The drive from Anchorage to Homer next runs along the Kenai River, which has turquoise-blue waters that are fast-running and freezing cold.  It’s a great place for fisher-people and rafters.  We had lunch (halibut & chips; salmon chowder) at a lodge built in 1952 — it was almost possible to imagine what it would have been like to live in Alaska years ago.  We also stopped and talked with a chatty woman at a gift shop/boardwalk/education center co-run by the National Forest Service and the Kenaitze tribe.