The highway from Anchorage to Sterling curves along Cook Inlet. Mostly two-lane. To our right, just over the wake up strips, groups of bicyclists pedaled smoothly by. We saw a glacier from a distance. We circled the inlet until we left it, and were driving on its opposite side, behind the mountains we'd been looking at across the water. We began to glimpse the beautiful Kenai. I felt the carnival atmosphere of fishermen in heaven; a river cluttered with people, each with pole and waders. I don't know what they caught, but all Sterling and Soldotna were without ice one day. Here in Sterling, we ate just-caught sockeye salmon for 2 nights, a huge pan of it baked with onions, butter and plenty of pepper, by The Last Frontiersman.