Day 45 - Saturday 8/1/2026 - Captain Cook State Recreation Area

Happy Happy Happy Birthday to Jack Howard Tate!!  We hope it was wonderful like you 💗🎂 - we love you!

Today we left the Upper Skilak Lake Campground and drove to the Captain Cook State Recreation Area campground north of Kenai.  It was about 70 miles and took us about 4 hours 😎.  It was sunny and beautiful all day, with highs in the mid-60s.  

We stopped and checked out the Lower Skilak Lake Campground, and we could hardly get there squeezing past all the trucks with boat trailers lining both sides of the road.  The campground was completely full and there were people everywhere.  We saw lots of fishermen and we both had a little envy of what this guy was carrying back to his truck!

We stopped again closer to Kenai at Three Bears grocery store, and we may or may not have bought some of this stuff:

We can't seem to pass one of those stores without stopping. Then we continued on toward Captain Cook State Recreation Area, and we passed what seemed like dozens of drive-up coffee shops ☕ and the same number of cannabis dispensaries in the Kenai area. The funniest sign was for Taco RV Parts.  We think it was two separate businesses, but the sign made us laugh.  We wanted to stop here for some malt liquor, but it was long since closed.😀

We booked 3 nights at the wonderful Discovery Campground here which is right beside where the Swanson River flows into Cook Inlet in the Kenai Peninsula. 

We took a walk around the cliffs overlooking the Inlet (right behind our campsite which is #13), then hiked downhill to the beach. The ground in places was covered with seed puffs that looked like someone had a pillow fight!

Mike (being funny) held this tree up for me so I could get past.  The trail was pretty overgrown!

The tide was moving in quickly, so we will check it out again tomorrow for low tide. 

Apparently the mud flats exposed at low tide is like quicksand, so we were warned to stay away from that.  The tides here can exceed 30+ feet and are some of the largest in the world!  We saw several people fishing Swanson River, and we will probably try our luck there tomorrow.  Within the Recreation Area is also a large part of Stormy Lake, where we can fish for Rainbow Trout and Arctic Char as well.

Across Cook Inlet is a line of gorgeous, snow-covered Aleutian mountains.  The picture we posted yesterday of the ghost mountain was actually Mt. Redoubt, which we can clearly see from here in this nice weather.  

Mount Redoubt stands at 10,197 feet and is the highest peak in the Aleutian Range, located about 50 miles west of Kenai.  More about the other mountains/volcanoes later.

Today bird-wise we saw some trumpeter swans, a few greater yellowlegs,

and a fox sparrow. 

We also saw a Cook Inlet Gull (American Herring x Glaucous-winged Gull hybrid). 

Tomorrow we hope to get out and see more wildlife and catch some fish.

Favorite camper today: 

Favorite wheel cover today (for Jordan): 

Favorite road name:  Silver Salmon Road 

For tonight's dinner we had juicy burgers with the fresh ground beef we bought today.  They were so good!  

Today's campspot (at 11pm): 

Today's journey: 

Day 44 - Friday 7/31/2026 - Upper Skilak Lake CG

Today we awoke to gorgeous weather, sunny and warm with a little breeze. We left the Hidden Lake Campground and only went about eight miles until we found the Upper Skilak Lake Campground and just had to stop and find a site.  The drive was beautiful, with mountains all around and rivers and lakes in the valley.  This was an almost ghost-like mountain in the distance (not part of the clouds),

and these were views from the Hidden Creek Overlook.

We were getting settled in the campground and decided to find a trail close by and go for a hike.  As we were leaving, someone came by and said that there had been a momma bear and two cubs in the campsite down from ours!  We grabbed our courage and made sure we had our bear spray, binocs, and camera gear and walked around the corner and there they were, across the road!  The momma bear was climbing on the picnic table to inspect some kind of camp stove that was on top, and the babies were running around under the table.  She didn't find much and climbed down from the table and they all retreated into the woods behind the site.  Mike had snapped a few pictures and we were so excited!  You can see him (Mike) crouched down in the photo below 😁

We continued on with our walk for a few steps and noticed something moving in the trees next to us - one of the babies had climbed a little ways up a tree and was looking soooo cute!! 

Then all three of them just hung around eating berries and some green leaves, with the babies running around and having fun.

Soon the momma bear stopped, and commanded the babies to stay where they were,

and headed toward another campsite just behind ours that had a screen room set up over the picnic table.  She ripped open their screen room and dug into a garbage bag and was pulling out trash and eating whatever she found there.  Suddenly the people in the site started hollering and got into their car and began blowing the horn to try to scare her away, but it hardly fazed her.  Eventually she got tired of being harassed and moved on.  The people camping in that site and their friends beside them immediately packed up and left.  I'm not sure if they were afraid of the bears or afraid of getting into big trouble for leaving food accessible to the bears.  They should never have left their garbage out like that.  The saying around here is that a fed bear is a dead bear, and we would hate it if something happened to a bear because of a person's ignorance or stupidity.

After all the excitement we went on with our walk again, down to the beautiful lake

and along a path through the woods nearby.  We saw an immature bald eagle, lots of nesting glaucous-winged gulls,

a cute little Swainson's thrush (a lifer for us!),

and some dark-eyed juncos and other birds. 

There were lots of berries around, and they were pretty!  We're not sure exactly which ones the bears were eating....

We saw this funny sign about keeping a weed-free trail (and then we read it).

The mosquitoes were thick, so we headed back to look at the pictures and revel in the fun it was to watch the bears!

Tomorrow we plan to go further west and north of the city of Kenai to Captain Cook State Recreation Area.  The next couple of days are expected to be clear and nice, then the rain sets in again, so we want to enjoy the sunny weather while it lasts.

Tonight's dinner is homemade freeze-dried roasted chicken in a store-bought Caesar salad.  Yummy!

Tonight's camp spot: 

Today's journey: