Leg 10 Homer/Kenai/Portage

 

Above is is a shot of Homer beach from our camp site, enough said. If you were to take your right hand and look at it palm up, the area between your thumb and fore finger would be the Cook inlet. The area beyond your hand would be the open sea and in the crotch between your thumb and fore finger would be Anchorage. On the left of your last fore finger knuckle would be Seward and on the right end of your finger would be Homer (well more or less).  So we drove from Seward up the finger and across to Kenai/Soldotna and then down to Homer.  Another beautiful drive (I think they all are) but this time along the sea coast.  Right out of Soldotna we were privileged to see another moose.

 

Joan was able to catch him looking up.

And if we zoom in on this fellow you can see that his antlers are just starting to grow and are heavily covered in velvet.

Along the way we get to see the mountain range known as the “Ring of Fire”.  Within the mountain range, part of the Alaskan Peninsula – Aleutian range are several volcanoes.  Mt. Redoubt erupted in Jan ‘66 and Dec ‘69.  Here are the gals capturing a nice shot of same.

Homer has its own spit that juts out into the bay and centers much of the activity of Homer.  On the spit are commercial fishing action centers, charter fishing (Homer being well known for great halibut fishing), restaurants, fish markets and camping. We opted to stay at the city park on the ocean side and found a wonderful camp spots. Here is our camp site.

 

Below is our view, not bad, eh?

Not only was the beach gorgeous and interesting – for instant we had spectacular tide movement, as much as a half mile – but it served as a flying field for my RC planes, a kite flying area, and a great area for the dogs to romp.

Kite flying.

 

 

Mike at the controls.

 

 

Happy hour with camp fire.

 

 

 

 

Shelle did baked potatoes in the camp fire.

 

 

 

 

Here is one happy camper, Happy hour, good meal, baked potatoes, and a view, what more could one ask for?

Night time view below.

From Homer it was back to Soldotna/Kenai.  We had chosen the Diamond M Ranch for our CG.  Turned out to be a big mistake. Water wasn’t working, even though we had paid for it in out price (we were promised a discount but were not able to get it – that was another thing, the folks that ran the place were not as ethical as we would like), camp site was marginal, Mike got stuck in their sand – took forever for them to get him out. Below is the sand they parked us in, Mike had to move because his site did not have power and below “sand” picture is the result.

We also got some bad fishing info from these folks.  Had a good time, enjoyed the scenery but finally some local pointed out we were in the wrong place. Here we are trying.

Eventually we found the correct spot and witnessed for our first time what they call “combat fishing”.  When the salmon are running the action is hot and everyone wants in so it is shoulder to shoulder, literally.  Folks line the river and sometimes, we were told, even get two deep. Actually it is not as bad as it sounds.  Folks get along very well, in fact it is common to get to know your neighbor, and everyone helps everyone.  One time Mike had left to take a break and I caught a nice salmon and was having trouble landing it so my neighbor helped me land it. The drill is that you are tossing a wet fly and a weight up stream, letting it drift down – which it does rapidly – pull it our of the water and toss it up again.  What is interesting the whole river kind of gets in sync – sort of like synchronized swimming – well sort of.  We were pretty intimidated at first but quickly got the gist of it and had fun.

This scene repeated all up and down the river – the Kenai River, famous for salmon fishing. While in Soldotna we picked up our silver salmon that we had left to be smoked – wow are they dynamite, wonderful good.

From Soldotna we headed for Portage, sort of on the way back towards Anchorage.  Before we left we had to have one more apple fritter from the “Moose is Loose” bakery in Soldotna – do not miss this treat if you are ever even close! In Portage we stayed at the Williwaw National Park, a great camp site.  We were also able to visit our friends Robert and Leslie and Stan and Connie – fellow Hitchhiker owners also exploring Alaska.

At the visitor center, right on a lake, we witnessed up close and personal a good sized ice berg.  Not only that but a few pieces had broken off and drifted towards shore and I was able to snag one.  Always wanted to have a cocktail with fresh, clear ice berg ice!

Unfortunately the picture does not do justice to the incredible clarity of the ice, what a great drink I had!

We visited the museum at the visitor center and Sally had to cuddle up to her buddy, Smokey.

From Portage we swept back through Anchorage to visit Jeff and Susan and stayed at Eagle River again, one of our favorite CGs (although we had a long list of favorites).

Next stop, Glennallen on the way to Valdez. The CG, Tolsona Wilderness, is west of town and really in the wilderness as their name suggests. It is about a mile and a half off the highway and is right on the Tolsona River which snakes through the CG.  Unfortunately the river was high and muddy due to so much rain and the run off (which also squelched the fishing we had hoped for). Yet still a gorgeous setting.  (We were able to fish for graylings on a near-by lake.:-))

 

More Fireweed, always pretty.

 

 Next to Valdez, a special place.

Leg 9 Seward, Alaska

Seward is south of Anchorage, on a spit or peninsula.  It is a major (for Alaska) sea port and a significantly picturesque place. Our chosen campsite was Resurrection City CG, precisely on the water.  Basically a parking lot, but, oh, what a parking lot.  Here are some of the views of and from our site.

 

And this was the view out our back window.

So much to do in Seward. The major things that we did were a) visit the fantastic aquarium there – followed by a visit to the Yukon Bar, b) an ocean ride to visit the fiord and it’s wildlife, and c) a super fishing trip for silver salmon.

Walking to the aquarium, we spotted some local eagles perched in a tree watching for lunch.

 

 

 

And off to grab a nice lunch treat.

 

 

What a fantastic, magnificent birds!

Then the aquarium, great spot.

And the puffins.  We saw puffins here, beautiful, we saw puffins in the wild on our boat excursion, and we saw puffins hanging about on our silver salmon fishing trip.  Here are the guys in the aquarium.

Two of my favorites were capturing this great sea lion, what a majestic and bucolic creature he is.

Then in front of the museum, whilst waiting for others to finish, had to capture a flower or two.

To end this days journey, it is off to the famous, or is it infamous, Yukon bar.  If you remember a previous post talking about the drink  “duck fart” , this is the place it originated. And what a place.

Simple looking outside, funky inside.

So we order a beer and a duck fart, of course!

 

 

Now you know, these are nice – but esthetically they pale to the beautiful drinks Stacy (and now Murray and Rich) make!

This bar had so much to look at, it was amazing.  The building had been many things including a barber shop.   It was resurrected at one time and a local who befriended me (read I couldn’t get rid of him) pointed out at one of the resurrections they found in the basement of the place a human skull!  It is now surreptitiously sitting on a shelf (as my new best buddy said “try that in the lower 48!”) – see below.

  Next adventure was the ocean going trip out to sea.  Seward, like some of the other Alaskan sea ports, is actually a fiord – a long narrow channel carved by a glacier.  Our voyage took us out the fiord, out to sea and back. On board was a ranger/marine biologist narrating and helping us with the nature stuff.  Fantastic trip – could go on for a long time, but will only share some pictures from same trip.

Going out the channel/fiord. This is so massive, if you look really, really close, on the far right of the picture you can see a tiny white blur, this is a fishing boat, and not a small one!

Below, a sea otter, we saw several of these from our camp.

Above, we saw this glacier from a distance.  In the total course of our trip we saw several glaciers, in fact even walked on one.

Spotted this nice eagle, below, from the ship.

We saw several sea lions, just tons of them.

And then some wild puffins.

 

And we were lucky enough to have a couple of whale encounters.

On the return trip we cruised by a huge glacier that had calved some icebergs.  The icebergs were captured in a fresh water lake created by a moraine (pushed aside dirt and rock from a proceeding glacier) . Look closely at the size of that big iceberg, remember that 2/3s of it are under water, and compare the height to those tall pines in the foreground!

As our last treat we espied some mountain goats as we cruised home.

Not at all a bad days journey.

The following day Rich and I opted to take a small boat out into the bay/fiord/ocean and do some salmon fishing. We had a coupon (from our coupon book – a must buy for any Alaska trip) that got us two for one, or 50% off – and off an already very respectful price. What a day! Aside from rising before oh 600 – friggin’ early, rough seas, aftermath of a storm, and fog and rain (so what do you want, it is a fishing day!), we had a great trip.  The owners of the operation homesteaded the property and started their little business, now shared with their son – who was our skipper. What a great seaman and fantastic fisherman.  Full of vim, vigor and love for fishing, augmented with oogles of enthusiasm.  We were lucky we were in an enclosed boat, most boats fishing were open. Here we are starting out to sea.

And the stout boat looked like this.

We really lucked out and got some fantastic action.  The salmon were silver salmon and so much fun to catch.  Took a little touch and feel to get used to the fishing but we did great.  The skipper let us fish for the boat, meaning if one person limited out they were still allowed to catch for others that didn’t. We had 7 people fishing plus the skipper and deck hand (who were constantly busy) and the boat caught 48 fish. I was lucky enough to catch 10 or 11 – what a day.  We could only keep our individual limit – which was 6 – but what a mess of salmon we took home. Below is our wonderful, energetic skipper, Chance.

And below before the boat’s catch, in a celebratory mood, Rich and Mur.

Seward was a great stop, how much fun. We had some gloomy weather, actually the norm for most of these sea ports, but were also blessed with some awesome clear days allowing us to see the complete grandeur of this magnificent place. We took a drive and then hike to Exit Glacier, another great drive, fantastic up close look at the glacier and most informative narration by a ranger.  Below a shot of Exit Glacier – next off to Homer, another great and interesting sea port.