Alaska Day 6: Playing the Local in Homer

After nearly a week of go, go, go in Alaska, we intentionally planned nothing at all for today, Saturday morning. We rolled out of bed at 7 and took our coffee outside on the patio to enjoy the bright sunshine and the spectacular views of Kachemak Bay State Park, the best views we would have during our stay in Homer. Unlike last evening, today we had great views of one of the more notable mountains in the Park called Poot Peak. It is perhaps more affectionately known to locals as the chocolate drop for its perfectly symmetrical conical shape, just like a Hershey's Kiss.

Poot Peak, Kachemak Bay State Park

Panorama from the Patio

The meadow below the house of fireweed, angelica, cow parsnips, and stinging nettles, all in full bloom, was resplendent in the early morning sun. Especially bright were the scarlet red elderberries growing in mounds surrounding the meadow. Closer to the house, golden-crowned sparrows which are supposed to be ground feeders were up in the cow parsnips, harvesting seeds from the seed heads along with the goldfinches. Flycatchers were sallying from nearby trees and the noisy red-breasted nuthatches were busily chatting down in the small spruces.

Golden-Crowned Sparrow on Cow Parsnip

Angelica lucida is a Most Common Wildflower

Most mornings and afternoons, including today, we would see a small group, usually four in number, of sandhill cranes foraging in the meadow. We would see as many as nine, but generally four, working the open spaces along the hillside or noisily honking as they flew over.

I was sitting at the table sipping coffee and waiting for Ann to appear when Michael, knowing we had no plans for the day, asked me, “You want to go with me on a real Alaskan adventure?” Without hesitation, I said yes. Flash back to the fish that he was off obtaining when we arrived in late afternoon yesterday. His plan was to take the fish down to the public cleaning station on the Spit and break them down. At this point, he did not know that I am a retired chef who broke down fish every day of my restaurant career. 

Once we got coffeed up, we followed Mike in his Subaru, festooned with all kinds of antiwar bumper stickers, down to the Spit. Before noon on a Saturday well before the charter boats would be returning, it was easy to find a spot in the first cleaning station we came to. The city of Homer maintains several cleaning stations complete with stainless steel drain boards, sprayers, and a wagon for scrap. The pavilions are wrapped in fly netting and the entrances have vinyl strip doors to help keep the bugs out, a very, very nice set up, appropriate for the Halibut Fishing Capital of the World.

The station that we used was situated right on The Nick Dudiak Fishing Lagoon, better known as The Fishing Hole. The hole is a small pond with an inlet through a breakwater into the bay. Alaska Fish and Game stocks this pond with king and silver fry which imprint on the pond, migrate to the sea, fatten up there, and then return to the lagoon to spawn. Despite scads of would-be fishermen and a few jumping fish, I never saw a fish landed in the lagoon.

We lugged Mike's cooler into the station and unloaded five red salmon (Sockeyes) and a much larger King. He got the fish off of a buddy from Seldovia across the Bay for a song, especially because the King had a chunk taken out of its head by a seal and was therefore commercially unsaleable.

I hadn’t planned on a working vacation when we came to Alaska, but I'm not averse to work and got to work, first scaling the fish and then happily filleting them. Mike's fillet knife is a bit longer than mine that I have used for 35 years, so it took a minute to get used to, but my muscle memory is good despite not having busted out a salmon in five years. I stockpiled bits and pieces of trim with a plan to make them into handrolls later in the day. A woman was happy to take the heads, guts, and carcasses to use for chumming halibut.

Scaling Salmon in Prep for Filleting

After putting the cleaned fillets in the cooler on ice, Michael offered to buy as a beer. After working busting out salmon, I was plenty game for a beer. We drove down the spit a short ways to the Salty Dawg Saloon, tourist attraction of tourist attractions where at 12:30 on a Saturday, parking was almost impossible to find. In fact, Mike invented his own spot right in the middle of the lot, claiming that as a benefit of driving a beater, "Who would bang up their rental car on my beater?"

As we walked across the road to the instantly recognizable landmark, I could see that it was a hodgepodge of two tiny buildings jammed together and fronting a lighthouse tower. The Salty Dawg is so well known that whenever we mentioned Homer, the listener would inevitably say that we had to visit it.

The original building was one of the first cabins in Homer, built in 1897. It served many purposes until 1909 when a second building was added. After being the first post office, a railroad station, a grocery store, a coal mining office, a school house, and an office for Standard Oil Company, in 1957 it finally became the Salty Dawg Saloon. After the big earthquake in 1964, the buildings were moved to the current location and the iconic lighthouse tower was added between and behind them.

The Salty Dawg: I am Taller than the Doorway

On ducking really low to get through the door of the tiny log structure, above the usual chatter of a dive bar packed with patrons I could hear Toby Keith belting “I Love This Bar,” which seemed pretty appropriate if a lot cliché. When my eyes became accustomed to the dim lighting, I could see that every surface was covered in dollar bills. Ann added one to the collection.

Customary to Leave a Dollar on the Wall

We Were There

Tony: Local Color

After waiting at the very busy bar for a couple minutes, we finally got our beers from their tiny list of cans, nothing on draft. At least they had one IPA in a can. We took our drinks out on the patio and there were regaled by an old acquaintance of Michael's, flamboyant in a green Hawaiian shirt and sporting a three foot-long silver wig held in place with a bright blue scarf tied as a headband.

After we finished our drinks, Mike showed us around a bit on the boardwalk before we headed back to the house. My first impression of this part of the Homer Spit was as a typical tacky tourist attraction like many beach towns. We would get a closer look at the Spit in coming days.

Part way back to the house, Mike pulled to the side of the road and asked us if we were hungry and perhaps wanted to go get a decent sandwich. Living east of Homer, Mike lives in an enclave known as Fritz Creek. For sandwiches, he took us a mile or two beyond his house to the Fritz Creek General Store which offers a lot of things: gas, post office boxes and services, a deli, and a convenience store. We ordered sandwiches to take back to the house to eat out on the patio.

Fritz Creek General Store

After lunch, I helped Mike portion and vacuum seal his salmon, then I minced all the salmon trim in preparation for making handrolls for dinner. After cleaning up, I went foraging for dinner in town at the local Save-U-More store which, surprisingly to me, sells Kirkland-labelled products from Costco.

I picked up some nori, seaweed salad, and sriracha for the handrolls, but then I fell afoul of Alaska ABC laws when I grabbed a couple of bottles of Prosecco and headed for the check out where the cashier told me emphatically that I could not purchase alcohol at his register. I had to go to the register not fifteen feet away in the part of the store that is licensed to sell alcohol. This is not the last time that I will comment on the arcane liquor laws in Alaska on this trip. In a country of crazy liquor laws—thank you Supreme Court for leaving the laws to the 50 states—Alaska is right up there on the crazy spectrum.

Back at the inn, I put together a spicy salmon mix for our handrolls and we sat on the patio in the late evening sun while I rolled the salmon. The nori sheets were of the worst possible quality and were very dry, brittle, and tasteless. I could see that Michael was not the world's biggest fan of spicy salmon, but he put a brave face on it. Liberal application of Prosecco would help.

Post Prandial Pinot

Spicy Salmon Handrolls

After dinner and on towards 9pm, Mike lit a fire in his firepit and we sat around sipping Pinot, chewing the fat, and watching the sun slip towards the horizon in the west. Once the fire died down, we all headed for bed, Ann and I to hopefully rest up for walking the Spit from beginning to end and back again tomorrow.

Alaska Day 5: From Anchorage to Homer

Friday morning, the start of day 5 of our Alaska vacation, was laid back. We needed to get to Homer, about four to five hours away and we had all day. Planning ahead for the week to come, we took advantage of being in a major metropolitan area to stock up on cheese and bread at Fred Meyer. We needed lunches for several days in Homer and bread and cheese would do nicely when we were out doing things far from town. After resupplying, we drove back to midtown for coffee and a veggie breakfast burrito at Black Cup Coffee.

Black Cup Coffee: Coffee and a Smile

After our leisurely coffee, we made for the Seward Highway and points south, retracing our steps from yesterday all the way to Portage and then beyond further south and west down the Kenai Peninsula. To get around Turnagain arm, we headed southeast to Portage where crossing the Placer River, the Seward Highway, Highway 1, turns abruptly west and starts climbing through the tall Kenai Mountains to Turnagain Pass, the highest point on the highway at 900 feet. 

Once through the bulk of the mountains, Highway 1 takes a right hand turn due west and becomes the Sterling Highway, while the Seward Highway continues south as Highway 9. At Cooper Landing, the highway picks up the Kenai River as it pours out of Kenai Lake. Heading due west, we arrived at Sterling where we got gas much cheaper than in the Anchorage area before heading into Soldotna, the seat of the Kenai Peninsula Borough.

In the stretch between Cooper Landing and Sterling passing the north side of Skilak Lake, we saw vast acres of dead spruce trees, much of which had burned over and was now swathed in screaming pink fireweed. Spruce bark beetles have killed millions of spruce, leaving small stands of poplar, birch, and cottonwoods, but also leaving the area prone to lightning-caused forest fires. Naturalists are putting a brave spin on the grave situation: monoculture spruce forests have been cleared out giving different species a chance to reclaim the land in a more diverse nature.

St. Elias Brewing in Soldotna

We arrived in Soldotna about 12:30, on the fence about going to St. Elias Brewing or Kenai River Brewing for lunch. As we came into town, we saw St. Elias just on our left and pulled right in to a packed parking lot. Word from most beer people that we talked to later on is that Kenai River Brewing would have been the better choice. We had decent enough beer and sandwiches while sitting at the bar chatting with a couple of guys taking a lunch break from pouring concrete.

Over the years, when I have thought about the Kenai Peninsula, I have thought about the Russian influence, Alaska being Russian territory until just after the Civil War, though no doubt the native tribes would love to dispute this. Besides a few villages in which the native tribes still speak Russian and certain place names (e.g., Kenai, Kalifornsky, Kasilov), the most visible symbol of Russian occupation is the few remaining Russian Orthodox churches with their onion domes and their orthodox crosses. I made a point back in Oregon of telling Ann that I wanted to visit two picturesque Russian Orthodox churches on our trip out to Homer.

Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Church

After lunch, we took the short Kenai Spur off the highway to the town of Kenai, situated on Cook Inlet where the Kenai River empties into it. In Kenai, we visited the first of the two churches, the Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Church, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. We were not alone. Several other couples came and went while we were there.

The oldest remaining orthodox church in Alaska, this tiny wood-framed structure still sees regular services. Completed about 1895 and replacing the previous church from 1849, it is built of logs in the shape of a ship's hull. The two story bell tower with an octagonal belfry was added five years after the church was built. The belfry is topped by a bright blue onion dome and an orthodox cross. The building has two additional blue onion domes, each topped with a cross.

We entered through the ground floor of the bell tower and then into the nave which has a large brass chandelier hanging from the octagonal dome. At the far end is a wall of icons and paintings called an iconostasis.

Gorgeous Rugosa Roses Just Across From the Church

Belltower and Central Domes

Chandelier and Iconostasis

Iconostasis Detail

Elaborate Chandelier, Rector Peter Tobias, the Iconostasis

Inside the church, we met Rector Peter Tobias, a likeable guy who has spent time at the Eastern Orthodox Church of the Assumption in Milwaukie just outside of Portland. He gave us a rundown of the church's history and showed us several icons and old manuscripts. While I recognized the Cyrillic characters in many of the writings, I could barely decipher any words. I think the language was not Russian but Old Church Slavonic.

On our way to and from the church in Kenai, we passed an old bus converted to a walk-up food truck, surrounded by a horde of people, locals mainly by the look of them. We put the Burger Bus on our list for the return trip from Homer to Anchorage, but alas, we never made it. On advice of many people, we would go to Cooper Landing Brewery and we would not regret it.

Holy Transfiguration of Our Lord Chapel

From downtown Kenai, we took Kalifornsky Beach Road along Cook Inlet through both Kalifornsky and Kasilof before popping back out on the Sterling Highway. In just less than an hour, we arrived in the hamlet of Ninilchik. There we took a right on a dirt road for about a quarter mile until the road ended at the water and the Holy Transfiguration of Our Lord Chapel, also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Father Tobias told us that nobody would be at the church and he was right. Ann and I were the only two people there on a gray and gloomy day. The weather seemed appropriate for a setting that looks almost abandoned, quite a forlorn scene with the picket fence in disarray, surrounding an overgrown cemetery. Situated on a bluff overlooking a tiny village on the shore of Cook Inlet, this church is slightly newer (1901) than the one in Kenai and a good bit larger, topped with five gold onion domes each bearing a cross. Some of the domes are a bit askew.

Beautiful Location on a Bluff Above Ninilchik

My Favorite Photo of the Church

Front Porch Cross Detail

Square Tower Detail

Homer

It was a very quick ride into Homer from Ninilchik. We stopped at an overlook just outside of town to get our bearings, and we could see the 4.5-mile Homer Spit extending out into Kachemak Bay. Alaska Highway 1 ends at the tip of the spit. Once in Homer, we did not go down to the Spit, where most of the action is. Rather, we turned on East End Rd which parallels Kachemak Bay and drove 6.5 miles out of town to our home for the next week, the Good Karma Inn.

Billed as the Halibut Fishing Capital of the World, for all intents and purposes, Homer is Lands' End and the population center of these parts, occupying the far southwestern end of the flatter part of the Kenai Peninsula as you can see on the map below.

There is a finger of the peninsula directly south and extending further west of Homer across the Kachemak Bay, but that land is spectacularly mountainous and barely accessible. Although Seward is a bit less than 80 miles as the crow flies east of Homer, it is 170 miles by car, so mountainous is the southern part of the peninsula that is home to Kenai Fjords National Park on the Seward End and Kachemak Bay State Park on the Homer end. The next population center of any consequence is Kodiak, 100 miles to the south on Kodiak Island across the Shelikof Strait from Katmai National Park.

Good Karma Inn

We had spoken to the innkeeper, New Hampshire native Michael LeMay, earlier in the afternoon and understood that when we arrived, he would be out getting some fish from a friend. We made ourselves at home until he got back from town.

Michael built the 1800-square foot log chalet himself on a 2-1/2 acre lot overlooking Kachemak Bay. There are three guestrooms, very well appointed, two upstairs and one downstairs where we stayed, although most of our non-sleeping hours were spent out on the patio just outside our room. 

The first afternoon we spent sitting outside on the patio, chatting away with Mike and then other guests as they arrived. Just below the patio is a small patch of mown grass and below that is a meadow given over to the native flora of the area. The cleared area with surrounding trees was a mecca for birds and we would watch pewees and other small Empidonax flycatchers hawing bugs all afternoon.

We would see and hear a small group of Sandhill Cranes many times a day during our stay, often grazing in the meadow below the house. It was not unusual to see Bald Eagles overfly the house and while we were there, we would see both a Spruce Grouse in the driveway and would scare a hen Ring-necked Pheasant as we pulled in one afternoon.

We brought a couple bottles of wine with us just for enjoying while sitting out. Mike makes his own wine from juice or concentrate. Later on that evening, we would open a few bottles and shared them around with the other guests. The cheese and bread that we bought in Anchorage make a fine dinner.

Though the scenery would change from hour to hour and day to day according to the weather, the views across the bay to the mountains and glaciers of Kachemak Bay State Park were always stunning. 

Sunlit Grewingk Glacier Across Kachemak Bay

Clouds Cleared Enough to See Poot Peak

Western Pewee Spent the Afternoon Hawking Bugs

Our Host Michael LeMay

Michael's Sidekick Sammy

Common Hemp-nettle, Galeopsis tetrahit

Cow Parsnip Seed Head

Is This Not a Million-Dollar View?