7/30/12 SOLDOTNA, AK

Our mail arrived Saturday so we left homer and are now dry camping in Fred Meyers parking lot.  Fred Meyers is a grocery store chain.  This one in Soldotna is very RV friendly.  They welcome overnight parking for up to 3 nights and have a dump and water fill up station you can use for free.  We’ll stay 2 nights. They happen to be having a festival this weekend.  We walked from our RV ½ mile down to the park to the festival.  The Kenai River winds through Soldotna in a semi circle and can be accessed from many areas in town.  The city has built a steel boardwalk along much of the river.  Norm and I walked along the boardwalk and stopped many times to watch fishermen reeling in nice size fish.  Not sure but they look like silver salmon.  The river is so swift it takes time and strength to reel them in against the current.  I can’t believe how many fish were being caught.  This town is packed with people, mostly fishermen with Alaska license plates.  We see many parked in their car or truck in the Fred Meyers parking lot over night.  Sunday we drove 10 miles to the town of Kenai.  Population is about 6,000.  A nice town with a Walmart and a lot less tourist it seems.  We drove around “Old Town” thoroughly enjoying seeing the old homesteaders cabins.  The visitors centers has a large and nice display of stuffed birds, fish and other artifacts. 

Because we are parked in the back of the parking lot we get some noise at night from the semi trucks coming into the loading dock.  Last night was the worst.  We have trailers parked all around us, very close, and they sure made a lot of noise.  We thought we were in the perfect spot, tucked back in the last parking spot away from the highway and commotion of the store.  Not so.  If I were to do it again I would park on the other side of the store.  Oh well, still living and learning.  Today we’ll move on toward Talkeetna. 

Soldovia had amazing tree carvings all through town.

Pulling in salmon left & right.

Fishermen lined up along the river bank.