Second morning, still at the Cabin on the Cliff, I am having coffee on the deck - of course! - and hear a bird chirping. Light chirping, sounds like a small bird, so I open Merlin on my phone to see what it is - Merlin says: "Bald Eagle"... (!?..) This is highly doubtful, but then Merlin is usually pretty good, so I start looking around. And what do you know? - literally above my head!..
OK, so the day started right.
Next, we checked out of our cabin... let me post the photo of our car here, since I haven't done it earlier...
... and drove North along Herman Leirer Rd. towards Exit Glacier. First, there is a glacier viewpoint.
Then, after you drive to the very end of the road, you come to a visitor center and parking, and from there it is an easy 1-mile hike (each way) towards the glacier.
Along the trail, you can see signs - because the glacier is constantly receding - so the signs map where the glacier was in such-and-such year. For example, if you'd visited in 2005, the edge of the glacier would have been right here... but as you see, now it is far away.
And this is the the end of the trail - you are not allowed to go any farther. However, if your camera has a good zoom, you can pretend that the glacier is closer than it really is.
And you can also look back towards the "braided river" - which is how glacier run-off generally looks like in Alaska.
So this was two miles of hiking, after which we got back into our car and drove to Cooper Landing. This is a small town on the banks of Kenai River, where we were going to spend the night and do a river float tomorrow.
But first, we made two short stops: Kenai Lake...
... and Tern Lake.
After which, we did the Russian River Falls hike, that's 2.5 miles each way. The hike is quite famous and highly publicized, but I am still thinking what made me agree (and even volunteer) to do another 5 miles, on top of the previous 2... that's 7 miles just hiking!!! plus miscellaneous other walking, I finished the day with 22,000 steps, or 9 miles... it was rough.
Still, the walk in the woods was quite pleasant.
And these are apparently the Russian Falls...
No photos of salmon jumping up the falls, to go up the river for spawning, and no bears... It's the end of the salmon season, we saw some of them at the bottom of the falls but didn't see them jump (although some people we met on the trail said they saw a few salmon jumping) - and also we met a guy with two dogs on the trail, and he said he saw a bear about half-mile before he met us. (Probably the dogs alerted him. We were keeping an eye out for the bear, but didn't see anything.) Alik was very much hoping we'd see a bear on this trail (and he was carrying a can of bear spray, for whatever that's worth) - but he was disappointed. I wasn't... I prefer seeing my bears from a bus, or car.
Anyway, we finished the hike and checked into our hotel, Kenai Princess Wilderness Lodge.
We had dinner at their restaurant, Rod & Reel - it was quite good, as far as I remember - for some reason can't find any pictures of the dinner, but here is a photo of me having coffee on the deck of our cabin next morning, before leaving for the river float.
> Day 3
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