Skilak Loop Road

Sunday, July 18.  Dave and Mazie headed back to Kenai this morning to get their furnace fixed, so Joe and I headed up the road to the Skilak Lake area on the Skilak Loop Road.  I think we drove 18 miles for this change of scenery, but this park happened to be a national one, in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, so we got to camp for $5.  The campground was nice, with paved roads, but all the sites were pretty short, built 30 years ago when RVs were much shorter.  Anyhow, Joe got us scrunched in a great spot with a view of the beautiful, emerald-colored Skilak Lake, which is huge, larger than Roosevelt Lake in Arizona.  The Kenai Rivers runs through this lake, which is where it gets its color, and it has all 5 specie of Alaska salmon in it, plus rainbow trout and Dolly Varden.  We didn't fish, but we thought about it.  But it was rainy most of the time, so we really had a nice, quiet afternoon with a great view. We were barely off the road, and one tire of the Explorer was on the grass, which is a violation of the rules, but we decided to risk it for one night.

This area is prime bear habitat so we kept on the alert, but we never saw a bear here.  There was a bird rookery (island) out just a little ways, and we could hear the seagulls all the time.  We spotted an eagle up on the mountainside, and a couple of loons (we think) swimming by.

It finally stopped raining about 6:00 p.m., so we took a walk.  There was a family fishing off the boat ramp (one little girl kept running in the water, Yikes, that had to be cold).  Then a boat came in so we watched them unload.

We walked on through the trails.  Joe thought I was pretty well camoflaged in my lime green rain jacket, which I am getting a lot of use out of.

All the Alaska boat ramps have life jackets available for kids.  We remembered this from our last visit here, and think its a great idea.  Most of the rivers in Alaska really roar, so its good that there are always life vests available.

Here's a picture of this lake, showing the Kenai River coming in and going out of it.

After dinner, we drove the rest of the loop road in the car (looking for bears).  We saw some great views of the lake and the surrounding mountains, which still have streaks of snow on them.

This one area was the regrowth from a 1991 forest fire.  We assume the red flowers are fireweed.

Monday morning we broke camp and headed to Seward.  On the way out on the loop road, we came upon a culvert, and from my seat in the RV I could see the salmon swimming up Hidden Creek.  Of course, we had to stop and take a few pictures.  There were probably 60 staging right before the culvert, and we could see others behind them.  They were also on the other side of the culvert.

Of even greater interest, though, were the dead salmon lying on the bank.  Obviously, the bears had been here during the night or early morning.  They just ate the heads and left the rest, which I believe means that they are pretty full.  But these salmon would have been easy pickings for the bear because they were so thickly staged. We saw almost a dozen dead salmon carcasses.  We were surprised there were no birds or other animals eating the left-overs, but we didn't see any.

After the salmon went through the culvert, that had to find their way through a brush pile, so we watched that for a while.  But they were able to find a deep spot through the limbs.  Some of them had to look it over a couple times before they made the dash through there.  You can see how shallow this creek is.  We could see the salmon coming because they had to splash through some places, and their backs were actually out of the water.

Finally, we left there and met up with Dave and Mazie for pie in Cooper Landing. But as we were driving past the Kenai River back on the Sterling Highway, we saw some people fishing on the bank, and a BEAR on the other side of the bank.  There was not a pull-off available, so we didn't get to see the bear for very long, but it was a big old grizzly. Dave had his furnace replaced so they should be in good shape again for the rest of the trip.

We headed on down to Seward and found a camping spot at the Waterfront Park Municipal Campground.  We have a great view of the bay here where the boats come past us.  A sea otter spent some time right in front of our area so we got to watch him floating around for a long time.