Are we there yet??: A change in the weather

In Fairbanks the weather was so mild it became obvious we had under-catered for summer, so splashed out in Walmart and bought teeshirts and mosquito repellent. Balmy days in Talkeetna meant we got to wear the teeshirts and use the repellent on the giant-sized mozzies. But that all changed once we headed to Anchorage and the Kenai Penninsular.

Only 3 fine days in the last 10 – and even they were cold with a bitter wind, necessitating stowing the teeshirts and hauling out puffer jackets, raincoats and umbrellas. It meant that in Anchorage we stayed indoors exploring the museums and indoor malls, and lunched at The Hard Rock Café (baby boomers aye!). Anchorage’s spacious parks will have to wait until we return next week. Overnight parking was free at an amazing hunting, fishing and sports store called Cabela’s. Their amazing décor included two full-sized bull moose at battle, a piper cub aeroplane suspended from the ceiling, numerous other stuffed animals and a huge fireplace with leather armchairs to relax in. Very impressive. If you live in Alaska you fish! And hunt. It’s what everyone does – and in season they stock their freezers with salmon, halibut, trout and moose meat. Canned salmon in the supermarket is hard to come by and is expensive – everyone here catches their own or knows someone who does.

The weather forecast was better in Homer at the southernmost tip of the Kenai Penninsular so we headed south. Homer is a cute little fishing town with a long spit that extends out into Katchemak Bay in Captain Cook Inlets. Shops and restaurants are dotted along the spit on piles over the water – and dozens of small boats. All very cute and not too touristy. Most memorable thing was the excellent fish chowder on a wet and windy day.

The road back up the peninsular to Kenai follows the coast and gave us beautiful views across the inlet to four recently active volcanoes in the Aleutian Chain – all of them around 3000 m. At our beach side camping spot enroute we hung out with 30 or so bald eagles fishing in the river and waiting with the seagulls on the beach for low tide. Mt Illiama looks a bit like Mt Taranaki and the huge rocks of coal on the beach was a novelty!

Moose are making up the majority of our wildlife count. We no longer stop and photograph the ones on the side of the road as we drive by. But the one that wandered into the middle of the path as we were out walking stopped us in our tracks. We felt a lot less brave without our trusty vehicle to shelter in. The pregnant cows are big are bad-tempered at this time of year. We did get up close and personal with brown bears at another wildlife refuge just out of Anchorage, but at our present campsite in Seward, it is the very cute sea otters in the harbour that are entertaining us.

It is Memorial Weekend this weekend and Seward has a cruise ship- visiting as well as LOTS of RVs. Unfortunately the constant rain has meant that people are mostly confined to indoors. Our RV is small and we have decamped to the laundromat and a coffee shop to avoid hut fever – but pity the family parked next to us with two (wet) children two (wetter) dogs in their RV!

Next stops are a trip up the Kenai River in a drift boat, a birthday dinner atop the lift at Alyeska Ski Resort, and a music festival in a town called Chicken. Guess what the festival is called – why Chicken Stock of course!