Hello,
Today, we got up early in the morning and readied ourselves for a 4 hour drive to Homer. Homer is on the opposite side of the Kenai Peninsula from us (way over the Harding Glacier fields) - about 173 miles up and around the peninsula from Seward.
When we started out this morning, it was foggy, cloudy, rainy - rather yucky. The weather report was for 90% chance of rain in Homer and promised to be a poor touring day. But, what the heck. So, what! We went anyway. And it turned out to be a wonderfully pleasant day and not much rain at all!
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| First view of Homer, and you can see Homer Spit sticking into the Kachemak Bay. |
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| View from the Spit as we were driving on it. |
Homer is a quaint town at the end of the Kenai Peninsula and has a 4.5 mile long "spit" which extends out into Kachemak Bay. The spit is actually the harbor for Homer, but has turned into a novelty, of such, and is the location of many RV parking locations and quaint gift shops and restaurants. The spit in barely more than a 2-lane highway, but in a few places humans have actually built it up and widened it for our own purposes.
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| Small, cutely decorated shops; art, crafts, food, novelty shop and charter fishing and boating, as well. |
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| Sweet shop with a sense of humor. |
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We wanted to get a sense of the local life, so we visited the Homer Farmer's Market. As most of you know, FMs do not usually cater to tourists - its really for the locals. That was true for this FM. And, I have to say something about Alaskan produce - it is completely beyond our wildest dreams! I can't describe how HUGE, fresh, tasty and clean Alaskan veggies are. It simply is beyond words. I've only heard about the produce as a result of the extended summer hours, but to witness it ourselves has been so enlightening. Produce has been the most flavorful of any we have ever tasted, including our own garden product. AND the produce is HUGE!
One more comment about the long summer days of Alaska, it has surprised and amazed us the amount of flowers that Alaskans have. I have never seen so many huge (beyond words to describe) hanging baskets, pots of flowers, beds with flowers, boots with flowers, etc., that decorate most every store and main streets in Alaska that we have seen, as well as many homes. The amount of blooms are indescribable. Why is it? I don't know. Perhaps it is the long days that enhancing blooming, or perhaps Alaskans work especially hard at having brightness for their short summers.
We stopped at the
Homer Bookstore mostly because we needed something Alaskan to read a a souvenir, but also because an acquaintance of mine in Montpelier used to live in Homer and knew the owners of the bookstore. Sadly, the owners were off today so I missed them, but both Ira and I picked up our books by Alaskan authors to bring home. It was a very sweet little shop; cozy and friendly describe it. I even sparked up a conversation with a couple of locals about books we have been reading in common.
Just as aside, we both agree, Alaskans are some of the warmest, friendliest people I have ever met. Not just "Hi" people, but they are "let's chat and get to know each other" people. I can't tell you how at home I feel with Alaskans! Actually, I've not felt this before anywhere.
We have a wonderful lunch at
Maura's Restaurant and it was wonderful in terms of food. It is a very tiny, specialized location for foodies; mostly organic, local foods, EXCEPT for their lunch selection called THE VERMONTER which had Vermont cheddar cheese! Now I had to mention to them that we were from "the" Vermont, however, I didn't get a free lunch. I had a wonderful fresh salmon, salmon burger and Ira an wonderful Italian Rubin. These were not anything close to fast food - they were wonderfully fresh and so tasty! The one down side of Maura's was that it was so small, and people kept pouring in, getting the food out took too long. That being said, because we were in no rush, it was well worth it, hands down.
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| Ira and Maura's - PS Maura came from France. |
After we left Homer, the weather spit rain for a bit, but then we hit the Kenai River area and it was nice! It even got up to about 65 - hot! We took in the sights on the ride back to Seward.
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| Mountains seemly rise right out of nowhere, all around. |
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| This pink Fireweed is EVERYWHERE. It is such a beautiful wildflower and it truly is everywhere. | | | | |
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| We watched Dall Sheep grazing on the mountainside for quite some time. |
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| We couldn't come close to capturing the aqua color of the Kenai River! |
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| More mountains. |
It was a wonderful day on the Kenai Peninsula here in Alaska. We got back to our temporary residence and now it's time to read! Tomorrow we hope to have a relatively down day of doing laundry and a short drive. See what happens.
