#sheltierv

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July 17 Anchorage

We bid goodbye to the Kenai Peninsula, which has been our home for the past month and head back to Anchorage for supplies, bike rides, and hit the breweries that we missed the first time.  We got to Ship Creek Park (all parks in Anchorage suck, this one appears to suck a little less than the Golden Nugget) and got settled in.  The site is narrow but long and we back up to the railroad tracks – great fun during the day, but at 2am not so much.    We are basically at the start of downtown near the RR station, so we hop on the bikes and head for the Tony Knowles Coastal bike trail again.  Nice day, early morning clouds give way to sun.  After our ride we head over to King Street Brewery, and sample the brews which were pretty good, we got a 6 pack of Hef.  I had a haircut appointment while D went to Costco since our fridge is pretty bare.  Shocked her as I decided to get a pretty short cut, so I would not have to do it again. 

After dinner we walked back to downtown and went to another brewery,  the Sleeping Lady which is part of a downtown restaurant.  The view was excellent (view of the inlet and bay) beer was ok, but not as good as King Street.  With that we call it a night.

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July 11 Seward

Ah the rain, teases you into thinking it will soon stop, but it keeps on drizzling.  That sums up the day.  Raining in the morning, so we packed the car and headed into town, hoping to catch some breaks.  It kept drizzling so we decided to walk the town instead of a bike ride.   Seward’s downtown is relatively small (about 4 blocks of one street) but they have a nice waterfront path. As we were passing by the local bank a lady comes out and tells us she has 2 shelties and invites Abby into the Bank for a visit.   We talked and she gave us her number to arrange a “play date” for Abby and her dogs. 

Since mother nature was not going to cooperate, we called another audible and headed to the SeaLife Aquarium (built from Exxon Valdez spill trust funds).   Very nice aquarium lots of displays, re-hab animals including playful otters and a sea lion, and tanks with all the various native marine life. 

Back at camp the rain had stopped, all the puddles were dry and you could start to see the surrounding mountains coming out of the clouds. 

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July 6 Soldotna

Today we have an educational opportunity of the fun type.  There is a place nearby called “Three Guys No Wood” (more on the title later) that teaches woodworking classes.  In a half day we are going to learn to make a bowl from a tree stump.  The “school” is a well provisioned shop made out of a log home.  Our instructor puts us each at a lath, gives us some very large and sharp tools and while I was expecting a disaster (at least with my wood) in the end we created what I think are 2 very nice bowls.  Though we would both like full credit for the hard work, our instructor jumped in to safe us and correct our mistakes many times. We ran about an hour over the designated time, but he kept us moving along.  It was a long day (or half day) but a lot of fun and well worth it.

After we headed to Kenai to play ball with Abby, eat diner at a great little Mexican Restaurant (Playa Azul) – yes more good Mexican in Alaska.  Then we went swimming at the Nikiski Pool (Nikiski is the little town that has all the oil refineries) which was crowded but still a lot of fun. 

Oh almost forgot, the 3 guys title.  They started in Barrow AK where there are no trees (get it?).

Tomorrow we head back to Cooper Landing for a few days (and more hot tubbing).

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July 2 - Soldotna

Took the extra long 90 minute (we took our time to do 70 miles) trip from Homer to Soldotna.  Our RV park is a cute little (only 29 spots)  place on the outskirts of Soldotna.   After setting up we headed out to do a little discovery for bike paths (they don’t talk about them in any literature) and found that they have them paralleling all the highways.  We ended up in Kenai and took the bikes out for a ride around the old town area.  Alaska towns are interesting in that only the really old ones have a downtown area, others like Kenai are spread out all over the place with no central downtown area.   After our ride we did the ultimate tourist event…we shopped at the new Wal-Mart.