Kenai, Alaska

July 17, 2018

The Seward Highway links Anchorage with Kenai via the Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet with the base of the Chugach Mountains to the north and the Kenai Mountains to the south. The Kenai Peninsula features beautiful scenery and excellent fishing and is called the playground of south-central Alaska and is a favorite destination for Alaskans and visitors alike. The Turnagain Arm is a 48-mile long estuary stretching from the mouth of the Placer River to the head of the Cook Inlet. It was named “Turnagain River” by Captain James Cook in 1778 when he discovered the arm had no eastern outlet and he had to “turnagain” and retrace his path.

The Kenai Mountains across the Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet.

Mount Aspenglow.

The Spencer Glacier.

The Kenai River.

The city of Kenai in centrally located on the western Kenai Peninsula about 160 miles southwest of Anchorage. Kenai is as far west as Hawaii and about the same latitude as Oslo or Stockholm. Our campground was located high on a bluff overlooking Cook Inlet at the mouth of the Kenai River. This location was a Dena’ina Athabaskan village when the first Russian explorers arrived in 1741. The Russians built Fort St. Nicholas at Kenai in 1791, the fifth Russian post in Alaska. By the time British explorer Captain George Vancouver visited in 1794, about 40 Russians occupied the outpost. Kenai’s oldest buildings are Russian Orthodox-related: A log rectory building built in 1886 and the Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church built in 1895. Commercial salmon canneries have operated in Kenai since 1888.

Salmon fishermen at the mouth of the Kenai River.

Catching salmon with huge dip nets.

Russian Orthodox rectory (1886).

Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church (1895).

This 1910 photograph shows the church behind a domesticated moose tied to a manger. We have no idea what you do with a domesticated moose.

The Chigmit Mountains are across Cook Inlet to the west. Three of these mountains are active volcanoes, Mounts Redoubt, Iliana, and Augustine.

Mount Redoubt, an active stratovolcano, last erupted March 22, 2009.

Mount Iliana volcano.

Captain Cook State Park 25 miles north of Kenai is rarely visited and we had the park almost completely to ourselves when we hiked out to the beach to look for agates and watch for wildlife.