I would call it an unlikely experience to travel 4,500 miles from home and meet someone who you feel like you’ve known your whole life. Tucked somewhere in the midst of the Kenai Mountains of Alaska was the little slice of Southern hospitality I had been missing on our travels.

Just a couple of weeks ago, my family and I caught a plane to Anchorage, Alaska, for a week-long getaway. Our preferred method of exploration of the Last Frontier is to rent a car and drive ourselves as far and wide as we want and the road allows us to go.

The roads wind through mountains, past hidden lakes, by vast oceans and bays, and every once in a while, we just stop to explore the scenery or cast our rods a couple of times to see what’s biting. We traveled as north as Talkeetna and as south as Homer during our road trip, staying in fishing lodges along our route.

The last stint of our trip was set in Soldotna, at Reflections Kenai Riverfront Cabins, on a tributary of the Kenai River. As we drove to the red light in Soldotna that would lead us to turn onto Funny River Road, where the cabins were located, we noticed that the GPS still said we had 35 minutes until our arrival time.

“Surely not,” my dad said.

But sure enough, it was 35 minutes down a long winding dirt road to the collection of small homes beside the river.

A Southern Welcome

We drove to the end of the gravel driveway where the big house sat, facing the river with a small sign above the back door that said “Office,” and my dad hopped out of the car to check us in. He came back out, followed by a man named Greg, who pointed us in the direction of our cabin.

The cabin was warm and cozy, a respite from the cold rain that had begun to fall outside. Set on the table was a platter of cookies of all different varieties, topped with a big red bow with the word “welcome” in swirling cursive across it. This felt like a little slice of luxury compared to the pre-statehood fishing lodge we had stayed in prior. The sight of the fluffy bed drew me in, but we had to get out and see the river before turning in for the night.

We walked down the short driveway, past the big house and down to the water’s edge where a john boat bobbed in the water and a metal platform stood out at the edge of the current. All that could be heard was the sound of rushing water and the occasional eagle cry. This was the world the way God intended it.

“Why don’t you come inside and get some soup to warm up?” a voice called behind us. A woman was standing out on the porch of the big house with a jacket wrapped tightly around her body, and Greg, the man from earlier, walked toward us.

“I’m Deanna! And you must be John’s daughters?” She wrapped her arms around my sister and me. “We are just so glad to have you staying with us!”

We talked and talked, telling our respective stories of where we were from, our favorite Alaskan scenery, the routines of the salmon swimming in the water and the vegetation growing around us. Come to find out, Deanna was from Fayette, Alabama, and her kind and welcoming presence all began to make sense.

An Alabama Connection

Eventually, we all parted ways for the night, but I continued to think about the conversations we had. I wanted to know more about Greg and Deanna Jones’s story, what brought them to Alaska, what made them stay and their lives before all this.

The next evening, after a long day of fishing and sightseeing, we made our way back down the long gravel road, deep into the woods, to our cabin. We were greeted by a rhubarb pie in to-go containers made just for us by Deanna. Its sour but sweet filling, with the buttery, crumbly crust, was heavenly.

I found myself making my way back to the big house with the office sign above the door. I wanted to thank Deanna for her hospitality, but she quickly welcomed me inside and led me to the dining room table. There, over conversation, I began asking her and Greg about the lives that brought them to this unexpected place.

Deanna grew up on a farm as an only child in Fayette, Alabama. She was taught how to hunt and fish and take care of the land and their home, something many girls around her did not get to learn. She considers herself a true outdoorswoman, never shying away from the opportunity to spend the day in the woods.

It was when she went to college at a women’s university in Mississippi that she met Greg. He moved down from Arkansas for school, and they had been together ever since. As life went on and they graduated from college, Greg enlisted in the military, and that had them traveling around the United States. But Alaska was the one place they could not shake.

“Alaska stays with you. You know that, don’t you?” Deanna said. I knew exactly what she meant. “We just kept coming back, and when we retired we knew we wanted to spend even more time here.”

Five years ago, they purchased Reflections Kenai Riverfront Cabins, not because they were looking for a business venture, but because it gave them a way to spend their summers in the place they loved while sharing it with others. There was never much hesitation; they knew this was where they wanted to be.

“We can be more active here. The temperature is comfortable all day, the sun never sets in the summer, so as we get older it is the perfect place for us to be,” Greg explained.

The rest of the year, they split their time between Arkansas and Alabama, where they visit family, enjoy the outdoors and, as Greg joked, “pay our taxes.” But each summer, they find themselves back along that long gravel road in Soldotna.

Owning the cabins has become about much more than the scenery. Greg and Deanna light up when they talk about the people who pull down the long gravel driveway each week. They love inviting guests onto their boat, taking them fishing, pointing out wildlife along the river and hearing stories from wherever they call home.

Most arrive as strangers, and leave as friends.

Finding Home Far From Home

As we packed our bags the next morning and pointed the car back toward Anchorage for the long flight home, I thought about something Greg had told me the night before.

“We never say the word ‘lucky,’” he said. “Because that’s not the case. We are blessed. God has given us everything we have and all of these opportunities.” And he’s right.

We aren’t lucky to watch a brown bear pull a salmon from an icy river. We aren’t lucky to stand beneath glaciers carved over thousands of years or drive roads that weave between mountains and waterfalls. We aren’t lucky to hear bald eagles calling overhead or watch the midnight sun stretch long into the evening. Those things didn’t happen by chance. They were created by God long before any of us arrived to admire them, and every moment we get to experience them is a gift.

But also, I had a thought that our greatest blessing wasn’t the landscape at all. It was sitting around Greg and Deanna’s dining room table, listening to stories from a woman who grew up on an Alabama farm and somehow found herself spending her summers deep in the Alaskan wilderness.

It was homemade rhubarb pie waiting on our doorstep after a long day of fishing. It was fresh cookies tied with a red ribbon, warm bowls of soup on a rainy evening and hugs that made strangers feel like family. Somehow, Greg and Deanna have managed to carry southern hospitality more than 4,500 miles north. I left Soldotna with photographs of mountains, rivers and wildlife that I’ll treasure forever.

But when I think back on Reflections Kenai Riverfront Cabins, it won’t be the scenery that comes to mind first. It’ll be the people who reminded me that the greatest reflections of God’s creation aren’t always found in the rivers or the mountains. Sometimes, they’re found in the kindness of the people He places along the way.