And on to Homer

 July 20 

We left Fox Island after breakfast, retracing our steps by boat to Seward (with stops to admire a sea otter and a marbled murrelet), followed by a four hour drive to Homer on the other side of the Kenai Peninsula. Our path took us north, northwest and finally southwest, as we had to go around the mountains and ice fields in the center of the peninsula. 

Downtown Seward is lovely (once you get away from the harbor and the cruise ships). The national park visitor center was interesting and the sea life (rescue) center was great. The center had exhibits which allowed viewing puffins, ducks, other waterbirds and sea lions both from above and below water level. We could have watched the puffins dive and “fly” underwater all day!  The sea life center was founded after the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in nearby Prince William Sound highlighted the need for wildlife rescue and rehabilitation facilities in Alaska. 

Leaving Seward we drove back through 

Chugach National Forest, which covers 7M acres and much of the Kenai mountain range. At the turnoff to the Sterling highway, we stopped at Tern Lake and were treated to views of a family of Trumpeter Swans and a pair of common Loons. 

The Kenai River is a popular salmon fishing spot. Currently sockeye and coho salmon are both “running” in the river. Salmon is the backbone of life in this part of Alaska, not only as a food source, but for its role in moving nutrients from the ocean to the land. All salmon are born in fresh water, spend years out in the open ocean ( duration depending on species) and then return to their birth rivers to spawn. The time they spend in the ocean means that marine nitrogen and other nutrients return with them. Bears carry both live and dead salmon deep into the forest, where the carcasses contribute to the health of the forest soil. 

Salmon require clean, cool and cold water. Pollution is an obvious risk to them, but so is logging— the extra debris in the water, and the lack of shade at the edges of streams also degrades the water conditions they need. 

We stopped at Anchor River State Park  (so named as a place where Captain James Cook lost an anchor in his exploration of Cook’s Inlet). The beach was covered in gulls, searching for halibut carcasses that wash in from the fishing boats once the fillets have been removed. The fish also attract bald eagles, from which the gulls flee. The town of Anchor River is the furthest west town on the US Highway system. It was too misty to see across the river to Lake Clark National Park on the Alaska Peninsula.

We proceeded on to the town of Homer (

about three times the size of Seward) and then out onto the 5-mile long “Spit”. The Homer Spit is the terminal moraine from the glacier that formed Kachemak Bay. It is quite a tourist location and prides itself as “the halibut capital” as well as “the largest small boat harbor in the US”. We took a small boat across Kachemak Bay to Chinapoot Bay and the Odyssey Lodge, our home for the next two nights. Along the way we saw large groups of Common Murre, who were not too happy about our intrusion! 

Pictured: gulls fighting over a fish head, common murre escaping, bald eagle, approaching odyssey lodge