Cruising to Soldotna

Along the Seward Highway

We left Anchorage the next morning, Father’s Day, after Capt. Larry was surprised by timely calls from both of his boys with Father’s Day well wishes. And Jane’s daughters also sent their greetings. Things are looking up to be a great day! We started our day by heading down the Seward Highway and then taking the Sterling Highway to Soldotna.

Breathtaking views

The Milepost said that most people considered this stretch of road to be the most scenic in Alaska. We couldn’t disagree as the scenery was absolutely stunning.

View by the Seward Highway

The road pretty much followed the eastern shore of the Cook Inlet with beautiful water shots with mountain backdrops.

Signs at Beluga Point

Beluga whales are often sighted in this section of the inlet and we were hopeful that we would spot some. We stopped at Beluga Point which seemed to be the logical place to spot them, but after scouring the water with our binoculars for about 20 minutes and observing that no one else there seemed to be spotting anything, we moved on. In many spots the inlet comes right up to the road and provides some spectacular views, but we repeat ourselves.

More gorgeous scenery

One of the interesting geological events that forever reshaped the Alaskan landscape was the “big” earthquake on Good Friday, 1964. This was a huge earthquake, one of North America’s largest, measuring 9.2 on the Richter scale.

Dead trees from the earthquake

By comparison, the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 is only evaluated at 7.9, and remember, this is a geometric scale, so a little increase in scale produces huge devastation. What this earthquake did along the Cook Inlet coast was drop coastal terrain about 40-50 feet. This resulted in this landscape suddenly being inundated with salt water and killing all of the trees and plants. Evidence of this occurrence can still be seen today with a number of dead trees next to the coast. It was cool to be able to see this.

On the banks of the Kenai River

We came to the junction of the Seward Highway and the Sterling Highway and turned west. We stopped in Sterling for a break, but there wasn’t much to experience. We moved on to Soldotna where we would spend the night, and it turned out to be a nice sized town with a lot more businesses than Sterling. This made us wonder why they called it the Sterling Highway.

At the Soldotna visitor's center

We found our hotel which turned out to be a first class accommodation (someone was looking out for us!) and then checked in with the “bush plane” people to verify that we were in town and needed flight service over to Lake Clark, N.P. the next morning. We went to the Soldotna visitor's center to get the local scoop, then wandered by the banks of the Kenai River, a heavily fished salmon king salmon river, for a few photos. After that and being Father’s Day, Jane took her captain to dinner. We had a great evening and got our bags repacked for our short excursion into Lake Clark.

Happy Father's Day Opa and Capt. Larry