We started the day off as all days should… at a sports bar! Well, a sports bar that served breakfast and it was a great choice. Buckets is just a couple of minutes from our VRBO, had a great vibe and delicious food! LJ had a “skillet” and I had the French Toast with Sausage. Such fun and creative menu item names and some NASCAR memorabilia!

Next we headed to Fred Meyer, which is a Kroger brand company and like an upscale Target / Walmart with so many different selections. This is not the place you’d hear “we don’t have that in Alaska” for sure. We got some ham and cheese to make sandwiches on our fishing days, some fruit, cereal, milk and drinks. We still had plenty of items from our last shopping trip so this was a small one.

We brought the groceries back to the house and then loaded up to go out to one of the local parks that has fishing available. We started at Swiftwater and then needed to go to Centennial in order to get a season day pass for the City of Soldotna Parks (better value overall for the time we’re here). There are several parks with Riverfront Boardwalks and stairs, it’s really such nice infrastructure.

We decided to go ahead and stay there and drove down to the boardwalk area. There were about a dozen or so people there and LJ donned his waders and we walked down to the gravel beach area. We started fishing there and I had also brought my book and enjoyed sitting by the river reading some. LJ got his first chum salmon, as well as a pink or “humpy” right on the river which was fun.

Here’s a quick overview of the five types of Salmon for those that are interested.

Back during our trip in 2015, we had a rainy day that weathered us in so we had visited the Orca Theatre. Even though our weather was beautiful, we decided to go back there for nostalgia sake. We saw Practical Magic 2 and enjoyed the downtime.

We left the theatre in search of Moose! We drove around and saw a very nice park that was an Eagle Scout Project. It had a beautiful overview of the Cook Inlet and there were hundreds of sea gulls down below.

Russian Orthodox Church that is still open weekly for services.

Beautiful park with amazing views of Mt Redoubt and a sunset that was the perfect way to end the day!

We had tripped a breaker at the house somehow overnight which had knocked out internet / tv / lights in the living room so it was a slow night of trying to get photos / videos transferred and uploaded. We called it a night around 11:45, it’s going to be an early morning. Tomorrow we shall begin the hunt for silver salmon!