"Russian Falls"

9 Jul 2015--I am 2 days behind with the blog...our days are totally thrown off by all this daylight, I think.  We are getting much later starts to the day than usual, and not getting home till 9-10 at night, so we are off our game.  haha

Anyway, on Monday we traveled from Anchorage to Soldotna, where we are staying for a week. Here are just 2 pics of the scenery getting here...pretty, but not enough to demand more than a couple entries.  haha



Tuesday we headed out to "Old Town Kenai" and saw our first sightings of Caribou.  They are a little grainy because they were a good distance off the road, but the 1st pic actually has a mom and baby in it, with the baby to the right of the frame.




We have no idea what this bird is called, but its' eyes are bordering on creepy!  haha



One of the highlights of this trip was supposed to be this old Russian Orthodox Church.  The Russian community dates back to 1841, but the church was built in 1893...it was much smaller than we expected, and generally inside holds a weekly crowd of only 25-40 people.  I asked the priest if this was an off-shoot of Catholicism, but he said it was the other way around...haha.  He immediately showed me a timeline of the church, going back to the beginning and showing the "Great Schism" where the Catholics broke off from them over the primacy of the pope and something to do with adding a couple words to the Nicene Creed without an Ecumenical Council.  I will have to ask Sister Helen about this when I talk to her again!  haha




So then we went for a 5-mile round trip hike in the Chugach National Forest, to the Russian Falls, where we were hoping to see some salmon running and maybe some bears trying to catch them. Well, we saw the salmon, anyway!




Cathy spliced together several movie clips to make one here that lasts almost 3 minutes.  Most of the bigger fish jumping happen in the last minute, so hang in there, there are some good ones!

Cathy and I trekked down a little further to get to the level of the water in hopes of seeing an even better view of the fish jumping, but while it was pretty, the angle didn't make much difference...haha. Ellen stayed up on the deck; I keep trying to get her to go that one step further, but overall she is doing good, so I don't bother her much.  haha  The weather warmed up over the course of the day, so she was pretty tired after this 5 miler!  haha

 


Stopped on the ride home to see a lot of people fishing here, and caught this eagle directly above us in the parking lot/boat launch area.  If you blow up the 1st pic you can see the eagle directly above Ellen's left shoulder, but it's easier to it in the 2nd pic after I zoomed in...haha.  I didn't realize I had put my camera on a special setting when I  took the 3rd pic and it gave me a black and white version. Nice, huh?



We keep waiting for the blockbuster blog...we know there are lots of bears just around the next corner, so we are still hopeful!  Maybe we should start titling the blog "In Search Of..."!