Homer has several nicknames. One is The End of the Road and the Halibut Capital of the World. We were told that a lot of the seafood from the Deadliest Catch television show is sold out on the Homer Spit. Dutch Harbor were the fishermen from the show work out of is located on the Aleutian Islands south of Homer, not reachable by road.
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| Kahemak Bay and the Homer Spit Taken in 2008 on a sunny day |
Looking straight out my windshield I should be seeing the beautiful Kachemak Bay and the Kenai Mountains with some glaciers right across the bay. Unfortunately, fog rolled in last evening when we arrived and, that and rain has been going on all day. I haven't even left the bus because it is nasty. We will only be here a few days. I hope it clears up enough for me to visit some of the craft shops, book stores, and bakeries. Everything is close enough for me to walk while Richard visits with Lyle West. He lives up on the hill above our campground.
Since I haven't been out yet, I thought I'd post an excerpt from my 2008 blog when Jack and Jeannie Dickson was here with us.
July 7, 2008–Monday,
Jack had the oil changed in his motorhome in preparation for their trip back to
the lower 48 on Thursday. By noon, we were on our way to Homer.
None of us have ever been there so we weren’t sure what to expect. We
arrived around 3 in the afternoon.
What a
beautiful place!!! I love one of their mottos--It’s a quaint little
drinking town with a fishing problem.
Homer is located on the Kenai Peninsula on
Kachemak Bay. Across the bay are the Kenai Mountains with several
glaciers spilling into the bay from the Harding Ice Field. The town’s
most noted feature is the Spit, a 4.5 mile long gravel bar which extends into
the bay. That’s where Homer’s harbor is located. The 92-year-old
gentleman, Lyle, who took the guys dipnetting out of Chitina lives in
Homer. He is in Fairbanks until Wednesday evening processing the salmon
he and his gang caught during the fishing trip.
We were told
that if we drove to the end of the road, when the pavement ends, keep
going and we would eventually come to a Russian Village. We
went down a God-awful road, single lane, mud and rock. We came to a place
where there were several cars parked. The road went on, but it was almost
straight down drops. We parked and Richard and Jack walked a little
ways down the road. When they came back, they told us they had talked to
a couple of young women who were driving out from the village. They
were married to Russians who lived there and were dressed in native
garb reminicient of the Amish. Their dresses and scarves are made from
very pretty material.
They said we could drive down to the beach and
we’d be able to see the 40 or so houses in the village, but it was posted no
trespassing and we couldn’t enter. We discovered that some of the
cars parked where we were belonged to village residents, but the cars
didn’t have 4-wheel drive so they couldn’t be driven to thevillage. The
other cars belonged to people who had decided to hike down to the beach.
So, we decided
to make the drive down. We passed several people who where gasping for
breath as they climbed the (I’m guessing here) 20% grades. We went a long
way down, rounding switchbacks, dropping into the depths of what felt like and could
possibly have been, the bowels of hell!!
Suddenly we
came to a place where you could switch back to the left or round a
blind bend to the right. We chose the right only to encounter what
appeared to be a straight drop over a cliff. By this time my equalibrium
was spinning and I begged to get out of there. After about a 6 point turn
around, which Richard did with great expertise, we drove back up to the place
where the other cars were parked. There we compared a few notes with
survivors of the trip down the mountain and we drove back to Homer, vowing to never try that again.
Until next time,
Dolores
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