Jeff Billimek’s Journal

We woke up at 8am today. We walked down to the lodge restaurant to have breakfast. It was pretty overcast and foggy. I had fried eggs with bacon and potatoes. Larry had scrambled eggs. After breakfast, we packed up and headed out to our first trail: Kenai River Trail.

When we got to the trailhead, it was overcast, but not raining. The parking lot was empty so it looked as if we were the only ones on the trail. We hiked down through pine and other trees on our way to the river. On the way there we passed through a burn area. Back in 1991 a fire burned out over 7900 acres. The burn area was pretty cool because there were no trees, just shrubs and charred remains. There were some areas thick with fireweed too, which looked nice.

Once we got to the river, Larry casted his fishing line out some but didn’t get any hits. We followed the trail along the river, attempting to fish along the way. Eventually we came to a ’spooky’ part of the forest. It was dark, the trees were all dead and turned over and the stench of death was in the air. In this area we caw what looked to be a big bear dropping. A little farther we saw big bear tracks in a soft patch of ground. We never saw the bear though. As we continued on, the trail sort of disappeared and we took what appeared to be game trails until that, too, became un-passable. While we were trying to find our way back to the main trail, I fell off of a log, to my back about 3-4 feet down. I wasn’t hurt, but I had my camera slung over my shoulder. Aside from being a little wet, it was fine. We made our way back to the trailhead.

The next trail we went to was Seven Lakes Trail. By the time we got there, the weather improved and the sun was starting to shine. I took some photographs of the first lake, and then Larry & I had sandwiches for lunch. We hiked along the seven lakes trail for a little while before Larry wanted to turn back. While we skirted along one lake in the beginning, the trail became very monotonous: a straight, narrow path deep in the forest. He was bored.

Before dinner we stopped at Exit Glacier. This is a really cool place because you walk about a mile right up to the edge of a huge glacier. The sun was starting to set, so lighting wasn’t so good and it was getting pretty cold. We took some photographs and then headed into town for dinner.

We ate dinner at Chinooks. I had Salmon with almond topping. It was really fresh.