Awoke this morning to rain, in fact awoke throughout the night to rain. After a walk up to the showers it was off to the two sisters for breakfast again. This morning was a tough morning as my cold had deteriorated overnight to be quite bad. We packed up and went back to the two sisters café for another coffee and pastry morning.

Given the health issues of the day before we gave up on Soldovia, next trip, and decided to try Homer's Art galleries - Ptarmigan Arts www.ptarmiganarts.com and the Picture Alaska art gallery and boutique http://picturealaska.com were both examined along with a few other stores along Pioneer Ave. Now if you are into artwork and trinkets these places were excellent. The artwork was of some of the finest Alaskan artists and was reasonably priced. No they were not cheap, but reasonable, one question we left with was who got what percentage of the take in these shops. Is it 60/40 artist or some other split?

Stopped at Captains Coffee www.captainscoffee.com/ to get sustenance for the journey northward. It was a good choice another fine Homer coffee emporium.

Eagles nest - Each day we were hoping to get a good shot of the enormous nest with eagles and babies, unfortunately the weather was not our friend again so a quick couple of photo's and back into the car relatively dry.

The drive from Homer was an experience in rain and downpours broken by sections of overcast touched off with a biting wind. That said we did stop off at Anchor Point and watched boats being launched via a tractor which was interesting in itself. In the midst of awful weather the car parks were full of fishermen desperate to get out on the water. They even have life vests for the dogs, wished I'd taken a photo.

We drove through Ninilchik, home of this year's Kenai Peninsula Fair and it was teeming with rain which says something about the comment below from the local paper http://peninsulaclarion.com/news/2011-08-21/a-fair-not-so-fair#.TlGVLajj6pA.

Charlene Paight, has lived in Ninilchik long enough to know that just because Friday was a bust, the weekend is not lost. …"One thing about Ninilchik," she said, "is that if you don't like the weather, hang out a little bit and it'll change." My view was that we don't stop which coincided with Shoeleh's so on we drove.

At this point I was feeling pretty rotten and in one of those miracles of entrainment that happens every so often we both decided staying in an RV park for the next three days was not a goer. So we decided that as soon as we got to Soldotna we would drop into Fred Meyer for some free WiFi and find somewhere to stay that was warm and dry.

So on arrival to Soldotna we set about finding accommodation. The task was slightly harder than expected as we found that the reviews for many of the places available to stay ranged from bad to terrible. Eventually we found Aspen Hotel suites www.aspenhotelsak.com/.

Being in Fred Meyer meant a wander through the aisles, this was both a bounty and a mistake. It seems that specials abound and so we got some winter boots and clothes, along with some food for the night.

Then it was off to the hotel, we were worried given the reviews we had seen, which was overdone as this place was great. The room was large, kitchenette, big bathroom and a living area. It was probably larger than most studio apartments. The staff were fantastic helpful and informative, this was by far our best experience.

After cooking up a dinner on the two burner stove and then a really hot shower and off to bed.

Animals Spotted: No moose whatsoever! And other than the eagles, seagulls eating crab domestic pets not much to report

Day Thirty five