Wednesday, July 30 - Exploring Homer

  Bob says I was too grumpy about Alaskan towns yesterday - I think it was the result of the long drive; anyway, we are both enchanted with Homer!

We awoke to another clear day, although the forecast keeps predicting rain.  The young woman who is working here for the summer cooked us a terrific mushroom and tomato quiche with seedy bread and excellent jam.  We haven’t seen any bear or moose yet, but we were told that in June, the month also best for birds and flowers, the female moose and their young come into town and hang around as it’s a safe place for them.  A moose and her baby stayed on the lawn right in front of our room this year!  Obviously a great place!

View from the Bluff

Homer is divided into the Spit, the Town and the Bluff.  We drove up onto the Bluff which overlooks the Spit and Kachemak Bay and got some spectacular views of the bay and the heavily glaciated mountains beyond.  We continued on to the Carl E. Wynn Nature Center which has about 5 miles of trails through bog and woods.  We were looking for the Boreal Chickadee which differs from the Black Capped, which also occurs here, in that it has a light brown head, and would be a life bird for us.  We walked some of the trails identifying the many wildflowers in bloom.

Monkshood

Dwarf Dogwood

Coastal Paintbrush

 Although the peak for wildflowers has long past, there were more here than we’ve seen elsewhere.  We had to leave more quickly than we wished as we had arranged to meet Karl Stoltzfus who runs Bay Excursions, a water taxi/nature tour operation at noon.  As we were getting to our car Bob tried once more to call the Boreal Chickadee, and in one came and sat on a branch above us chickadee-ing away!

Karl's water taxi

We drove back onto the Spit to Ramp 3, parked and waked down the very steep ramp to the boat area.  The tides are quite extreme and everything connected to the water is attached to floating rafts guided by very tall pilings.  We found Karl at his bright yellow taxi boat with several people on board whom he was going to drop off at various places along the bay and then bird with us.  He set off at 24 mph and reached Halibut Cove across the bay in 25 minutes.  From Homer you can’t see any houses on the far side of the bay and I was surprised to  find a few small communities, mostly fishing camps, hidden in coves.  These houses were on really high poles as the tides can exceed 20’.  We left off a few people and their gear and continued to a beach where some hikers took off, leaving Bob, me, and a Texas birding couple.

Halibut Cove houses

Karl gunned the boat and we headed towards the end of the bay. We passed many sea otters, one group of 19, many Bald Eagles, including three young on a tiny island surrounded by seals   We finally found some Murrelets, small brownish seabirds that Bob had been looking for on our Seward cruise and finally could study them at close range and separate the rare Kittiltz’s from the common Marbled - another life bird!.  Unfortunately we couldn’t locate any Aleutian Terns, another of Bob’s targets.

Sea Otter

Halibut Cove Light House

It was time for Karl to pick up some more taxi customers and we headed back against the tide and wind and spent 45 minutes with the boat slapping hard against the waves.  Karl picked up two women hikers from a beach where they had hiked over a ridge to a glacial lake.  We returned to the Spit at 4 PM; Bob and I found an espresso shop and refueled with mochas and macaroons.  We returned to our B&B to relax a bit and at 6:30 drove back to the Spit to Captain Pattie’s Fish House for Alaskan King Crab legs.

Great King Crab Legs!

 I figured this was the place to get them as we are heading inland tomorrow.  Bob and I split a 1.5 lb platter of legs with nothing else except mugs of Homer beer.  The legs fortunately came with heavy shears and pliers as the shells are quite thick and prickly.  Just delicious!!  We drove through the tiny “old town” and walked a ways on a lovely boardwalk overlooking marsh and distant mountains before returning to our B&B.

Twilight glow