July 22, 2018
This morning I headed out at 6am and drove slowly making my way back to Russian Waterfalls. I decided to stop in Ninilchik and visit the Russian Church. This historic church was built in 1901 by the Russian immigrants who moved here.
I took a side road called Kalifornsky Beach Road, north to Kenai. Love the road name. LOL
I then took a gravel road called Skilak Lake Road that loops back onto the Sterling Highway. This gravel road had some amazing views.
On the Skilak Lake Road, I stopped at this one look-off, called Hidden Creek Overlook. I decided stop here to have breakfast and enjoy the view.
There was one mobile unit parked there and had stayed there overnight. They came out and we chatted for about half an hour. Paul was in the US navy as a deep-sea diver and after 5 operations could not dive anymore. He retired and is living the dream. It was a nice visit.
I made it to the state park to asked them where the parking was to go see the Russian Falls. She said that it would be $11.00 to park there! I said I didn’t need to see the falls that badly. Imagine! $11.00 to park to walk a short distance to see the falls … outrageous! There were many other hikes you could do in the area, but I decided I would continue on to Seward which was only an hour away.
I saw a side road that was quite well hidden and had to turn around to go back to it. It ended up down by a lake and there were a few people camping here. I went to the beach and took a few photo’s, such a beautiful view.
I entered Seward and stopped at the information place. She told me of a couple camping grounds that I could stay at … one was right in the town and the other one was about a mile and a half passed the town. It turned out that the town campsite was only $10.00 a night for a tent! The other campground cost $27.00 a night. The interesting thing was that the town campsite had pay showers and flush toilets, a luxury for all the camping I have been doing for the last few weeks. LOL
I got set up and hiked the boardwalk into town, a very nice hike.
There was a cruise ship in the harbour which added some more excitement in the town.
Something I noticed that was quite a great idea I had noticed at Homer and Seward was the free use of life jackets for children. The sign above it read, "Kids Don't Float". What a brilliant idea.
There were some interesting placards along the walk. One was about the earthquake that happened in 1964 that they call Alaska's Good Friday Earthquake. The earthquake had a brief magnitude of 9.2 making it the second most powerful earthquake ever recorded. The earthquake caused a large number of tsunami’s which caused destruction in Anchorage, Valdez, Whittier, Seward and Kodiak. There were approximately 140 people who were killed by this natural disaster. Valdez water town site was abandoned after this and moved to a safer location. The waterfront in Seward was declared unfit to rebuild. The boardwalk and campgrounds is where part of the town used to be.
