June 21 - We drove to the Kenai Peninsula. Most of the roads are two-lane and very curvy. It's hard to watch where you are going and view the awesome scenery at the same time. We drove by a spot where they had "combat fishing". The fishermen were standing shoulder-to- shoulder in across the river fishing for salmon. Apparently sometimes here the fishermen and the bears fish side by side. There was a report of a bear wandering around in the parking lot in that area. (We didn't see one while we were there).
We visited one of Doug's county committee people. She has a commercial greenhouse and raises horses. She was giving a riding lesson to a little girl when we arrived. So we got a chance to visit about Alaska farming practices with her husband and tour the greenhouse. He told us a few stories about the regular visits from bears in their area.
We spent the night in Soldotna. The motel was right beside a river. They had a half mile long boardwalk that extended over the marshy area so you could walk right along the river. When we woke up the next morning, we could smell the smoke from a very large fire that had been burning on the Peninsula. There was a light covering of ash on the pickup when we went outside. As we left Soldotna and continued down the Peninsula, we could see the smoke from the fires off in the distance. This photo is not very good, but the high cloud in the back picture is actually a cloud. The large flat could is smoke from the fire. The fire burned over 50,000 acres before is was controlled.
