Between the new pillows from Costco and learning that you need to use stabilizer jacks so that your slide out is not leaning, makes for a much better night’s sleep. Today I was able to sleep in until 7:00am before getting up. Portage Valley Cabins & RV Park have excellent clean showers which let us conserve water but primarily we used them since it is much bigger than the shower in the RV.
After enjoying breakfast outside, we got everything packed up and it was time to hit the road. Before leaving, we decided that we should dump the RV tanks. For first time RV’ers, I think we did pretty good. Nobody got splattered on, so I consider that a success.
Lucky for us, our first stop of the day was only a two minute drive. The Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center is a 140 acre park dedicated to the rehabilitation of orphaned or injured animals. We spent a couple of hours walking around and checking out all of the different kinds of animals. The center has everything from moose to elk to wood bison to wolves and my personal favourite, the bears. The bear viewing area is an elevated walkway that goes over the enclosure and it gives you a great view of both the black bears and the brown bears. Having the RVs makes it so convenient. We when got finished with one part of the park, we headed back and had lunch before finishing up the rest of the park. By this time, it was close to 4:00pm and so we got back on the road for the two hour drive to Soldotna.
Yesterday we were supposed to go to Crow Creek Mine to try our hand at gold panning. Since we ran out of time, we decided to stop at Prospector John’s in Cooper Landing to see if we could strike it rich. The way it works is that you buy a bucket of pay dirt that you run through a sluice box. Once you finish sluicing, the box is cleaned out and the gold is tallied. Now I have watched alot of gold mining on TV and thought this would be a piece of cake. But boy was I wrong. The hardest part I found was getting the last bit of gold using the gold pan. It is hard work swishing around the water and making sure you do not wash away any gold. Steve and Linda, Michael and Liam and Karen and I each ran a bucket of dirt. I think in the end we ended up getting about twelve flakes of gold. It was so much fun and I have a new respect for Parker Schnabel.
Before arriving at Kenai Riverfront Resort ($51.50 USD / night), we made a stop at Fred Meyer in Soldotna to stock up on groceries. We are staying here two nights so we wanted to make sure we had enough food. Kenai Riverfront Resort is like it’s name suggests, right on the bank of the Kenai River. By the time we got here, it was 9:30pm so we put together a quick dinner which we enjoyed by the water. The night ended with late night fishing (just pass midnight) for some while others just headed for bed.
Today’s miles = 112.2
Total miles = 178.4
Those so called wild animals are known to be sashquashes, so beware. They have been shaved to resemble human boys, so watch out for they are known to attack without warning. BEWARE !!!!!!!!