Soldotna, Alaska – Wild Times With a Timeless Beauty
Soldotna – is it a Russian soldier, a river fork, or an herb? It doesn’t really matter because anytime you visit in the summer months, this beautiful little Alaskan town is warm, charming and friendly. Located 150 miles south of Anchorage, the two and one-half hour drive from the airport is the opening chapter to a journey of unparalleled scenic beauty, intrigue and adventure on the Kenai Peninsula.
The Sterling Highway, the only way by land to get to Soldotna, is a precursor to the variety and surprise of what is in store. As you go deeper and deeper into the Peninsula, stark gray beaches with their steely gray water may give you your first look at a breaching whale. There are glaciers to stop and visit, wild tumbling mountain streams that you know are full of the fish that you have come to Alaska to stalk. There are glimpses of deep blue lakes, rivers with names like the Copper. Settlements along the way offer giant woodcarvings, including huge rocking chairs that dwarf you. You begin to get a feeling for the grandness of this land, its immensity and untamed status. And then you come to the river that this place is named for – the Kenai.
The sun sparkles off the deep jade green of this essential part of Soldotna. The wind whispers to you why the catch is such an integral part of the culture here. Whether you are trying your luck for Kings in July, or pursuing silvers and trout in August, fishing on the Kenai is almost like going for goldfish in a bowl. A good fishing guide with a boat will assure your luck, but plenty of anglers get their limit from the numerous public parks and docks that line the river.
Though fishing is what raises the small local population from under 20,000 to nearly 100,000 every summer there are a variety of other activities unique to Soldotna and the Kenai. Because it is Alaska and the wilderness is a block away, the animal life is amazing. Bear warnings are in effect for picnickers out to get their fair share of the luscious fruit growing wild along luxuriant green banks. Bald eagles swoop down to grab your fish guts as you clean your catch and moose have been known to stop traffic in the middle of town.
And what about the scenery? It is always there. Day or night, sun or storm. There are no nights in the summer. Twilight stretches to midnight. If you stay-up until three in the morning, the dancing lights of the Aurora Borealis glide across the sky, a continuous display of soft shimmering fireworks. During the day, wildflowers look like grandma’s garden on steroids. Shasta daisies, brilliant blue delphinium, and the never ending fireweed, scattered by God’s hand and growing with abandonment, almost as if they know their season is short and so they have to make-up for it in quantity. All of this placed amid a backdrop of never-ending snowcapped mountains, patchwork prairies of wildly colored grasses, verdant green and wild forests or black spikes of stunted fir, beauty in their own starkness.
Coming into town is a little different. The frontier wildness of Alaska is evident in the wild and woolly shops that line the main streets of Soldotna. This is not a place of sophistication or glitz, and you won’t find that here. Instead you get a feeling of what the rest of the lower 48 may have been like a century or more ago. Timbered lodges, hideaway cabins, rustic and weathered joints serving things like Gold Pan Stew with ice-cold sarsaparilla. This is a place to come and really relax, to leave the pace of today’s life behind. But leaving Soldotna, Alaska there is one stress — how are you’re going to get 50 pounds of frozen salmon home with you on the plane?
Ó Deborah Schultz
