Forks in Our Road: Alaska Day 5: From Anchorage to Homer

Friday, July 30, 2021

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.