Rain, Again (Wednesday, August 12, 2009) Our luck ran out with respect to clear weather, as it rained all yesterday, last night, and this morning traveling the short distance to Kenai. We noticed some tire wear on the front tires in Seward, and had an appointment in Soldotna to have them aligned. They rotated the tires, and called and said the upper and lower ball joints were loose, needed replacing, and alignment would be worthless. At $1400 and several days wait, we decided to test our warranty and will have Ford check the ball joints. Since we had to unhook the Saturn, Kay took advantage of the extra time and visited the hair salon. It’s a trial keeping the gray away. I drove the RV to Beluga Point Lookout RV Park, set up, and began drying out from all the rain; it’s not that the rain is so bad, but with all the gravel, the grit sticks to everything. The RV Park sits high on a bluff overlooking Cook Inlet, but we did not have an unrestricted bluff view. We had a good internet connection at our site, and were able to bring up-to-date both the journal and the web album, no easy feat. Because of the success of the halibut fishers yesterday, the caravan had a fish cookout and potluck. The food was very good; one thing we’ve noticed about RVers is that they like to eat! After dinner, we strolled a couple of blocks along the bluff and took photos of another old Russian Orthodox Church. This church was built in 1894 while the rectory was built in 1891 and thought to be the oldest building on the Kenai Peninsula (the Kenai Peninsula includes several cities and towns.

Kay’s Take One interesting side note. The owners of this RV park are from Illinois and their last name is Dunn. A couple in their late 40’s or 50’s, I’d guess. Beluga Point used to be a great place to watch the beluga whales come in Cook Inlet and going up the Kenai River eating the salmon as they came home to spawn. No more. Where once there were 1500+ belugas now there may be only 300 on the entire peninsula. No one saw one here that we know. There were some people fishing in the surf and my hair stylist said it was a great beach for ‘clamming’.

Our Recommendations for Kenai, AK Kenai was an overnight stop for our caravan, and we didn’t have any scheduled activities. Consequently, we don’t have any recommendations for Kenai.

Campground Beluga Point Overlook RV Park was a very clean park, with gravel sites, sitting high on a bluff overlooking Cook Inlet. The 30-amp electricity was good, water and sewer were OK, and we received several stations via cable, and wi-fi was good. Sites were extremely small, both in width and length. Neither of used the showers, restrooms, or laundry. We would stay here again.

Driving Statistics
Beginning Mileage: 14,274.0
Beginning Time: 8:00 AM Alaska DST
Ending Mileage: 14,363.5
Ending Time: 1:00 PM Alaska DST
TOTAL MILEAGE FOR THE DAY: 90.5
CUMULATIVE MILEAGE: 4,972.0