Onward to Soldotna and Excitement!

South of Anchorage, the terrain suddenly changes.  The highway closely hugs the side of a mountain on one side and then train tracks and a sheer cliff on the other.  Beyond the cliff is a shallow bay that is part of Cook Inlet.  It's as if you were in the fjords of Scandanavia.  See?

And you see those train tracks?   Well let me tell you something.  Bug-eyed tourists from the cruise lines pay big bucks to take a ride in a snazzy yellow-and-black train along those tracks.   I know b/c I saw them from the comfort of my temperature-controlled motorhome while sipping my coffee and munching on a bear claw as they drooled hungrily.  So long, bug-eyed and drooling tourists!!   Ha, ha, ha, ha!  Life is good in an RV!

And the train don't go where I go, so the cruise line tourists don't see what I see.  See?

You know when you're in Soldotna when you come to Oldie's Bead Shop.  It's the "Happenin' Place" in Soldotna ...

...that is, other than the Starbuck's Cafe which is located inside the Safeway grocery store.  Now that is the "Happening Place"...

It was here that I met the first in a series of remarkable citizens of Soldotna, Alaska.   They are indelibly etched on my mind...