Crawford Family Sabbatical

If it’s any indication of how we feel about Homer, Alaska, we planned on possibly 2 nights here, and ended up staying 4. Even though, we’re not in a national park and we’ve seen some amazing things on our trip, Homer must be considered top 3 or better. It’s truly amazing. From the moment we drove in and caught our first glimpse of Kachemak Bay (and the range of snowy volcanoes across the way), to the last teary farewell, this place has captured our imagination and had our adrenaline pumping.

Homer is on the west side of the Kenai peninsula (mid-southern coast), and in a bay within a bay (Katchemak bay off of the Cook inlet). It’s a self proclaimed “Little Drinking Village with a Fishing Problem”. The bay itself is only 4 miles across, and the other side of the bay from Homer is a beautiful range of snowy volcanoes, glaciers, and glaciated fjords between them. The view really does take your breath away. There is a “spit” which is a 3 mile or so long gravel peninsula that juts out from Homer toward the other side of the bay. It turns out this was created by the terminal moraine (the rock pile pushed down by a huge glacier marking it’s furthest progression) of a huge glacier. This is home to many a fishing charter as well as commercial fisherman and a few tourist service type businesses (fishing store, restaurants, ice cream shop, motels, rv parks etc). It’s interesting how it’s clearly a tourist destination, but it still feels kind of native in some ways. Probably because it’s not really a family tourist destination as much as a sportsman destination. No strip malls, water parks, or mini-golf courses. It’s also curious how gritty it is, with ship “junkyards” etc next to the fishing lagoon. Not much pretense to be found here.

This post represents the first two days or our time in Homer. I apologize in advance for the verbosity.

So our first day, we drove over from Sterling on AK Highway 1, and rolled in early afternoon. We settled in at the “Ocean View RV Park” which offers a phenomenal view of the bay. The nice man working there took time to offer some suggestions and answer questions. He told us we could fish from the end of the Spit or the Lagoon, but offered no detail on how.

We decided to start by heading to the visitor center, the “Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor Center”. It was a really nice place offering movies and interactive displays about the area. We met a couple working there from Kimberling City MO. It turned out they were across the street from us at the RV Park. We shared some great stories with them, and got some good advice. We had hoped to go clamming here, but found out we need a “minus” tide for that, and we missed it by a week. We found out about a marine life program at the dock, which is a nice alternative to tide-pooling in the absence of really low tides. The kids raided the gift store, and Kane bought an edible plants guide to go along with his mushroom guide previously purchased. Kat bought a stuffed puffin keychain. The center closed at 5 and we left, confusing a few European families coming in on our way out with a (according to kim unfriendly toned) “they closed at 5”, which were summarily ignored.

From there we went down to the spit to check out the fishing situation. We drove down to the end, and there was a motel at the very end, a commercial dock just prior, and wedged between the two a barren place with several cars jammed in. We found a spot there and parked the jeep. Down on the beach (black sand and pebbles), about a dozen or so people were standing along the shore fishing. It’s a pretty interesting sight really seeing people fishing right from the beach… ocean fishing with no boat or even a pier! It didn’t take long for Kane to zero in on an Asian gentleman in bib-waders, because he was pulling in huge fish two at a time, nearly every cast. Kane ran down to the beach and stood about 5 feet from the guy and watched him. He had a long leader on his line with a huge lead sinker at the end, TWO hooks, and some sort of bait.

About ten feet to his left were an older gentleman wearing a pair of keenes, jeans, a t-shirt, and a fedora. He was with a 12 year old (whom we all assumed was a girl due to his long braided hair and androgynous face). They were taking turns casting out and catching regularly as well. I asked the guy if he minded some questions, and we ended up spending 1/2 hour with “Deacon” and “Finn”. It turned out Finn’s parents own the wood-fired pizza joint (Finn’s) on the spit, and Deacon is Finns grandfather from Boston. Deacon’s been coming to Homer every summer for the past 5 years or so, and is the resident expert on the topic of “end-of-the-spit fishing”. School was in session and Kane and I were apt pupils. According to Deacon, the fish processing place on the spit, dumps their waste (fish guts, heads etc) via a pipeline, that ends right where they (and the other guy) were fishing. He showed us their rig (similar to the other, but they used flies that looked like shrimp rather than real bait… Deacon called it the “fish-bomb”), told us where to go to get set up (The Sport Shack), and even hooked a fish and let Kane reel it in. They were giving their fish to the other guy rather than releasing it. We heard some lore about silver salmon and halibut being caught there, but all we saw were Pollock and perhaps a few cod while we were there. We didn’t care, the opportunity to catch significantly sized fish from the ocean was too good to pass up, and if it’s good enough for Mrs. Paul, we figured it was good enough for us too! We’d be back and ready to try our luck the next day, and Kane was already giddy with anticipation.

After that, we drove back halfway down the spit and found a place to park. Right as we parked, we noticed one of the charter fishing trips had returned to the shop right in front of us, and they were hanging out their catch. A huge haul of salmon and halibut (nice ones), but a monster was hanging at the end… a 231 lb Halibut. It was literally 6-7 feet long, and hanging another 2 feel up in the air. Incredible. We went down to the beach and went for a walk. The kids collected shells, and we “tried” to keep our nikes clean as the tide rolled in. It was really nice to be on the ocean (our first time this trip), and to see the spectacular display across the bay as the sun struck the volcanoes and glaciers laterally from the west.

It was getting late, and we’d heard from two independent sources that “boardwalk fish-n-chips” was good, so we decided to splurge and eat out for dinner. We ordered 3 adult orders of Halibut fish-n-chips, and the kids bought their own lemonade and root beer. (we’ve been getting water every time we eat out, but kids can choose to spend their own money otherwise). The food was good, the view was incredible, and it felt nice not to worry about cooking and cleaning!

After dinner we decided to explore a bit more, and took a drive up and around the top of the ridge to the north of downtown Homer. Most of the homes in Homer are build on the ridge, with parallel roads running at different elevations, all facing bay, spit, and volcanoes. Not a lot of zoning going on, so there is a pretty diverse range of architectures, size, and maintenance all withing a fairly small area. The view from the top was breathtaking, and we stopped to snap a few pictures.

That was quite a first day, but would pale in comparison to day 2.

Our second day in Homer was epic, and probably my single favorite day of our trip so far. Here’s how it went:

1) got up, had bacon, eggs, and bagels for breakfast
2) went to the farmers market and scored some amazing loot
3) came home for lunch and sampled aforementioned loot
4) went to the Wynn nature center for what turned out to be a guided hike
5) Kim and Kids were dropped off at the pier and did a marine life exploration program
6) Scott went to the “Sport Shack” to gear up for fishing, and went home to get snacks etc
7) Scott picked up family at pier, and we went fishing at the end of the spit
8) kim went to McDonalds to get dinner
9) We went home, kids went to bed, Scott cleaned fish, Kim went to grocery store, Scott cooked the Salmon that had been thawed for two days.

Some details:

Farmers Market – we had scoped out the location on our way to explore the Spit the first day, so finding it was no problem. Parking was interesting, because it was packed! We gave the kids their 2 dollar allowance, and headed in. For me, it’s probably my second favorite farmers market ever. Terrific and unique produce (like really cool purple cauliflower, and tasty light green hybrid of cauliflower and broccoli), the thickest, juiciest snap peas ever, Fresh fish and seafood etc. Amazing homemade products: Amish maple cinnamon rolls, russian made salsa, typical $1 cookies and kettle corn (which the kids spent their 2 dollars on). We bought all that. For seafood, we bought 2 lbs of golden crab legs (not eaten yet), and a lb or crab tails (which were good). The market was a success, and really started the day off right. You could tell it was mostly locals, and it was a really decent opportunity to watch people as well… crusty old guy buying plants for his garden, fellow gardeners swapping pointers with vendors, old friends catching up one last time before they leave Homer until next summer. One other interesting thing, after we bought the snap peas and the carrots at the “Steller Gardens” booth, this guy came over to share some maple syrup with the kids working at the booth. They were talking about his trip back to the “lower 48” last year to Vermont, where he did the sugaring and made the syrup. That got my attention because we’ve been blessed to go to Vermont a few times over the last 5 years, thanks to our friends the Hardemans. We chatted a bit about Vermont, then he was sharing the syrup, he started talking with the guy working the booth about the location of the farm (“Stellar Farm”), and he said “it’s about 12 miles east of here, it’s Eve and Eivan’s place… Eve’s garden”. That struck a chord with me because before we left (when we still had TV) we had watched a few episodes of “Alaska:The Last Frontier” reality TV show about Alaskan homesteaders. Eivan and Eve are one of the families they follow on that show. What’s really funny though is, on the show, they make it seem as though they are “in the middle of nowhere”, when in reality, they are about 10 miles from a Safeway. The next day, I also talked with a kayaking guide who lives down the street from Eivans dad “Otto”, another mainstay of the show, I guess Otto plows this guys driveway for him. Small world.

Wynn Nature Center – So Kim really wanted to go to this place, and I thought it sounded like “just another hike”, and kind of wanted to skip it. I’m really glad I didn’t. We went up there, and right away I was intrigued because they parking lot had really nice landcape, ironwork signs, fresh cedar walkways etc, and there was only one other car in the lot. We walked along the boardwalk back into the place, and there were nice placards providing info on plants and animals around the area, and a sign that said “$7 fee for day-use”. Then I started to regret it again… 30 bucks to do a hike… yuck! Well, wrong again. We went on back, and there was a young kid sitting at a log cabin… you could see craft areas where educational programs take place there frequently. Kim said “do we pay you, or are you here by yourself”? He says “Both”. Then he asked if we were there for the guided hike, scheduled to leave in 15 minutes. Well, we weren’t, but now that you mention it… The kid was named “Robroy Macgregor” (though for 2/3 of the hike, we thought his name was Rob Roy). What a great guide, he’s recently graduated from college with a forestry degree, and it was his first summer in Alaska, but you’d never know it. It was amazing. He made apple cider for the kids, he made a phone call for us to inquire about another guided tour for us in Peterson Bay, he went and got boots for another lady to borrow for the hike. Besides being nice and accommodating, he knew a ton about all of the plants and animals around the area. We learned about some of the berries that are edible in the area, and some that are not. We learned about medicinal traits of some plants, and how the Monkshood is used by Eskimos to poison tip their whaling spears. (don’t eat Monkshood BTW). What Robroy didn’t tell us about the area, a couple of the other visitors on the hike did… we had two older ladies with us, who seemed to be very knowledgeable, so we bounced questions off of them from time to time. It turned out, that they were both recently retired from careers in the National Park Service! This hike really made us appreciate having guides with us in these places… I’m sure we’ll seek out guided hikes when we can from now on.

Marine Life Exploration – I did not attend this, I dropped off Kim and the kids near the pier at 4:00 and came back at 5:00. I can tell you this, it must have been amazing, because I came back at 5, with new fishing gear to take Kane fishing, and he just wanted to talk about how great the program was. Pretty ironic, because when I dropped them off, Kane was BEGGING to come with me to the Sport Shack to buy fishing gear instead. Evidently, Kane and Kat were the only ones there for the 4:00 tour, and they got to go around the pier (it’s huge), and find all kinds of marine life, touch/hold them, and learn about them. This included sea cucumbers, urchins, sea-stars, and anemone. After the program ended, Kane spotted a jelly-fish from the ramp back up to the street level.

Fishing at the end of the spit – So, in anticipation of some ocean fishing or salmon fishing from the bank, we had gone to “Trust Worthy Hardware and Fishing” in Soldotna (on the recommendation of our salmon fishing guide, Jason), and procured two pole/reel combos (one for salmon, and one for ocean fishing). They are medium to strong stiffness, longer rods, with open-faced spinner reels, capable of dealing with up to 25 lb test line. We had the line and the rods, but we had yet to put the line on the rods, or of course set up the rigs for bottom fishing. So we spent probably a 1/2 hour getting our line on the rods, and getting ready to fish. We used 20lb test braided line, with special mono-filament leaders that I bought at the Sport Shack. The leaders had 2 oz weights at the bottom, and above that, staggered by 10 inches were to “sub-leaders” (12 inch leaders coming off of the main leader) with hooks for bait attached. I asked the guy at the shop what the rig was called, and he said it was a “end-of-the-spit rig” (I’m sure there is a name for it, but he didn’t care enough to recall). He said it’s a great rig for bottom fishing with bait. I bought three of those rigs (1 for each of our new poles, and 1 extra), and a package of frozen Herring to cut up for bait.

So Kim setup camp on the beach (cooler with ice, waiting for fish), snacks, lawn chair, blanket, tackle box. Kane and I got the poles ready. It occurred to me before the first cast, that I didn’t really know what the technique was, so I quizzed a fellow fisherman who said, get it to the bottom, and let it sit until you feel a bite (maybe 4-5 minutes for him), you may try bouncing it in a bit… I’ve caught’m on the way back in before. So I heaved it out. Within minutes, Kane and I were reeling in fish like crazy… sometimes two at a time. We quickly realized that our casts needed to be out beyond the pylons to be effective, so I was casting for both of us when it was convenient. The stiffer, longer pole was much more effective for doing this, so over time, we started taking turns using it.

Early on, I had two small Halibut come in on one cast. I wasn’t sure if they were flounder or Halibut, so I asked the guy next to me (nice retired army guy from Achorage…originally from Mississippi), and he told me how to distinguish between the two by looking at the location of the eyes. Halibut transform, midlife into bottom feeding fish, and their right eye moves to the left side of their head (and their right side turns white and becomes their “under belly”). They are really odd looking fish. He also told me that we could only keep two Halibut, so I decided to release them. In hindsight, I should have kept the larger of the two. We ended up only keeping one Halibut, which was smaller, because we wanted to try it, and it was really super yummy. Tastier than the Pollock. We caught tons of Pollock, we kept the first 4 decent ones (or what we thought was decent), then started releasing them.

It was hilarious to me that in 24 hours, we had become the “experts” dominating the fishing down there. Tourists would run over to look at our fish, snap pictures of themselves standing next to our fish etc. A bit later, a couple of young boys from Wasilla (the HQ of the Iditirod sled-dogging race), came over to fish with rental poles (they forgot their poles at home). They started out down the beach aways, and after awhile came over to ask for tips, as they failed to catch anything and Kane was reeling them on on every cast. I helped them, we gave them some of our fish that we caught, and Kane even let them reel in some fish that he hooked (paying it forward). I was casting for them a few times, but the problem was their rods and setup, would not allow them to cast far enough out to be effective. When we left at 8:30 or 9:00, they were still fishing and had not caught anything. They appreciated the fish that we gave them. One of the last fish we caught was huge, and we decided to keep it, but it would not fit in our cooler, so we gave it to them.

Along with the Halibut and the Pollock, we caught several sea-stars. Kat loved taking the sea-stars off the line, playing with them, and putting them back in the ocean. When other small children would be nearby, she’d take a sea-star over to them so they could hold it and touch it. It was so cute… she was a trooper while we fished for 4 hours. She did reel in a fish or two that I hooked, and she enjoyed that.

One more incident of note while fishing, and a little context. Deacon (and again our friend from Mississippi confirmed) told us that the area where he was fishing was the end of a pipeline of fish waste coming from the processing plant up the spit. The reason the fishing is so prime is the fish come in there to feed on the heads and guts of the halibuts that are brought in by the fishing operations. The other things that like to feed on the fish and the waste are seagulls. As a result, when the waste is being flushed, the gulls congregate just above the end of the pipeline (the exact spot where were were casting to). There must be up to 2-300 gulls at times on the surface of the water, in a 30 foot diameter circle over the end of the pipeline. So I was baiting my hooks, when I heard the boys from Wasilla say “he caught a bird!”… I wasn’t too surprised, because there had been times when I reeled in my bait, that a gull waited for my hook to come out of the water, and it stole my herring. I did think “whatever poor sap got a bird hooked, is in for some fun getting it unhooked”, but I kept on baiting my hook. Then I heard Kane giggling… that sort of “i can’t believe what’s happening to me right now” giggle. Cold chills when down my spine. I looked back, and Kane was reeling in his line and 10 feet from the shore, a gull was twisting, flapping, and squawking, being dragged toward shore. Of course, Kim was off getting dinner for us, so I was there with just the kids. I on put my fish cleaning gloves (kind of like chain mail) headed toward the chaos. Kane was still reeling, and was started to try to “pick up” the bird by lifting up on the rod tip. I implored him to stop, as it was allowing the bird to twist and flail in the air, becoming more entwined, and also putting more tension on his wings that were caught up in the line. (he had not hooked the gull, the gull got tangled up in his line). About that time, the bird was close to shore and super distressed. I got over there and grabbed the line to start to try to untie it… naturally, the bird would submit as it would be obvious that I was there to help him right? WRONG, it freaked out even more and started biting my hands and fingers! So I was struggling for what seemed like an eternity and made a tad bit of progress, then a good Samaritan came over and offered to help. So I grabbed the bird by the neck (loosely people, don’t call PETA) and held it, while he untangled the line from the birds wings. Together we got him free in about 3 minutes, by myself it would have taken 15, if ever. Once the line was off, the bird took off like a shot. After, I thanked the guy who helped and he said “it happened to me earlier and so I felt sorry for you over here by yourself”. Unfortunately, since Kim was not there, and I was busy, we don’t have any pictures of this, but I’ll never forget it anyway!

After we got home, it was getting dark, we put the kids in bed, and I was dreading going back outside in the dark to fillet the fish. It’s not something I’ve done much of, and I don’t enjoy it (does anyone?). Also, each species seems to differ, and I’d never handled a Halibut or Pollock. On top of that, my knife when dull on me after the first fish. It was a pain, but I got them done, fillets soaking in icy salt water, and everything cleaned up by around 10:00. We had pulled out 1.5 lbs of Kanes Salmon for dinner the night before (we decided to eat out two nights in a row), and so we decided to go ahead and cook the salmon that night too. I pan fried in in butter to sear it, and finished it in the oven. It turned out really good, and we used it for breakfast and lunch over the next couple of days.

That’s the story of our first 1 and a half days in Homer! I told you it was Epic… gallery of pictures: