After Homer we drove to Cooper Landing area and stayed in Cooper Creek Campground for 5 nights. First pit toilet stay of the trip and good thing those don’t bother any of us because our next campground has pit toilets as well. It’s not ideal but hello first world problem. Staying at Cooper Creek we were 5 minutes away from the Russian River for the guys to go fish in. The guys were able to fish everyday either in the afternoon or afternoon and night. The first day fishing Benjamin caught the first fish and everyone was there to see it! Solomon might of laughed out loud when he hit the fish in the head with a rock… :/ It was morbid but funny at the same time. Sadly, they weren’t been able to catch a whole lot of salmon because they kind of ran up the stream the week before and left them with slim pickings :/ Boo… But, Christopher was able to catch us one so we can have a really nice meal or two with that!
The day after we arrived at Cooper Creek we went on a hike/walk to the Russian River Falls where the salmon are pooled at the bottom and are trying to jump up stream. If on
ly you could fish right there J It was pretty cool to see them flopping around and working so hard to get up that little waterfall. Solomon laughed watching the fish jump and land on the rocks. He was on Christopher’s shoulders the majority of the walk but we all enjoyed it for sure. The next day we headed into Seward for a whale/glacier cruise but the seas were 10-12’ seas so…. Yeah…. we were able to reschedule for a few days later. It would’ve been kind of cool to experience such seas for a little bit but 6hrs on a boat with that high was seas did not sound very fun to anyone. They were probably still taking that tour out that day but there was an 80% for a route change.
We already had a dog sled tour booked that we were able to change to that day so we didn’t waste a trip into Seward. They have these, cool golf cart like things with wheels that the dogs pull you on in the summer, since there’s no snow for a sled. All the grandkids and a few adults went for this ride and everyone really enjoyed it! Solomon was yelling telling the dogs how it’s done and when to go! It was really quite funny and I’m so glad I got to see it! It’s a very interesting thing and the dogs look nothing like you think they would but it’s very impressive for sure. There were over 100 dogs and wowee can they make some noise. They are very skinny and called Alaska Sled Dogs, which means they are some kind of cross bread but they never really said what they were. The dogs can burn 10-15,000 calories a day when riding and they eat more food than I’ve ever heard of a dog eating. The howling and barking is so crazy when they are picking the 14 dogs that are going to pull your cart. Once the dogs are selected the 14 of them go crazy until they are told they can go and then all is quiet. The family that runs Ididaride are a family of Iditarod winners. The grandpa, who lives right there by the dogs, moved his family to Alaska to be able to use sled dogs and started the very first Iditarod in the 1970’s. His son and grandson still compete and win race after race. The Iditarod has gone from 20 days to 8 over the last 40 years. It was very exciting and something we won’t forget!
The next day we all had the memorable evening by the lake. Everyone was able to walk all of our camp chairs, food, firewood, kayaks and fishing things down to a big lake where we spent the evening. Benjamin shared a salmon with all of us along with other shared veggies all cooked in the fire as hobo meals. Smores were after to top it all off. Solomon only wanted to be in the freezing lake resulting in changing his clothes two times. It didn’t seem to bother him but it was quite chilly with good breeze going on so being wet was not the best option. Two year olds are weird little people J They would lay down on the rocky beach and keep their legs in the air? Not sure what they were doing but they seemed to enjoy it! Evenings like this remind you of how blessed you are!
