The Kenai peninsula is a large land mass jutting out of south central Alaska, about 2 hours south of Anchorage. You could spend an entire month of the Peninsula and barely scratch the surface of everything there.
We disembarked the ferry in Whittier and drove west to join the Seward highway. This involved going through the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel, the longest in North America at 2.5 miles. A train, then vehicle traffic, travels east at the top of the hour, then it switches at the half hour for the train then vehicles to travel west. In between, it is aired out with jet turbine ventilation. Anyway, we passed through the tunnel and turned south on the Seward highway.
Again, it was raining, so our view on the well-known scenic highway was not as great. We made it to Seward by the end of the day and found an awesome campsite on the banks of the Resurrection river.
The next day, we headed to Exit Glacier, a part of Kenai Fjords National Park. The park is split between land, mostly accessible from Exit Glacier, and sea, accessible by boat from Seward.
In the Exit Glacier area, we hiked the Harding icefield trail, which was around 9 miles total. It was definitely the most strenuous hike we did, but it was awesome. The Harding icefield is the largest in the US at 700 square miles and nearly 4000 ft thick. The hike took us from the valley up past Exit Glacier and overlooking the icefield.
The next day we took a boat from Seward out into the waters surrounding Kenai Fjords National Park. We saw the incredible landscape formed by the ocean, as well as glaciers, Dall's porpoise, sea otters, and fin whales.
The next day, we headed back north on the Seward highway and then west on the Sterling highway, stopping at Skilak Lake in the middle of the peninsula.
Skilak Lake was gorgeous with beautiful turquoise colored water.
We then continued down the western part of the peninsula to Homer.
We went down to the beach and saw about ten bald eagles gathering around the river emptying into the ocean. The eagles, most of them juveniles, were picking out the spawning salmon and feasting on the shore.
As seen on a bumper sticker, Homer is a"quaint drinking town with a fishing problem". Homer is also known as the halibut capital of the world. We went out for a day trip with Homer Ocean Charters to see if it was true. The seas were incredibly rough for fishing with 25mph winds and ocean swells up to five feet. It doesn't sound like a lot, but we were getting tossed around the boat. Three out of the six passengers threw up... but I won't tell you who.
We were successful in our trip- getting our limit of two halibut each. We had the fish processed and shipped home to Arizona for my family to enjoy. We did take out a filet before the processing- William sautéed it that night and it was delicious!
The next day we drove the four hours back to Anchorage. We stopped in Girdwood to check out the little skiing town on the way back. I wanted to do a hike, but predictably, it was raining, so we opted to stay inside.
We returned the Scout to it's owners and headed to the airport for the last part of our journey.
The Kenai peninsula was incredible. If you had limited time in Alaska, I would definitely go there. The beauty, diversity, and variety of things to do was amazing.
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