Seward to Ninilchik

We head out of Seward totally understanding why Leeann had decided to move here and spend a couple years living here. It is really a quiet little town with an influx of tourists in the summer but with a true local community at its center. It’s a working town not completely based on tourism. We really enjoy the pace and atmosphere here and, once again, think how easy it would be to hang out here a bit longer. Alas, we head north out of town and stop by The Pit Bar one more time to see Shelly. We ask for her at the bar but they haven’t heard from her since she left for the football game. They don’t seem to worried. They just figure she had a REALLY good time and will come back when she is ready. We get on the road and start retracing our tracks north (once again… the road goes in and stops so we have to go out the same way) and head North. It is already early evening when we leave and Susan has scoped a campground not far out of town where we can get a shower and do laundry. This has become a pattern for us here… camp in the bush for free most of the time but then find a pay-to-stay campground where we can get an internet connection, a real shower and reload on clean clothes. It is great being so self-contained where we can stop anywhere and have full power (12v DC & 120v AC) as well as hot water, shower and toilette all in our little Thumper. Our destination is Bear Creek, which is still open and will wait for our arrival. Susan checks in and finds that the young lady (probably 20 or so) behind the desk is the oldest of 9 children and is in charge of her siblings while the parents are on an anniversary getaway for a couple days. She looks kind of beat but cheerfully gets us set up. We pull into our spot and get comfortable for the night.

The day dawns bright and clear on the Kenai Peninsula, a place that Susan has wanted to visit for many years. It is a mystical landscape, the way the tree covered mountains rise out of the waters and the small streams cut deep canyons in the bedrock and create tall waterfalls almost everywhere you look. The fog hangs low and cuts the mountains in half so the tops just float in mid-air and appear much taller than their listed 3000’.

There is a side road. Really. It is a little by-pass that takes an alternate route for about 17-miles before dumping us back on the original road. There was a trail down to a lake that Susan read about was about half-way along the road so off we went ready to take a hike. The trail takes us through the fairly dense woods, across a slope where a fire had burnt years ago and down towards the lake. We met a family that was hiking out and they let us know that there were a lot of bear markings on the trail ahead. We thanked them for the info and continued onto the lake. It wasn't long till we began to see random piles of berry-mush in the trail which is winding it's way towards the lake. The area is pretty wide open due to the fire so we feel comfortable continuing our hike as we could see quite a ways all around. We made it to the lake and began waking along the bank and the number of berry-mush piles grew quite a bit and in both quantity and freshness.

These bears really need to add something else to their diet... seriously. There are rotting salmon and fresh bear tracks all along the beach and Jim is getting to that place of really feeling that we were being watched. The crazy thing about our walk there is that despite the distractions of keeping an eye out for a bear, Susan looks down and finds these rocks all painted up just lying in the beach... one is painted up with a native bear design and another had the word "Love" painted on it. Such a random find on this beach full of rocks. Susan thanked whoever left these for us and takes them with us as we make our return trip back to Thumper. We never do see the bear that was keeping an eye on us, but we sure know he is close by the whole time.

We don’t think we will make it the whole way to Homer today. When it comes to driving, we have been on the pattern of finding a place to camp somewhere around late afternoon. Jim doesn’t really like the idea of driving at night and with Susan looking (and hoping) to encounter a Moose he doesn’t want to chance it. We have really been enjoying finding a spot and getting settled and then going out on a little walk to stretch our legs and explore the area. Tonight is no different as Susan has done her research and found us what sounds like a great little campground on the Cook Inlet. We drive into the campground to find our spot but we aren’t too impressed with the campsites there. There is a road that goes down towards the beach and turn down that way to see what we find. We discover that the road leads us straight to the water… like right out to the beach. The Inlet is there in front of us and across the miles of water is Mount Redoubt, which is an active volcano and has recently put on a pretty good show. In fact, from this point, we can see 4 active volcanoes along the opposite coastline… quite an impressive sight. We talk to a couple who have been camping out on the beach all summer and they tell us that we can camp anywhere on the beach and point out some good spots. We talk a bit about it and decide to head out on the beach to find a spot.

The “beach” is not like a typical beach where it is all sandy. It is probably 100’ wide at low-tide, with the first 30’ or so made up of small, flat, round stones. This is followed by a 30’ band of mostly sand and then it turns back to the stone down to the waters’ edge. Fishman set up camps out on the beach every year during the fishing season pulling out trailers and boats. It sounds just fine for driving out in a pickup. We turn Thumper towards the beach and head on out to find our spot about a mile up the shore. We didn’t get very far before we found that the beach isn’t really suitable for driving a 9000# camper on and is more sucking us in than holding us up. Jim keeps trying different parts of the beach, from the dryer areas to the wetter, and finds that none of it is good for driving and decides to turn around and get back to the road.

Ya know that sinking feeling in your stomach when you realize you might be getting into a bad situation but already have gone too far to just call it off and have to keep going forward in hopes of getting out of it all without having to call your insurance agent and report some “minor water damage”? Well… let’s just say we were getting to that point. With some effort, Jim gets turned around and heads back towards the exit. We are just getting to that point of “Whew! That was close!” and are turning towards the road when all forward momentum stops and we start sinking into the sand. At this point, Jim thinks that Susan should go out and take some pictures of the event but Susan is battling that sick feeling you get when things just don’t look good at all and you might just end up on the evening news in the “Stupid Things Tourists Do” segment. Jim keeps trying different angles and techniques at getting us back onto solid ground but all attempts end up the same way… tires turning forward but Thumper just digging deeper into the beach. We try 4 or 5 different exit strategies when our camper friend comes over and explains to us how the fishermen get out. “They just back up onto the semi-solid part by the water and get a running start at it”. Ok… let’s try that and see what happens. We back up as far as we can and our friend stands up on solid ground and directs us. Jim gets Thumper moving parallel to the water along the beach and then turns towards the road where we are being directed. Thumper slows in the sand but keeps moving this time. Our camper's female companion, who is sitting in her chair reading a book, pumps her fist and cheers us on as we creep towards the road surface. Susan is still fighting that sicky feeling of seeing Thumper half submerged on the beach as we reach the road and get traction enough to pull us out of the sand. We never do stop to thank our cheerleaders for their help in extracting us off the beach and don’t stop moving until we hit the stop sign at the main road.

We drive south towards the small town of Ninilchik (ni-NIL-chik) to check out an official state campground that is, reportedly, situated on solid ground. We are both still coming down off our adrenaline high as we turned down a road that takes us to the old Russian Orthodox church overlooking the the water. This is a nice diversion from our recent experience and we get out to explore this beautiful church set on top of the hill. There is a trail leading from the church down the hill to the small, simple fishing village. It is a serene setting with the sun getting low and water and mountains in the background. We take a walk around the grounds before heading down to the campground where we hope to kick back and have an adult beverage celebrating our escape from the YouTube archives.

There isn’t too much to see at the end of the road in Ninilchik. It ends up that the campground is pretty much shut down but the camp host, Rick, was still there and finishing up cleaning up the area. Susan asks him if he had one more night in him and he responds, “I’m done here, you can stay all winter if you want.”

We talk to Rick for a while and learn the story of how he ended up as the camp host here 14 years ago. Seems he got kicked off of one beach after spending a month or so there and he moved to this beach. The ranger who kicked him off the first beach found him camped here where he was cleaning up the trash from folks partying on the beach during the past winter. She decided he wasn’t a bad guy and offered him the camp-host position. After hearing the duties expected of him, he accepted and has been spending the summers here ever since. “This is my front yard all summer” he said as he pointed out over the water. Rick has a pretty good life here and then he heads south to Montana to snowboard all winter. Susan and Jim try to figure out if they can get their name on the list to be the next camp-hosts when Rick decided to call it good.

Jim gets a fire going and Susan cooks up her extra-special, “best-fish-on-the-planet”, “Christmas Scampi” Halibut-instead-of-Scallops wonder dish for dinner. Someone up on the hill behind our camp whistled at us. Jim waved at them and we continued tasks at hand but soon we had visitors. Marie and Philip walked down the beach towards our camp. They are the couple that we saw at the camp in Seward and we stopped and talked to on the trail up on Exit Glacier. They recognized Thumper from their camp up on the ridge and decided to come down and say Hi. We invited them to share our camp and fire so off they went to move their camp down to ours. We all spend the evening out on the beach around the fire and getting to know each other.

Turns out, Marie and Philip are from Switzerland, probably around 30 and are on an 8-month journey around the world. They flew into Northern California and bought an older VW bus to drive around on the U.S. leg of their trip. They made it as far as Fort Nelson in Yukon, Canada when it started giving them trouble and now they are waking up each day wondering if it will start. “The engine is broken” is what the mechanic told them. It needed to be replaced, but they couldn’t afford that, so they decided to just keep going until they can’t anymore. We have a great night of talking and sharing and trying to keep warm around our fire before calling it a night and heading to bed.

We wake up to a cold morning and invite our new friends over for breakfast, coffee and a warm place to start the day. They are taking it as it comes, but Marie is starting to find the autumn temperatures a bit hard to live with in the bus. And now they are headed to Denali, in hopes of seeing the mountain before winter sets in there. Hmmmm, it's going to be waaaaayyyy colder up there. Thanks to Rick, we've inherited a pile of good, dry wood so we help them load it up in the van & give Marie a pair of extra thick wool socks. The night before we had taught them about heating rocks on the fire to warm their sleeping bags. So wishing them luck we send them on their way and head out to find Homer.