Russian Trading Company. Many were Russians who had married Alaskan native women and were unwilling to return to their native country. Their descendants have lived here for the last 140 years.

When we got here, Jess and I rode down the bumpy dirt road to the old village, a collection of very tiny rough hewn houses on the Ninilchik Creek. High on the bluff above these homes is a small wooden Russian church with onion domes and a tiny cemetery, each tombstone enclosed in a tidy picket fence.

We tried to reach Chief Rod Van Saun and my CC contact, McKibben Jackinsky, but got only their voice mails. Rod had given us directions to his friend, Denny's charter fishing camp, but we got turned around and could not find it at first. EVERYTHING is fish and fishing on this peninsula. We used the phone at "Fishhunt" where a large gravel lot was filled with RVs and a wagonload of discarded fish stunk to high heaven and was being scavenged by many hoarse crows.

Most of these fish camps are very rough and ready, and we were getting discouraged when we finally found Denny's. His is a rough and ready fish camp, too, but small and with no stinking fish about. Basically it's a gravel lot with Denny's travel trailer at one end and ringed by 4 RVs and 3 or 4 fishing boats, a fish hut with four bunks in it, plus fish weighing scales and cleaning tables, hoses, etc. The best thing is that it also has a little house with a shower, toilet, washer/dryer, and freezer. 

Denny found us a place for our tent off to one side in very tall grass and horsetails, and gave us two folding chairs and a small plastic table which we topped with a skid to make it larger.

Jess, Charlie, and Triever at our Ninilchik camp; Charlie had just given us the salmon filet on the plate near Jess

Before long, Rod Von Saun rolled in in his pickup. He was playing host to another, somewhat younger, mother/daughter duo (his roommate's mother and her daughter) who had been camping and hiking in Alaska. Rod had taken them fishing that day and the daughter had caught a 70-pound halibut. We invited them to help us eat our salmon (see below), but they were going to a restaurant to eat.

We washed our clothes and took showers, and then we enjoyed the uncommon hospitality we've found all along our route. Charlie and Kathy Flood and their dog, Triever, from Oregon, gave Jess a large sockeye salmon filet in exchange for a beer. Jess made a run for beer and butter, and we poached the filet for dinner in our one cook pot. The guys who had gathered to ask us about our trip observed this operation with amazement (Look. She's cooking it. It's actually cooking!) They were also amazed at the amount of stuff we hauled out of our BOBs. The salmon was too much for our dinner, so we saved the rest of it for lunch tomorrow. We'll, roll it in a tortilla with cream cheese.

Later that evening when we returned from the washhouse, we found a great pile of cherries on our little makeshift table. They were from Brent May. He and his 14-year-old son are also from Oregon and are up here fishing, too. Their fishing stories excite me about my own fishing venture day after tomorrow.