Easy and at times a winding roar to Homer. Arrived and looked at the parking spot reserved for us, on top of a bluff overlooking Kachemak Bay and onto the Gulf of Alaska. Backing in would be an injustice so we just nosed into the edge, ran our power & waste lines under the coach and looked out the windshield to this awesome view.
Happy hour for all, then a bunch of us headed onto the Spit! What is a “spit”? The 4.5-mile-long Homer Spit formation is a narrow peninsula that is a terminal moraine formation deposited 14,000 to 15,000 years ago by a glacier that filled and ultimately carved the Kachemak Bay basin. But now it’s a long narrow peninsula with a road lined with shops, bars, restaurants and charter companies. There is a harbor full of fishing boats. We stopped at Captain Pattie’s. Rita finally got her king crab; I won’t even tell you what it costs…. But it was delicious & well deserved. I had my first of many halibut dinners, after all we are in the heart of halibut fishing country.
My observation of the day. We have traveled to the US coasts many times and always partake of the local seafood. Typically, it’s delicious & reasonably priced. BUT, in Alaska nothing’s cheap. And this meal wasn’t either. Every meal here was pricey, but it is what it is……. Moving on.
The next day we signed up for an all-day wildlife cruise to Seldovia. The day started off cloudy and it looked like it wanted to rain. Now that would certainly but a damper on a boat ride in a huge open bay. But we had an ace up our sleeve. One that we have been fortunate to use over the years. Rita’s mom, whom we believe to be in heaven, has been looking over us for years! Rita always says that if we ask her, she would give us good weather. Well, you would be amazed how many times she has come through for us. She has saved countless excursions & vacations.
On this trip alone we have had rain or snow only at night or on travel days. Even on days where we have been site seeing the bad weather held off. On our riverboat ride in Fairbanks, it didn’t rain until we made all the scheduled stops. The boat ride to Seldovia was no different. The weather held & we were able to see tons of wildlife. Harbor seals, dozens of sea otters, probably 20 bald eagles of various ages, common murres, puffins and rounded it out with a humpback whale with her calf.
The Marina on the Spit.
You gotta love the hat
Sea otters
Common Murres finally get to the top of the island
There was a huge flock of Common Murres. They are a very adapted bird. They spend the most of their lives on the water and can dive 100's of feet down. They have webbed feet but use their wings for diving. Because of that their wings are a bit short & bones are dense, so not the most graceful fliers. As we watched them take off, they barely get out of the water while flapping their wings like crazy. It takes forever to get up out of the water. They just can't fly up to the top of the island, they have to circle it, gradually gaining altitude. They wind up in a stretched-out flock flying in circles, which looks like a scene from the movie "The Birds". And when they do get high enough to land on the top, they have a semi-controlled crash landing at the top.
A string of little island with birds, the crew pointed out every species.
Lone bald eagle watching us
A young bald eagle
Puffins
Humpback whale breeches
What better way to round out the day than visiting the wacky bar that everyone must visit, the Salty Dawg! It’s a dinky bar at the end of Pier #1. It has a lighthouse on the front that invites you in, but it’s nothing but a dark crowded bar. The clincher is, everyone that visits pins a dollar bill onto a wall. Well over the years the walls are all covered, so there are bills stuck to absolutely everything. Walls, ceiling, rafters, pictures, the bar, behind the bar, jukebox, life rings, stools windows, lights, everything. If something gets attached to the wall, dollar bills get attached to it.
There are dollars attached to dollars. I’m guessing there’s more value to the cash attached to the building than the value of the building itself. Plus, everyone signs or writes something on their dollar. It is insane. It’s kind of dark inside because the bills cover most of the windows and parts of all the lighting.
Mica's dollar
Mica pinning her dollar to the rafters
Part of our group from the caravan
We all squeezed in and had a drink, I had a Salty Dawg of course, and moved on.
The next day started off leisurely and we went to Anchor Point to watch the boat launch. This part of Alaska doesn’t have typical boat launches, the bay is at the mercy of the winds & the tides. You can’t use your truck to back into the water because you have to go too deep. So, there are these huge tractor services that take your boat trailer and back you into the bay. You just start the engine & go fishing. When you return you call the tractor company on the radio and they grab your trailer back it into the bay & you drive on. The crazy part is they back the trailer until it’s almost completely submerged.
We drove the length of the Spit one more time looking for some reasonably priced seafood and found some on the very end at Salmon Sisters, a fish distributer.
Then grabbed a nice seafood lunch at a food truck,
Last thing we did was drove to the top of Homer for a view of the Spit.
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