Into Alaska - Alaska and Points North: Tips and Tales from the Road - page 106

Kenai Peninsula
Just 240 km /170 mi long and 110 km /70 mi wide, the Kenai Peninsula is remarkable for
three things - scenery, grizzly bears and fishing. Actually, the last two always go together
up here because where the fish run, the bears follow.
Scenery first - magnificent mountain peaks glistening with glaciers. The Harding Icefields,
for example, cover an area 50 miles by 30 miles. These glacial earth movers are responsible
for carving out the spectacular fjords and waterways of the Kenai. If you want to view the
Harding Icefields you have two choices - a cruise from Seward or a taxing 8 hour hike with
a 3,000 elevation gain. I'm guessing we are mostly all in for the cruise?
The highway down the peninsula follows the shores of Cook Inlet, offering up breathtaking
views of Alaska's volcanic peaks. Five of them are still active - Mount Redoubt, Mount
Iliamna, Mount Augustine, Mount Spurr and Mount Douglas. I could go on and on, but ba-
sically everything out here is a park or a peak or a wildlife preserve. You just meander from
one photo op to the next.
As to fishing, we watched the biggest salmon we'd ever seen in real life being pulled out of
rivers all over the Kenai. Fishermen tend to congregate though, at Cooper Landing and The
Russian River. This area accommodates them with boat launches and campgrounds and sup-
plies, I spent time talking to one woman from the lower 48 who told me this trip to Alaska