Remember the yearly get together we usually do around the end of summer?
Well… this year was certainly turning out differently due to Covid-19. I created a Facebook event and put out the idea of getting together for a outdoor weekend of camping so we might get to see each other along with being able to practice social distancing. I planned it for the first weekend of August, when Salmonfest would have happened this year. Laura and I planned the event so that afterwards we could then continue on our August trip we had planned.
After the passage of plenty of time and a lack of response, it was apparent the writing was on the wall; not this time.
One of my friends did contact me about wanting to do it though, and opted in to go camping with us for that weekend! Laura and I volunteered to go travel the Soldotna / Kenai area to see if we could find a free spot that could accommodate his request: A camping spot that would accommodate not only The Ohana, but his truck with a slide-in camper and his parents truck towing a 26 foot trailer. 😳
Talk about looking at things from a different angle! Laura and I had purchased The Ohana for the freedom of being able to fit into spots that didn’t require a lot of parking length- so this was going to be fun! 😆
Laura and I were hoping to find and area that wouldn’t require a ton of driving down beat up dirt roads that would jostle the Ohana to pieces; recollecting of our Morel Mushroom hunting experience.
So we decided to go up the road to scope out campsites the weekend before; and this is is the story of our little trip.
So we left that Friday, to this lovely weather, and we headed up Baycrest Hill out of town.
As we pulled away from Homer, and being right by the ocean, the fog cleared up as we drove a little further inland.
We made a point to stop by the gas station in Ninilchik, where Laura scooped up one of our unhealthy guilty pleasures they served there: A Redbull Slushie.
We opted to use the first night to go scope out an area we had been particularly interesting in checking out; The Captain Cook State Park. So we cruised on through Kenai, and then up through Nikiski.
In Nikiski, we decided to turn down and check out Nikishka Beach Road. As we reached the end of it we came upon this:
Cool! There was a nice access heading down the hill to a pretty sweet parking area right on the beach.
We checked around to see if it would be a viable spot for our criteria, and it was.
So we had one on the list.
Afterwards we continued on North of Nikiski to The Captain Cook State Recreation Area.
When we arrived at the roads end, we turned left and drove down towards the beach, and scoped out a nice little day parking area.
After looking it over we drove into the campground a little further back and across the way, which was all pay-to-play, as well as not right on the beach. Close, but no cigar!
So we decided to drive down past this sign we had seen.
That’s where we found our spot. Down the steep grade was another parking area that would fit the bill.
And that’s where we chose to settle in for the night. ☺️
The next morning we packed our coffee cups and headed out for a good beach walk.
By the way, we found these really cool collapsible silicone coffee cups:
The nice part about them is that once you are done with your coffee they just compress down, and you can slip the cup in your pocket or clip it to your belt or bag rather than have to carry it around with you. Plus they take up next to no room in the RV cabinet. 😉
And no- we are not sponsored by Wish (Or Anyone 😂), we just really like the cups. 😄
So we walked the beach that morning, enjoying the cropping of large rocks along the beach.
I had seen a picture of a building that was built off the top of one of these large rocks in this park, so my personal goal was to see it that day.
We didn’t find the building…
But that was okay! We had a wonderful walk on a serenely peaceful beach surrounded by hulking interested sculptures of stone. Check out this one!
After we enjoyed our walk we packed up and headed back down the road. There was another decent place to camp (a bit further from the water though) if you took a right instead of a left down the beach access road. So with that we had found 3 decent places to camp.
On our way back down we stopped by the Nikiski Community Recreation Center, which looked like it offered a ton of outdoor activities. There was a disc golf course there- so we thought that might be a fun thing to do the next weekend with our friends.
While we were passing through Kenai again we hunted potential camping spots and decided to hit a few stores- so the first stop was Home Depot.
An issue we had been working on, and trying to fix for a long time, was the our large window over the couch.
The original screen was missing, and Tim had just bolted a square screen frame over it which didn’t help much. So I had built a screen using magnets to contour and hug to the inside of the window, remember this from last December?
Well the window screen had held up fine, it was just the edge of screen that wasn’t magnetized to a windows edge. It tended to billow out a little, allowing bugs to find their way in over the sliding glass portion of the window. This became an annoyingly apparent issue when we were swarmed in The Mosquito Bowl.
So in the mean time I had tried to use window seal gasket to fill the gap, but it wasn’t doing the proper job. I had experimented with lots of different gasket placements, but determined that the last side of the screen simply needed some rigidity. Next I was going to play with the idea of using a door sweep and modifying to attach to that last screen edge. I just hadn’t found the right one yet.
Well, one day when working on The Ohana I noticed a channel that ran around the outside of the window, on the outside of the window! I had spent all of my time looking inside that I had never noticed it. So I made a plan that if I could use a rigid single strand of black electrical wire and build a frame with it, attach the screen to it, and the fit it in this channel it would completely seal the screen in from all sides! So at Home Depot we bought our wire.
Next we went by Walmart. Laura and I had talked and knew that if we were going to be traveling a lot in our future, anything could happen. We decided we needed to take a firearms course and pack appropriately before our big trip around the country. Until that happened though, I had started to toy with the idea of investing in a sling shot. So we went to buy one while we were here, and got talked into trying a product called The Pocket Shot.
It wasn’t too expensive, so we bought it and a box of ammo, deciding we would try it out. After all, it was a super compact method of carrying some protection.
Our trip would then take us to Soldotna, where we would spend the rest of our day checking out places to camp in the area all of the way up to Sterling.
No- we didn’t take any pictures of this endless day of driving around… 😩
We learned that the Kenai and Soldotna area IS ALL PAY TO PLAY. This is not a boondock for free area, at least that we found. (Maybe using a boondocker share site might yield better results in the future)
You must go North or South from this area if you are looking for free spots. So eventually we threw in the towel, and resigned to staying in the Fred Meyer parking lot in Soldotna for our second night; which is the one place aside from Walmart that is free RV parking friendly.
The next day we took it pretty easy, and went to the park in the middle of Soldotna. I had stopped here before with my daughter’s class on field trips, but I had never noticed this beautifully built stair system and boardwalk paths down the hill and along the river.
The sun had started beaming out from between the clouds, giving the thus far very gray weekend a nice Sunday sunshine finale.
All along the walkway were sets of stairs for people wanting to fish to wade out into the gorgeous Kenai River. Laura and I were not out to fish on this day, be we took advantage of many of these stair sets to sink our feet into the water and enjoy it’s cool and refreshing embrace.
We walked from one end of the board walk to the other, watching the water pass by methodically and decided this might be a nice stop along our next weekend.
Minus what plans that might form from what we could find on our way back down the peninsula, we thought we had an okay tentative plan at this point for the next weekend.
We would would head to the Captain Cook State Park. If the weather was really nice we could stop by the park in Soldotna for a nice river walk and dip along the way. We would camp up in Captain Cook State Park for a couple of nights and hit the Nikiski Community Recreation Center on our way down for some outdoor fun. It sounded like a nice plan.
So we continued on, like the bear that went over the mountain, so we could see what we could see.
Once again we found most of the peninsula south of Soldotna to be all pay to play. (Minus highway turnoffs- Alaska is pretty good about providing those for free camping)
We decided to check out the beaches in Ninilchik. On one end we found a beautiful spot by the harbor, and it was a perfect day to enjoy it.
The only downfall to camping in this area would be the wind. The wind ran very powerfully along this beach. But it was a gorgeous view.
We drove out and checked out the other side of Ninilchik, and I realized I had never been down to this beach access.
It was a lot more wide open with plentiful and awesome camp spots, just pay to play. On the way back up the hill from the beach I attempted another rear view mirror shot. It didn’t turn out too bad!
Here… let me zoom in a little for ya!
Further down the road Laura and I found a nice little quarry area. We decided to spend awhile learning how to use our pocket shot.
At first we were not very good- but after some practice we were doing alright! I decided I still wanted to invest in a slingshot though as well, and see if it might provide a bit more power, and a bit more accuracy.
The rest of the ride went smoothly! Down the whole rest of the peninsula it was an amazing day, with fireweed adorning the sides of the road.
It wasn’t too long until we were cruising down a much more beautiful version of Baycrest when comparing it to the one we had driven up that Friday.
Home sweet home again!
We had a lot of the details for our next weekend tentatively lined out- and as always got to enjoy some magical moments along the way. 😀
Geoff Murphy 9/24/2020
Forgot about that weekend trip, good job!! 😁