Departing Homer for Kodiak and Chenega Bay
Did I mention departures can be ephemeral?
“As soon as possible” can take a long long time when you are boarding cars, motorcycles, even a grown-up tricycle, container vans, campers, R/vs of all shapes and sizes, trucks, and today we learn how it is done. This is truly a marvel of engineering. It must also take some amazing system to keep straight where every vehicle needs to go because they are getting off at different stops, so all the ones getting off at the same stop need to be stored together. Watching all this happen is amazing.
They have this turntable. Cars drive on, we think a maximum of six. The turntable also handles a maximum of one large container truck.
Cars drive on the elevated turntable:
Turntable begins to lower:
Cars reach main deck:
Turntable begins to turn:
A friendly otter kept us entertained while we waited for all the vehicles to board.
We were told this is one of the Homer small ferries to Kachemak National Park or to Seldovia:
It is another gorgeous day in Homer, and even early in the morning, fishermen and women are on the beach:
It’s a beautiful departure, and somewhere between Homer and Kodiak, we run into a heavy mist near sunset:
We departed late and will be getting into Kodiak late, so late we sleep right through it. Before we know it, we are departed from Kodiak and en route to Chenega Bay and Whittier.
Dining at Captain Pattie’s, the Best Meal of our Trip
We’d been driving since breakfast, stopping, getting out, maybe hiking a little, taking photos, and we wanted a nice lunch. The weather is gorgeous, even hot, and we head for the Homer spit.
The name Homer Spit just cracks AdventureMan up, even though he knows Spit in this usage means a long, thin, flat beach that goes out into the sea (Definition of spit noun (LAND) from the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press), he still cracks up just like a little boy when he hears it or says it. This is what Homer Spit looks like:
It is actually like four or five miles long, longer than it looks on the maps. While a lot of people hike out there, we drove; we want to continue exploring after we eat.
The nicest restaurant we can see is Captain Patties, and we decide to give it a try.
From the moment we walk in, we are so glad me made this choice. The interior is clean and neat and sunny, there is sea memorabilia on the walls, and the place if filled with people who look like they live here.
This is the view from Captain Patties:
We love the place, and we love it that they are fine with us each ordering soup and splitting the main dish. We have found that we just can’t eat as much as restaurants want to put on our plates. At home, it is no problem, we ask them to pack it up and we have it for dinner, or lunch another day. We don’t want to waste food, and we don’t want to pack it up, either, so sharing a main dish works for us.
Today we choose seafood chowder – oh man, we’ve been eating chowders everywhere but this one is THE best. And we split a grilled local seafood platter, everything on the plate, the scallops, the shrimp, the salmon and the halibut, all local. It is unbelievably good. It is so simply prepared, no elaborate sauces, and it is so tasty, so good.
On the wall hangs this piece. From our whaling adventures with Captain Alan on the Scania, we know that this is baleen, what the whale uses to screen fish as he ingests them. 🙂
We wanted to go to The Mermaid for dinner, but they were fully booked, right up to closing. We could see people waiting outside at Fat Olives, a lot of people, so we decided we had such a good lunch at Captain Pattie’s that we would go back for dinner. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha on us. Whoda thunk, but in Homer on a gorgeous Saturday night, you had better have reservations for dinner. We ended up having a nice enough dinner, but nothing special, across the street, wishing we were back at Captain Patties.
Our dinner somewhere else, nice enough, but not the same:
AdventureMan had salad and salmon quesadillas; I had Ceasar salad with grilled salmon:
A few last views of Homer:
The Homer Airport, cozy and efficient:
Public art at the airport 🙂
Sign on a property outside of Homer:
One of several thriving community gardens we saw in Homer, full of delicious things to eat. We love it that Pensacola also has good community gardens.
Reconnaissance Trip in Homer
Did I tell you how this trip came about? How last year I saw a notice about The Celebration in Juneau, but we were already en route to Zambia on those exact dates?
As we started planning this Alaska trip in 2014, we discovered we had more ideas than we have time. The Qatari Cat is ten years old now; we don’t like to leave him at the Wee Tuck ‘Em Inn longer than a couple weeks at most. The more we decided what to include in the two weeks, the more we came to the realization that we needed to do a reconnaissance trip :-). I found the Alaska Marine Highway System, and we realized we could cover a lot of ground and see a variety of terrain by taking this cross Gulf ferry, the M/V Kennicott.
Homer is almost the end of the line. The ferry continues to Seldovia, which is picturesque and beautiful, but we wanted to explore Homer, and to figure out where we will go next year after the Celebration.
Homer is so much fun. It’s been voted one of the hippest cities in America, for it’s 70’s counter culture and community values. It is a very fun place to be, and full of breathtaking scenery.
Even a Homer quilt shop!
The Duncan House Diner in Homer
We awake to a gorgeous day, a day with not a cloud in the sky, horizon to
horizon beautiful weather. That is thrill #1. AdventureMan goes outside while I
finish getting dressed, and comes swiftly back in for his camera – there is a
huge eagle perched on the turret of our building! We spend about half an hour
while he does what eagles do – soaks in a little sunlight, looks for a sparkle
in the water that might signal some breakfast – he knows we are here, and he
doesn’t care. How cool is that?
We can’t find Two Sisters Bakery (and discover later we stopped just feet short
of where it was hidden behind some shrubbery,) but we head up Main Street and
find Duncan Diner, with a parking lot full of pickup trucks and a very hip ’70’s
feel. I rarely eat pancakes, but I ordered something called the 1-1-2, which is
one egg, one pancake, and 2 strips of bacon.
“Blueberries?” the very hip waiter asked. I must have looked puzzled, and he
asked again “Blueberry pancakes or plain?” and I said “Oh! Blueberries!”
That pancake was so good. I couldn’t eat it all, but it must have had a full cup
of blueberries in it. I only used a little bit of butter; the pancake was so
good just plain.
As we ate, we formed a plan. We had intended to just walk around Homer, but
Homer is bigger than it looked on the map, more spread out. There are sights to
be seen! Homer is nearly at the tip of the Peninsula, on Kachemak Bay; whether you go east or west, you end up in Anchorage.
We call Hertz, they have a car available, and then we call Kostas taxi (907-399-8008) who come and takes us to the airport where we pick up a car. I mention Kostas specifically because every single local we asked mentioned them by name as the most reliable, and we found that to be true for us, too.
Driftwood Inn, Homer, Room 26 and Cabin
Homer greets us with a beautiful sunrise over the beach, and we can’t wait to get started.
This was such a lovely place to spend some time. It didn’t hurt that from the time we left Kodiak, the weather has been gorgeous. Gorgeous is not something you can count on in Alaska. It was nice having a break from the boat, being on our own to explore, and having such a beautiful view to write notes while I did the laundry.
What was so totally cool is that while you do have to pay for the washer and the dryer, and I don’t mind that, it’s only fair, the management provides a big jar of detergent.
Have you ever been traveling and wanted to do laundry only to realize you needed to go buy some detergent, or to have change to use those machines that distribute detergent, but sometimes don’t work when you need them to? What an annoyance! I so appreciated their providing detergent; it may seem like a small thing, but it made doing the laundry so easy.
Cold country dressing is so totally different from warm weather dressing. In warm weather, you really have to do a lot more laundry, sweat makes clothes need washing more often. In cold weather, unless it is rainy, you can end up wearing the same outer clothes multiple times before they need washing. Most of what we needed to wash was socks and underwear, but also my favorite jeans and t-shirts. I had others, but you know how it is, you have your favorites 🙂
Our room, #26 upstairs in a cabin separate from the Driftwood Inn but a part of it.
View from balcony:
Living and reading room
noticeboard prompting us to look for resident eagle
Stairway going up to our room (note antlers!)
Washer and dryer – and detergent!
view from downstairs
full kitchen area and dining available for use
As promised, eagle on turret 🙂
Eagle totally unfazed by our photo-taking 🙂
Kodiak and the Trip to Homer on the M/V Kennicott
Landed in Kodiak early, so early I don’t know how early. We rise, dress and WOW, it is not raining, you can even see some sun, so we decide to walk into Kodiak. As we debark, we ask which way and the Terminal Manager Steve catches up with us and offers us a ride. It warmed my heart, this is exactly what I wanted AdventureMan to see, this is what I grew up with, the Spirit of Alaska 🙂 taking care of one another. Alaska is like one big community.
On the way, he gives us an overview of Kodiak and we talk about the big problem with the lack of ferry transportation this year with the Tustemena out of service. Tustemena is the M/V ferry that runs down the Aleutian Islands all the way to Dutch Harbor/Unalaska, another trip we want to make. It’s been a big loss for all tour related businesses on the peninsula and for Kodiak. The Kennicott will make a run down in late September to help get people, goods and vehicles out who are waiting for transportation.
We told him we wanted some breakfast, and he dropped us off at the Shelikof Lodge, full of locals. I actually asked where he eats breakfast, and he said “at home” and we learned why – this is a very busy man. He runs back and forth between all the terminals, solving problems, making sure everything is going smoothly. In Kodiak, people work hard.
At the Shelikov, AdventureMan has biscuits and gravy, and I have reindeer sausage for the first time, with a hot, spicy aftertaste I love. Even though it is very lean meat, I only eat half.
Shelikov Lodge Breakfast Specialties:
AdventureMan’s Biscuits and Gravy
Reindeer Sausage
We hike to the Russian Orthodox Church, passing a tidal wave marker on the way. It is scary – it seems rather high on the island. That tidal wave came a long way up.
We walk through Kodiak, past all the processing plants, to ship. It’s not a very big place, but you can see a lot of pride in what they do.
LOL, loading the cars and trucks and containers and R/Vs takes hours and there is a long long line of walk ons, first the Kodiak football team, all in their jerseys, and then the Kodiak high school cross country team in bright lemon yellow wind breakers. Maybe 150 students, good kids, full of energy, whooping it up.
We leave Kodiak late, but these late departures seem to be built into the ferry schedule – they never know where they will need more time.
These meadows look so Swiss to me.
Just like Life of Pi! Fish jumping out of the water in tens and hundreds, flying!
Whales to feed on those crops of fish
Approaching the Barrens, as the sea passage gets a little rougher. This is one of the windiest, roughest areas to traverse
There is a whole new dynamic on board with the high-schoolers. They are hilarious! All that teenage energy! We hit rough water just after going through the Barrens, and the kids are standing on the forward deck waiting for huge waves to break over the bow. When the huge waves break, it is like in a movies, a sheet of water, and the kids hang on and come up laughing.
We go through rough waters about an hour, then things calm down and . . . the sun comes out! Gorgeous scenery, all the way to Homer.
Approaching Homer Spit on M/V Kennicott:
Docked almost exactly at 9, as scheduled. We waited for the kids to all get off, then walked to the terminal, where there are NO taxis waiting. When I made reservations, I had asked the hotel if they send a shuttle to the ferry terminal and they said no, they didn’t have a shuttle, but there are always taxis waiting. No. No, that is just not true. There are not always taxis waiting.
We see a couple we had met onboard, they ask where we are going and we tell them the Driftwood Inn and he says “that’s where we’re going!” and offers to split the cab they have already called with us. Perfect! Except when we get to the hotel he discovers that he is NOT staying at the Driftwood Inn, and he has to call the taxi driver back again to take him to the Heritage Inn.
It’s sad, I think this is a generational thing, he kept calling himself a dummy. We are raised in a different generation, to call someone a dummy is just so negative and so degrading that we would never do it, not to anyone else, not to ourselves. We might say “How could I be such an idiot!?” but we were horrified – and a little heartbroken – to hear this really nice man berate himself like that.
What was cool is that we ran into them again – twice – before twenty-four hours had passed, once at the car rental agency, and once again at the Homer Farmer’s Market. They had settled in quickly, only a couple blocks from where we were staying and were having a wonderful time, heading out that afternoon in route to Prudhoe Bay. (I’m impressed.)
Our room is lovely, spacious and welcoming, with gorgeous shared spaces and a view to die for, maybe 230 degrees of glaciers, mountains, Kachemak Bay and driftwoody beach. The sun is setting, the air smells clean; sea, salt and pine, the skies are clear, and oh, life is sweet.
Sunset from Driftwood Inn, Homer, Alaska:
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