Rafting the Kenai River

 

A portion of our tour group.  We made for a pretty motley crew.  

Blue sky this morning!
Loving the sun!
A 45-minute drive to Cooper’s Landing on the Kenai River.   Our departure point for our 10-mile rafting excursion.
There is a reason we are dressed head to toe in warm waterproof gear.   The Kenai River is all glacier melt and might mighty cold.

All dressed up and somewhere to go!

One of our rafting guides giving us the safety briefing.   Note the tee shirt and flip flops.   These Alaskans are just weird…


Our boat captain, Mary Anne in tee shirt and shorts.
Sort of like white water, but colder.
You can’t see it in the photo, but the cottonwood trees were in full bloom and snowing their cotton everywhere.  It really did look like a snowstorm.


Local sport fisherman, flycasting for salmon.


That is one momma duck and a whole lotta chicks.  Reportedly, ducks will mentor other duck’s chicks when their moms are out feeding, or die, or whatever.   The adopting momma won’t feed the other chicks, but she will teach them how to hunt and survive.  That is pretty cool.

Ahh, warmth!   But now I smell like campfire…
One of our fellow tourists teaching us all how to make the perfect s’more. 
On the road back to Anchorage.

Karen & I took a walk around Anchorage .  This is a nice park just a few blocks south of the main downtown area.
Karen, getting up close with a whale.
Looking across the Knik Arm towards Denali.   I have no idea if that big mountain is Denali or not, but I am told that you can see Denali on a clear day (a rarity around here).

The Iditarod runs through this street in downtown Anchorage.   There are statures of the dogs and the sidewalks have dog paw stars (like Hollywood Stars).




Dinner tonight was at the Tent City Taphouse.  Pretty darn good too.

Anchorage was founded during a gold rush (there were many gold rushes up here) and setup with tents as they were expedient and cheap.  It wasn’t until a number of years later that formal buildings replaced the tents.

Those buildings were all destroyed in the 1964 9.2 mega-earthquake.   The city has since been rebuilt, but nothing we make will withstand a quake of that magnitude that lasts for 4.5 minutes.

Good Night!

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 7, 2026 at 10:03 PM

    Those boat captains! It’s the converse of the hotel workers in Cancun wearing Christmas sweaters in the 75° weather of January!

    Cool trivia about the ducks. 💕 We should all take care of our neighbors’ kids! -CM

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJuly 7, 2026 at 10:05 PM

    Holy cow! I missed the last few blog days until just now! Man, I want to go back to Blue Redd and Alaska! Live these posts. Love the adventure. Will get back to my morning blog check for vicarious living. Love you guys….and the salmon …. Even when they spilled in the road. Medium rare? Have fun! Susan Wimer

    ReplyDelete

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