Our original plan
for the summer included a road trip to the Lower 48 northwest, but
rising gas prices made us think twice. When we started looking at how
long it takes to get to, say, Montana, and our timeframe of 3 weeks, we
decided we didn't want to be in the car that much. Denver recently
started working on his Cycling Merit Badge for Boy Scouts so we'd
recently gotten back into biking. From the camping trip Denver and I
took a few weeks earlier, I had the bright idea of basing out of Cooper
Landing and biking many of the great trails that are within 10-15
minutes of town. After running the idea by the family, we decided we
would camp, bike, hike and raft in the Cooper Landing area, and part of
the deal was trying every restaurant in town (there are 3). This blog
post will be an overview of some of the amenities and features of Cooper
Landing: restaurants, lodging, convenience stores and other
miscellaneous places.
Lodging:
There
are 6 public (National Forest Service and state) campgrounds in Cooper
Landing: Russian River Ferry, Russian River, Cooper Creek North and
South, Quartz Creek and Crescent Creek. The Russian River Campground
was full with a waiting list when we came into town on Tuesday afternoon
in mid-June, which worried me. We pressed on to the next campground
along the Sterling Highway from the south, Cooper Creek South. Of 25 or
so sites, only a handful were available for 3 days, and none were
available starting on Friday since they are on a reservation basis, so
we chose a site that we could stay at for 3 nights.
Come
Friday we headed over to Quartz Creek Campground, but they were already
full on Friday morning. Crescent Creek still had sites available, but
that was 3 miles down a very bumpy, rutted road and we had no desire to
drive up and down that multiple times a day. We opted to check out the
Sunrise Inn Motel on the Sterling Highway at the Quartz Creek turnoff.
It was $130/night for 3 beds, 4 people, which is pretty much the going
rate for the other motel and many of the local cabins for rent. We were
very pleased with this motel: it was the nicest motel I've ever stayed
in in my life (motels tend to be old and run-down or cheap). It was
nicely decorated, smelled nice, was spacious and had a great shower
(important after camping!).
After
a weekend of luxury watching TV and charging all our various electronic
devices, we headed over to the Quartz Creek Campground just down the
road from the motel. It had plenty of spots open on Sunday morning,
though we would find that nearly every spot would be taken by evening. I
would say 95% of all sites were occupied by RV's, campers and fifth
wheels. If there was a tent, it was a supplement to the camper. This
campground was like a village in the country, with lots of people, lots
of traffic, lots of noise, which contrasted with Cooper Creek South
where there was some traffic and it was very quiet, partly because it
was smaller but the sites were very private there. The kids liked
Quartz Creek more because it was large enough to go biking and exploring
in.
Restaurants:
We checked out Sunrise Inn Cafe first.
It is part of the Sunrise Inn Motel on the corner of Quartz Creek Road
and the Sterling Highway. It had good food (not raving good, but
solidly good), comfortable service, reasonable prices and a homestyle
restaurant atmosphere sporting an amazing collection of salt and pepper
shakers. We went there for both a dinner and breakfast and we would
gladly go there again.
I'm going to mention Summit Lake Lodge's
restaurants (pizzaria/ice cream/espresso and a sit-down) here even
though they are about 15 minutes from Cooper Landing towards Anchorage
on the Seward Highway. We went there 3 times in a week. The pizza
there would rate #1 for us if it was in Homer--we were totally impressed
with it. The sit-down restaurant had a very nice, open atmosphere,
felt new, and had $10-11 burgers. We all got burgers for lunch the day
we were there and we were all pleased with them. Service was great,
strawberry lemonade was divine, and even the fries were tasty.
Sackett's was
our next night and the pizza was such a disappointment after Summit
Lake Lodge's. My pulled pork sandwich was good. The seating was a
little odd (three different rooms, some tables, some picnic table). The
building looks like it is 3 different restaurants so I think each
"room" represents a different restaurant. I wouldn't put this one on my
go-back-to list.
The Kingfisher Roadhouse
was the brunt of our jokes all week. We put it off because it looks
like a dump from the outside/road side. However, we finally went online
and all the reviews said the food was excellent or very good, so
Douglas and I went there for Father's Day dinner. The food is indeed
very good, but it is the atmosphere that enchanted me. It was typical
Alaskan with room after room added on helter skelter, but it was so
artfully and tastefully decorated that it was fascinating. The porch
had a clear corrugated plastic ceiling which let in a lot of light, and
of course it sounds awful but it "fit". The burgers were $16, and were
the cheapest entrees on the menu, so prices were a bit higher than your
normal fare. I would happily go there again, though sans kids.
Convenience Stores:
It
cracks me up that I would even write about the convenience stores, but
there were only 5 so we could actually check them all out and in
spending 10 days in town we knew which one to get what (particularly
desserts!!).
Wildman's
appears to be the most popular store in town. It has nice restrooms,
showers, a laundromat, ice cream, hot soups and food, espresso, a liquor
store and the usual convenience store sundries and snacks. It has a
porch where people were always hanging out, and the inside felt clean
and spacious.
Hamilton's was
crowded, didn't have a great selection of items and the sales clerk
wasn't very friendly, so even though they had a laundromat and gas as
well, we wouldn't want to go back there unless we had to.
Almost across the street from Hamilton's was Cooper Landing Grocery
(not sure about the name!) and it was our second favorite, with ice
cream, pizza (we didn't try but heard it takes a long time), more
groceries than any other store in town (not saying much) and souvenirs.
Gwinn's used to have a resturant but turned that section into a store so it seemed a little barren. It was dark and didn't have much.
Right
next door to Gwinn's was another store...not sure the name...and it was
heavy on the fishing supplies. Doug said they had a really good
selection of snacks there!
Church and Cemetery:
The Catholic church, St. John Neumann,
has some very nice grounds for a small church. They have a shrine for
handicapped people, outdoor stations of the cross that is handicapped
accessible, the church, a rectory/social hall, another tiny building
that might be storage or an office, graves scattered about and a hiking
path up a 200-300 foot ridge to a cross overlook. We found this a very
peaceful, inviting place and returned a number of times during our
vacation, including for church on Sunday. Ironically, mass was presided
by a priest from Seward, a local deacon and a archdiocesan seminary
student!
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A 5-10 minute climb brings you to this peaceful overlook. |
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This was one of the graves in the Cooper Landing Cemetery. |
In searching for the Slaughter Trail, which we'd heard about and saw on one map of Cooper Landing, we stopped at the Cooper Landing Cemetery,
thinking the trail from the parking lot might be the trail we were
looking for. It was not, but the steep trail did lead to the most
unusual cemetery I've ever seen. The graves were dug in the woods here
and there. Footpaths wound randomly throughout the area, leading from
one site to the next. All were very natural, with the landscape hardly
disturbed in this heavily treed area. It felt like...a park. As we
were exploring it, gunshots started going off at close range. It was
disconcerting until we remembered that the local rifle range was right
next door! What kind of sense of humor must a community have to put the
cemetery right next door to the shooting range??!!
I'll
be honest: Cooper Landing has never once raised a blip on my radar of
"places to go" before. However, I am smitten. Although most people
come for the fishing, we found 6 easy to challenging mountain biking
trails within minutes of Cooper Landing, plus mountains to climb and
trails to hike. I would say we thoroughly explored this little town
that boasts 235 or so year-round residents. Next time we come to visit
we will make sure we have reservations to the campground of choice,
particularly if it is a weekend. Besides that, it was 10 days of one of
the best vacations I have been on: enjoying the amazing outdoors of
Alaska!
Note: I will blog about each of the trails we went on separately to avoid one overwhelmingly long blog post!