The tenth posting of our Alaska RV trip is about our time in Homer.
Homer Alaska
On day 87, we drive to the Homer Elks Lodge. This is a beautiful place, right on the water. We get here at around 4:00PM and there is only one space left. We park, and go into register. Today is Flag Day. They have a celebration and a dinner. The celebration is really good. The dinner is only okay, but we meet some great people.
The next day, we drive up East End Road, on the recommendation of one of the Elks members. What beautiful scenery of Kachemak Bay, with snow covered mountains and glaciers in the background.
After that we drive down the spit. We stop at the Salty Dawg Saloon. This is the oldest log cabin in Homer, and has lots of history. It reminds us of No Name Pub, in the FL Keys, with all the dollar bills on the ceiling. They don’t have any food, so we have a beer, and walk to Captain Pattie’s Fish House for lunch. We have the char grilled seafood sampler, with halibut, salmon, scallops, and prawns. Excellent. We walk around all the shops in the area and get information about fishing and water taxis.
It’s Father’s Day. We make reservations for Homer Ocean Charters water taxi to take us to hike to Glacier Lake at 12:30 and book a halibut fishing trip for Tuesday. The boat ride to Kachemak Bay State Park is awesome. The sea otters watch us get dropped off at the beach in front of the trail head. But, it just keeps getting more awesome the farther we go. We hike to the lake and it is unbelievable. Big chunks of ice floating in a lake, with mountains and a glacier in the background. We hike down to another point and the boat picks us up. There are lots of sea otter here. They seem to be as interested in us as we are in them.
What a great day! the total trip was five hours, 30 minutes there and 30 minutes back on the boat. The hike was about five miles, and was pretty easy. That gave us plenty of time at the lake. It cost us $170 for the two of us. It was well worth the price.
On Monday, we think about moving to one of the two city campgrounds. It is $20 a night, with no hook-ups, the really good spots are taken and it is noisy—we decide to stay at the Elks. We pay for two more nights, which is $25 a night with 30-amp electric. We do laundry, grocery shopping, dump the holding tanks, fill the freshwater tank and gas tank.
On Tuesday, we go halibut fishing, on North Country Charters. What a fabulous day! We board The Irish at 6:45. This is a ¾ day charter. The boat holds 16 people and everyone gets their limit, which is two halibut per person. The captain and crew are great. They filet all the fish on the way back to the dock. We end up with 31 lbs. We take two filets with us, and have the rest vacuum-sealed and frozen. We have blackened halibut for dinner.
The next day, we pick up seven packages of vacuum-sealed, frozen halibut, and ship the rest to North Carolina. All total, including charter cost, fishing licenses, tip, processing and shipping, it comes to about $25 a pound. It’s not bad, considering we had a fun day.
After that we go to the farmer’s market. We buy a dozen local oysters from Jakalof Bay Oyster Company. We saw the oyster farms, the other day, when we took the water taxi across Kachemak Bay. The captain told us that oysters are not native to Alaska, and they had to import oysters that could tolerate cold water from Japan. Anyway, they are delicious. We also buy radishes, turnips and english cucumbers. The cucumbers are among the tastiest we’ve ever had. We make full use of the turnips. We saute the greens and use the roots in salads.
We really enjoyed our time in Homer. Things are pricey, but we’ve had a fabulous time, fishing, hiking and touring. People are friendly, except for the local man who pulled up behind us at the dump station, honked his horn and drove up until his bumper was touching our tow-car. Maybe he was having a bad day.
We have driven 7,600 miles and been on the road for 92 days. We’ve spent $4,200 on gas and $2,200 on campgrounds. It’s time to move on. Next stop… Seward.