Magnificent Kenai - Kenai Peninsula in Alaska

Sunset, April, 1999 by Steven R. Lorton

Salmon and stories

It's in the central Kenai, on the drive between Seward and Homer, that you get the greatest sense of the peninsula as Alaska-in-miniature and can savor the spirit of the locals. At roadside restaurants halibut steaks are served on buns like hamburgers. Breakfasts, beers, and first-person stories are generous. We met a nurse from Philadelphia who packed up and moved to the Kenai, sight unseen. Now she waits tables, hikes, and sells her watercolors. When asked her name, she drew back, a wry, sassy smile stretched across her face. "You can call me Pretty." How does she handle the winter, which begins in October and lasts through April? "I survive. I fly to Mexico for a month every year after Christmas. But I wouldn't leave the Kenai for love nor money, even if I couldn't get out all winter."

The first sighting of the Kenai River comes as the road turns toward Cooper Landing. Filled with glacial silt, the river is startling in its turquoise brilliance. The stretch of river - 17 miles between Kenai and Skilak lakes - cuts through the 2-million-acre Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. This route offers postcard-perfect vistas of the Kenai Mountains and sightings of the peninsula's dense and diverse wildlife population, including bears, moose, wolves, Dall sheep, and lynx - not to mention king salmon that can exceed 80 pounds.

Beyond the town of Soldotna (a good place to buy supplies), landscape and vegetation change dramatically. The evergreen black spruces become stunted and stubby-branched. The Kenai birches are similarly diminished. This is the muskeg, a high-plateau bog where wet, acidic soil and deposits of decaying vegetable matter result in a dwarf forest that resembles a natural garden of bonsai. About the time the display gets monotonous, the road curves, begins to drop again, and heads toward Homer.

Homer: Mardi Gras north

From the town of Kasilof south, State Highway 1 hugs the coast. You glimpse the Cook Inlet. The road curves and opens into a large turnout. Stop. Get out your camera. Walk to the rail. You'll notice people aren't talking much. They're just staring straight ahead, as people do at the Grand Canyon. Stunning is the accurate adjective here.

Beyond the inlet's dark blue water, the Aleutian Range soars, immense and snowcapped. To the north rise Mt. Iliamna and Mt. Redoubt, both more than 10,000 feet tall. Mt. Redoubt awoke a decade ago from volcanic slumber and has been periodically puffing out columns of ash ever since. Look to the southeast and you see the town of Homer and, sticking out about 5 miles into Kachemak Bay, the low sliver of land known as the Homer Spit.

Homer was founded on the spit in 1898 by Homer Pennock, a New York adventurer who arrived high on gold fever and low on know-how. He and his Alaska Gold Mining Company didn't build much of a reputation for prospecting, but they built the town.

Homer's population grew incrementally: fishing families, homesteaders, and a wave of young, post-Vietnam Americans all came in search of a simpler life; now tourists return to make their homes here. In short, Homer is a little melting pot in the top left corner of the great American melting pot.