Day 76 - Quartz Creek to Homer

Back To The Coast

The original idea for today's travel was to go as far as Soldatna and try more salmon fishing there. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a zoo. When Harry lost a lure on his first cast, it became apparent this wasn't going to be a good idea.

Plan B was to go on to the end of the road, Homer Spit. The road was a nice drive, but there is quite a bit of traffic on the Sterling Highway. Not exactly the "Last Frontier" around here.

Aside from the stop in Soldatna for lunch, we stopped at The Buzz in Ninilchik for coffee. It is one of the many small coffee stops we've seen in Alaska. This one was run by two guys who are transplants from Wisconsin via Las Vegas. They decided that Las Vegas was getting too crowded twelve years ago, sold everything, and bought an RV with the intent of traveling to Alaska for the summer, then Florida for the winter and then up the East Coast. They got as far as Alaska, found Ninilchik on the Cook Inlet and stopped there. After a couple of years they bought this little coffee shop that had closed. It is right on the highway as it enters Ninilchik and they have been pretty successful with it, even in the winter in a town of 700. The coffee is good, too.

We ran into heavy traffic in downtown Ninilchik as this is the weekend of Salmonfest, an annual music festival. They even have a A-list headliner in Jewel, but she is a hometown girl, coming from Homer just down the road. We didn't stop as it was much too crowded.

There are two municipal campgrounds on Homer Spit. After looked at both, we decided to stay at the one furthest from the end of the spit. It was much less crowded and less dusty than the one near the end of the spit and we have sites right one the beach overlooking the end of Kachemak Bay and the mountains and glaciers across the bay in Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

We are actually sharing our site with a young man from Seattle. When we arrived the site looked empty, with a blank tag on the post. We assumed that it was not in use and filled out the tag and paid. Then we noticed the small tent on the beach and the motorcycle boots by the picnic table. These had been obscured by a high stand of grass. Then Ben arrived on his motorcycle,  BMW 650 GS. He had set up the tent and paid an attendant by credit card, but the receipt was attached to his bike. It all worked out since we had plenty of space for parking and he was tenting on the beach.

Ellen has been studying the ABA Guide to Alaska Birds and the spit is evidently a great birding area...except that most of the action is during the migrations and we are here right between them. We'll still make the rounds tomorrow morning.