July 24, 2009 - Kenai Peninsula, Alaska

Since we had the entire day here in Cooper Landing, we slept a bit later than usual. Yesterday we made plans to take a six hour rafting tour down the Kenai River. Pamm & Alan chose to go salmon fishing. (They did not catch any fish, but had a wonderful day on the river anyway.......they got to see a brown bear too!!) Gail and I had our usual morning coffee and bagel and were off for the river by 10:15 AM. When we arrived at the tour outfitter, along with 5 other people from the Princess Lodge we were "dressed" for the river ride. We all had to put on a rain suit, rubber boots and a life jacket. All of our belongings, aside from cameras were put into a huge waterproof bag that accompanied us in the large rubber raft. We now set sail for our voyage down the river. Within the first few minutes we saw a rather large bald eagle flying nearby .....very difficult to photograph though. The scenery along the river was outstanding. As we moved down the river a bit, there were literally hundreds of people along the shore in waders, salmon fishing. We saw salmon jumping out of the water as everyone tried to catch them........exciting to see. It did not appear that many of them had luck, but we did see several people catching sockeye salmon or trout. After a bit, the river became more like rapids and we were all glad to have our rain suits on. Unfortunately we did not see anymore wildlife aside from a few more bald eagles. In the early afternoon we stopped off and the guide made us huge sandwhiches from an assortment of things he had in a large cooler on the raft. After lunch we made our way across Kenai Lake for more exhilerating scenery. By 3:30 PM we were done with our journey and we had a van waiting to take us back "home". Overall it was another exciting day in Alaska. The day on the river was beautiful with more and more breathtaking scenery. I am sure that many people do not realize the scope and beauty of our 49th state. It is a place that I believe most people should have a chance to visit during their lifetime. After our wonderful day, we came back to our "cabin", rested a bit and had dinner. Tomorrow we are off to Whittier to board the cruise portion of our trip. We are quite excited about that, but we are very sad to be leaving the land portion of our trip. It has been most exciting and a place we hope to come back to again soon. Hopefully next time we will have an opportunity to spend a lot more time in areas such as
Denali and the Kenai Peninsula, that we personally found most scenic & rewarding.