July 23 - Quartz Creek campground, Kenai

We got to Quartz Creek early in the afternoon and got lucky in grabbing the one remaining site where we could stay for more than one night. This in another wonderful Forest Service campground, with level, widely separated spaces. We are a few hundred feet from Kenai Lake and Quartz Creek runs behind the campground. There’s a boardwalk and viewing platforms over the creek, where the “other” fishermen are fly fishing for rainbow trout and Dolly Varden trout.

We drove back along the road to the Russian River Ferry, where we had seen a lot of fishermen in the river. I took a picture of them lined up along the river and laughed about “combat fishing.”
“Oh, no”, said a guy near me. “This is tame because the runs are light right now. When it gets really going, there will be 5 times that many people out there. That’s combat fishing.”

We scanned the banks for signs of bear, and Gerry caught a quick look at one as it vanished into the underbrush. Then we drove out to a gravel road that cuts down into the wildlife preserve. It was a scenic drive, but we saw no signs of animals at all. Gerry really wants to get a good look at brown bears, so he has been disappointed at their shyness.



This is Skilak Lake. All the dark gray water at the base of the mountains is glacial water that was explosively released when an ice dam gave way and emptied the large lake that had formed at the face of the Skilak glacier.