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20050714 Homer AK Thursday Partly cloudy, with smoke near and in Homer. Picture Link
We got up lazily and finally got hooked up and on the road.
We took the only route to Homer, down the Seward Highway until one branches off that onto the Sterling Highway to Homer. This is all Highway 1, but nobody uses numbers up here - just the names and mileposts.
This route is also the most dangerous in Alaska. It's flat, two-lane with some passing lanes, good pavement, lots of turnouts for photographs and to let traffic get by you. Why dangerous? This area, the Kenai peninsula, is Alaska's playground. Everyone in Anchorage seems to have a cottage on or near the Kenai river, the most famous salmon stream around. So the traffic is fierce and everyone wants to get there fast.
Shortly after leaving the south end of Anchorage, we swung around a bend to find a motorhome with its rear end stuck out in the traffic lane and nose into a turnout that was already filled with RV's and cars. All the people associated with these vehicles were out of them looking up the cliffs at sheep. We swung around the obstruction, went 50 yards and found a sheep on the shoulder with a flock of people snapping pictures of it. After we cleared this place, it was fairly clear running to Soldatna, the shopping center of the mid-Kenai and a real bottle-neck traffic spot.
The traffic going north to Anchorage was worse than that going south, so we had few opportunities to pass the lone squirrel in a truck camper towing a boat that would not go over 45. Finally he turned off.
Somewhere around Ninilchik we saw the heavy smoke ascending from a forest fire later identified as the Fox Creek Fire. The air currents and temperature inversions kept a thick layer of smoke blowing southwest toward Homer. The layer didn't get at all high, but didn't get down to the ground either. Like a thick blanket at 2,000 feet. We could smell it, but not all that bad.
We got to our RV park in Homer (been here before) and parked at the low end of the park but still on the bluff in the second spot off Kachemak Bay. We have a great view of the bay and the mountains across the way to the east.
Then we went up the hill to Hallo Bay (www.hallobay.com) to let them know we were here and to settle accounts for our bear-viewing trip Saturday. Clint Hlebechuk welcomed us to his home with a huge view of the bay and mountains (Dolores wants this house) and showed us into the office room. We chatted and in the process, wrote a check for $1,024 for him. He told us tales of bear-chase-moose past his house, then angry moose-chase-bear back past the house as though whichever animal was angriest took the initiative. He told us to call tomorrow night for details on which air company (Homer Air or K-Bay Air) would take us over to the bears.
We came back down the hill and went to his recommendation for dinner, Happy Face on the Homer Spit. The Homer Spit is a piece of gravel that sticks out into Kachemak bay formed by glaciers and currents. The fish-and-chips was very good.
Safeway has a good store here. We found this out by stopping and buying a few things. Not cheap, mind you. Lettuce was $3.49 for a nice, firm head. Alaska Amber was $6.49 a six-pack in the associated liquor store next door.
Thence back to the little house on the bluff above Kachemak Bay. We settled in and process the photos. Work to do tomorrow will be to outfit ourselves for the bear trip.
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20050715 Homer AK Friday Partly Cloudy, warm. 52/80. Picture Link
Got quite cool during the night with a breeze out of the southwest. The breeze was good in that it sent the smoke from the forest fire the other way - toward Anchorage. The evening news from Anchorage was full of weeping and wailing that the smoke was offending and hurting them.
The drill as we understand it will be that we report to the air company, use the bathrooms, emplane, and that's the last of civilization as we know it. We fly for more than an hour, land, listen well to a conduct in the presence of bears lecture, then go watch bears. There are no bathrooms and everything brought in is carried out, including any toilet paper you might have to use in an emergency. Hmm...
The bears are allegedly moving back and forth from the beach (where they dig up clams) and the streams (where they perform the classic snarf-the-salmon act). The salmon are just starting to run, so the bears haven't yet shifted totally to the streams. We might have to move around some to stay with the bears.
The weather forecast is for showers. Standing around wet is no fun.
We wandered down to Kachemak Gear. They have all the rubber boots, waterproof over-pants, etc., that one might want to have on a wet day viewing bears on the Katmai peninsula. We got out for around $80 (found later they'd missed one item, so I had to go back and pay for that, raising it to $100). With the raincoats we already had and the wool socks we've purchased elsewhere, I guess we're prepared.
We ordered sub-sandwiches in the place next to the campground. They were so huge we took half of each back to the little house and put it in the refrigerator for a later encounter.
Then, off to the local Nature Center, where we met a great young guide by the name of Gordon, from Colorado, interning here, attending Brown U in Providence RI. He took us on a guided tour of the facility's 170 acres, pointing out flowers to Dolores (she'd expressed that interest) but also talking to the usefulness of the various plants, including the poisonous ones. The bark beetle has a firm foothold up here as well as in other places we've seen it; lots of spruce have been done in by the beetle up here. It's a natural pest currently in the ascendency; eventually, the spruce will dwindle, the beetles will die out, the spruce will spring up new trees that will grow to maturity providing a place for the bark beetles to home in on, and the cycle will continue.
In my attending to the under-payment noted above, I came back via Kachemak Bay road. In the middle of it, an oncoming pickup truck swerved into my lane, then back out. I slowed and found a mommy moose with baby moose along, eating the greens from the ditch. I couldn't take a picture with all the folk around me.
Back at the little house for dinner (the rest of the subs), then out and up East Hill Road and across Skyline Drive, looking for moose. We did find one moose, which quickly darted behind a hillock.
Now I take leave to wander off to bed -- tired.
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20050716 Homer AK Saturday Cloudy, cool. 55/63. Picture Link
Humph. Bad day.
We got up in time to meet our airplane weigh-in at 10:00am. Then we had a light breakfast, dressed, killed some time, and went to the airplane place on Kachemak Drive. No one home. Called Hallo Bay Tours to find out that weather at the camp is dismal and the flight is on hold, a decision will be made at noon whether or not to proceed.
We went back to the trailer and killed more time until noon. We called Hallo Bay to find out the day's flights had been scrubbed because the weather at the bears was even worse. They said we could come get a refund; we said we'd see if someone canceled on tomorrow's flight.
Then we diddled around the little house for a bit and took a ride around town. We came back and then went to church at St John the Baptist just down the road.
After church we went to the Homestead, Homer's fine-dining place, for dinner as compensation for not seeing the bears. Dinner was wonderful - a great Viognier for us, king crab for Dolores, and halibut alsace for me (the dill sauce was great and the organic Idaho rice and asparagus were perfect). We even stayed for coffee and port.
Then we went to Hallo Bay's house/office. Her take was that the flights tomorrow were already full, no cancelations had happened, and that the flights tomorrow stood an 80% chance of being canceled due to rain. Seeing it hopeless, we took back our check and said we'd try to come back in two years and try again. She said they'd be there, please do. She said there is nothing in this world like seeing these animals being themselves.
We went to the Grog Shop and bought three bottles of the wine we had for dinner, then returned to the little house and put them away. We also put away the contents of the bags we'd packed last night when we expected to take them to see the bears.
The caravan with the two guys from Loveland, Ohio, that I'd met at the Midas in Anchorage showed up. We chatted a bit (they've been in Seward for a couple of days). They said they keep traveling in rain and setting up in rain. I accused them of causing the bad weather.
So, no natural habitat brown bears. Dolores thinks we should replan our return trip so we go through Stewart BC/Hyder AK to try to see the brown bears there. So we're looking into that. We'd have to go back down the Cassiar Highway, then east on the Yellowhead, but we can do that. Hmm... more later.
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20050717 Homer AKSunday Partly cloudy, cool. 54/63. Picture Link
Today would have been a great day to go look at bears. We picked the only rainy day in two weeks. Drat!!
We did what we said we would do today - loaf. We got up late, then fixed a great breakfast in the little house, drank coffee, read the Anchorage Sunday newspaper, and took it easy.
Later on, I started replanning our trip to include a stop at StewartBC/HyderAK to look at the bears there. I made reservations at the key campgrounds. We held the days from Edmonton onward the same and just changed the plan to go go south on the Cassiar and Yellowhead Highways rather than the Alcan. So the road from Tok to Jasper will be the reverse of what we did on the way up. No big deal, we've seen the Alcan both ways.
Dolores had me take her on a ride around town to take pictures of flowers and scenery. Looks very different today without the rain.
We stopped at the local Safeway for bananas, then returned to the little house.
I made a couple more reservations, then we both attended to the photo chores. Now, we've resumed loafing.
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