It was not raining this morning!
We still didn’t get up and rush out!!
And a very happy birthday to Wilda, mother in law extraordinaire!!!
A very leisurely breakfast at our local internet café, Naptowne, was followed by a drive to Kenai, the largest town on the peninsular, although we didn’t know it at the time.
There is an old town area, sort of preserved from the late 1800’s, including the Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Russian Orthodox Church, built in 1895. The priest was there, and he was the star of the day.
We reckon he was actually the original priest from when the church was finished, he was that old, but what a talker!
Non stop for about 20 minutes, and then he asked if we had any questions, after he had told us the history of the church and his own life history, and how priests are ordained, and what happens if they are widowed or get divorced, and on and on, ………until I asked him if there were any women priests. “NO WOMEN”, he almost yelled at us, “God was a man, no women of importance in the bible”, and so on. Marlipops and I looked at each other, at the couple with us in the church, and decided to get out of there pronto, he was building up such a head of steam!!
The town of Kenai spans the Kenai River, and today was the last day of the King Salmon fishing season, so there were hundreds of fisherists, lining both banks of the mouth of the river, with their tents all pitched and their rods and nets and other fish catching necessities, waiting for the tide to roll in, hoping to catch lottsa fish. We were on an overlook park thingy, watching from above, and for the two hours we were there, not a fish was seen.
We met and chatted to a very nice couple, Grayson and Pauline, from Michigan, fellow RV ers, and exchanged tales from RV nightmares.
It was wonderful and relieving to find out that other people have similar plans, problems and solutions to ours, and also very pleasant to exchange tips of the trips with them.
The rest of Kenai is pretty standard USA anywhere, so we wandered out of town to another micro brewery, offering free stuff.
Kassik’s Brew Stop is fantastic.
A small sample of six different ales, a very knowledgeable owner, and an exceptionally clean place, all lent themselves to a pleasant half hour supping.
All six ales were good, the best being Roughneck Stout. Very much like a traditional English mild.
This brewery has only been open for a year, and was started after the owner’s wife bought him a home brew kit a few years ago for Christmas. He quit his well paying job at the local refinery, she quit her job locally and they are going well.
So, we had to help the local economy by purchasing three different ales, for home consumption later. We then wandered north on the coast road, past the big oil refinery, which has been here since they discovered oil in 1957, and which produces about 15,000 barrels per day.
We followed directions from one of our guide books, and went to the beach, which has room for about 3 cars, and is all pebbles, and had a fabulous view of the oil rigs in Cooke Inlet with the mountains and volcanoes as a backdrop.
We then trogged off again to a state park further up the road, which was deserted, and had bear warning signs posted all around. So what did we do?
Went into the woods, singing and talking and yelling “Go Bear”( see previous reports) in loud, deep voices.
And, once again, we got about a hundred yards, looked at each other, and did another runner back to the car!!
The weather up here is interesting. One minute we have the AC on, the next we need the heater on. Weird. The advice is to dress in layers, and I’ve found the best sort of pants to wear are light weight Columbia pants, with the zips around the thigh, so I can convert them into shorts instantly, together with a T shirt and waterproof windbreaker thing with a hood.
Of course, Wimpypops wears 500 layers, with scarves and all sorts of unmentionables!!
Wildlife watch today was pathetic, just a noisy squirrel at the campsite.
