After a lovely breakfast, we headed to the Wal-Mart in Wasilla.  We picked up some essentials (more ice, beef jerky, plastic utensils) and bought some food at McDonald’s for lunch even though we were still full from breakfast.

Valerie consulted the gigantic Milepost we have been lugging around and found Iditarod HQ was only a few miles away so we decided to make a stop there. The puppies were fantastically cute! Valerie held one and Bryon enjoyed petting them and distracting them from their naps. We also watched some people ride around on a wheeled sled pulled by a full team of dogs and were able to pet the dogs. After quickly browsing the gift shop we headed back toward the freeway.

Even though we were still full from breakfast and still had the McDonald’s food we’d bought, we also decided to pick up some food from Arby’s due to Valerie’s fear of running out of food in Denali. We are planning to take an 11 hour bus ride tomorrow into the park where there’s no food available at all for purchase (contrast this with Canadian national parks like Banff and Jasper which have entire towns in them). We ended up purchasing 6 Jr. Roast Beef sandwiches for the upcoming tour.

Despite stopping by a Mt. McKinley viewpoint on our drive to the park, we failed to see its famed peak due to the cloud cover. Maybe we’ll have better luck tomorrow. We eventually arrived at the hostel and checked into our Yanert room which is typically a girls dormitory but since we have rented out the whole thing Bryon can stay there too. Tomorrow we will change to one of the Iceworm rooms.

After checking in we drove the 13 miles to the Wilderness Access Center to pick up our bus tickets for tomorrow. We watched an interesting short video on the history of the park, and stopped by 229 Park, the most highly rated restaurant in the Denali area on TripAdvisor. We had a quick dinner at the bar (since the earliest time we could get a table was 8:45pm), and went back to the hostel.

Tonight will be an early night since our tour begins bright and early tomorrow at 7:15am.

Today marks our departure from Homer and the Kenai Peninsula. As we headed out, we finally saw our first wild moose waltzing his way across downtown Homer! While we stared all agog, the locals just continued on their way not even giving the moose a second glance.

Valerie realized that the Islands & Oceans Visitor Center was open after all so we decided to stop in.  This is the first visitor’s center we’ve seen that was run by the US Fish & Wildlife Service, and we could immediately tell this was different from a typical visitor’s center (and much better funded!).  They had elaborate displays on fish, oceans, birds, and wildlife. I wish we had known and stopped in earlier, but I’m glad we did go in before we left. They even advertised free tide pooling, but unfortunately it was for Wednesday, the day we had to be at Denali. We did take the time to hike a short path from the visitor’s center and realized that it went right be our favorite bakery in Homer (Two Sisters Bakery) and took the opportunity to go for the 3rd time in 4 days.  We finally managed to get one of the famous sticky buns, and augmented it with a cinnamon bun and scone. Yum! Afterwards we started our long journey north.

When we got to Soldotna, Valerie discovered that the town has erected “fish walks” alongside the river for observing fish, so we decided to stop by the visitor’s center for a look.  Though it was a little drizzly, we did see 2 fisherman trying to catch salmon.  Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like they were having any better luck than we were trying to see fish.  Even though we didn’t see fish, the fish walk was still an excellent way to get up close to see the world famous Kenai river.  In addition, when we went into the visitor center, we actually got to see the stuffed skin of the largest king salmon ever caught!  It was rather large and impressive, and it was caught in the Kenai river.  We saw a few other fish models and a stuffed wolverine and continued on our journey.

When we got to Cooper Landing we decided to break for a hike.  A couple we had met at the B&B had said that they did the Cooper Landing waterfall hike and actually saw a mother bear fishing for salmon with her cub.  We asked the employee there if there were any fish to view and he encourage us to take the 3 hour hike with the promise that the fish were there and jumping.

We ended up doing the hike even though we were pretty behind schedule due to our slow start in the morning.  At the end of the hike we were rewarded with an excellent view of the waterfall and countless salmon trying (futilely, it seemed) to jump up it!  It seemed like 99% of the salmon were not able to get up the waterfall, so I’m unsure if it was even possible, or how their forefathers (fore-salmon?) had actually made it to the spawning area.  It was still a great experience since we did finally see salmon in the river. Unfortunately, no bear this time. Maybe next time we’ll bring some chairs and just park there for the day. We hiked back to the car and continued on our journey toward Girdwood, where we’d decided to stay for the night at the Alyeska hostel.  Unfortunately we found out when we got there that there weren’t any rooms left.  In addition, the Alyeska tram we had planned to take wasn’t in operation! That’s a double Alyeska fail for us. It was the first time we hadn’t made any reservations and tried to wing it. Fortunately for us, when Valerie called a B&B in Wasilla (our other choice of lodging), they actually answered the phone and were able to take us in with very short notice.

Around 20:30, we arrived in Wasilla at the Pioneer Ridge B&B and were shown to the rustic cabin we had booked. The cabin had electricity, but no running water and no heater. There was a wood stove which we were shown how to use, and we attempted to get the wood to light. After many fits and starts, we did finally get a good fire going and then went into the main house to use the restroom and shower facilities. Normally this isn’t a big deal, but it happened to be pouring rain that night so it became kind of a pain going back and forth. The facilities were very nice and clean though, and the cabin was very cute and fun to stay in so it was still worthwhile.