Homer Alaska was a busy place

We did a lot in Homer and most of it was in the rain! Remember the two days of sunshine we had in Denali allowing us the privilege of seeing the mountain twice well it has been wet ever snice and it doesn’t look like it will let up soon. No, it isn’t raining all the time, but it is overcast and wet enough that you want your rain gear with you. In fact, Judy and I both spend money on a really good pair of boots. I don’t think that we will ever wear them out and they are guaranteed to minus 40 degrees, yet I have worn them all day in 50 and 60 degrees without suffering. They were especially great on the fishing trip

We get to our RV park and get set up and we are parked at the edge of a cliff. It is a good thing that there is a fence along the edge. Pictured below is my view from the back of our coach. As I was taking this photo other members of our tour were about three sites to the right taking picture so whales coming to the surface.

I brought Edgar out of the RV for his walk, and he acted like he was afraid of something and actually sought shelter under the bikes which were still mounted on the back of the car. Suddenly I heard a blood curdling screech and looked up in the tree directly over my head to see a rather large Bald Eagle roosting there. As it turned out the camp host for the park has been feeding two eagles all summer and the tree was where they perched to wait for their treat. Once Edgar realized the Eagle would not mess with him, he was good to go the rest of our stay.

Our first day in town is a free day so to make sure we don’t miss the boat tomorrow we take a drive to get a feel for the lay of the land. We are looking for wet weather gear for the fishing trip tomorrow but first we want to check out a few places. One was a winery and to my surprise there is a geocache right at the entrance. We found the cache, checked out the winery and then left. On the way out I see a sign that says “Yard Sale” and having never been to an Alaskan yard sale we are following the signs into a pretty nice development. We found the sale and actually saw a few things of interest but decided against getting more stuff to haul in the RV.

As we learn more about the lady having the sale, we find out that she and her departed husband had been commercial fishers for years and that is when the stories started to flow. Her opinion of the so called “Reality Shows” about life in and around Alaska was somewhat jaded. She told us of a good friend who was a crab fisher but was told that because he did not curse up a storm and yell at his crew all of the time, he didn’t fit the director’s idea of what a crab fisher was supposed to be. Not that the people who were on the show were bad people just a little more animated that most. She also mentioned the show with the Kilcher family in it. Yes, they did immigrate from Switzerland years ago and successfully homesteaded in the Alaskan bush. However, the show promotes them as being self-sustaining living totally off the land. She commented that on several occasions throughout the winter some of the family, which live only sixteen miles out of town, could be see shopping in the local grocery store in Homer. While we were there another car came to check out the yard sale and that brought on another interesting meeting.

The man’s name is Fred Agree and it had immigrated to Alaska decades ago and his life was something that books could be or should be written about. Fred has summited Mount Denali over ten times while leading expeditions and on several occasions organized countless more letting other guides lead the way to the top. Fred has been a trapper and dog musher for a long time, and he gave me some pretty good insight to the world renown Iditarod Dog Sled Race. As it turns out Fred had competed and completed the race on more than one occasion. Knowing that he actually raced it I had some questions. My first being how much support do the racers get to assist them? His answer was none! Well at least they aren’t supposed to but not so long ago a certain female race winner managed to get word to the stops before arriving allowing people to start heating water and preparing food for the dogs and racer. I guess it got so bad that they actually had to write some new rules and today only the race competitors are allowed to tend to their dogs and themselves. One interesting note was that if they thought they may need a replacement dog or dogs they had to bring them with them. He said it was not uncommon to rotate a dog or two in the team to allow them some rest.

I also asked about how long were they allowed to keep on running the race and his answer was interesting. It seems that years ago and older musher would enter the race and made it a social event instead of a competition. He would stop and visit friends along the way and take his time getting to the finish and it was tying up support people waiting for him. So today they have a rule named after this person that if you are more than four days out when the first sled crosses the finish line you have to abandon the race at the next check point.

Judy and I were trying to get away and Fred noticed my Navy hat and invited us to go to the local American Legion for a Veteran Appreciation Picnic. The food was great, and Judy and I both won door prizes. My prize was a really nice, hooded sweatshirt and Judy won a gift card for the Legion which we gave to Fred and his partner. Fred was telling me that his son has a vehicle repair shop in Philadelphia that restores motorcycle but to save me I cannot remember his son’s name.

Day two is our long-awaited fishing trip and to say the least we are not happy with the weather. It is raining and they are calling for seas up to five feet so it will be a fifty-fifty chance my breakfast doesn’t stay down. On the way out of the harbor I was lucky enough to see the Time Bandit from the show “Deadliest Catch” which is owned and operated by the Hilstrand brothers Jonathan and Andy. Judy and I were fortunate enough to have met them and Sig Hansen years ago when they were in Wilmington for a one-night speaking engagement. It was the Summer after Captain Phil Harris passed away to give any fans a guess of how long ago it was.

The boat is still close enough that we can still see land and there are people already suffering from motion sickness, but I am still hanging in there. Only time will tell if I purge or not. The ride out is rough but not too bad for most but for others it will be a long day. For me as long as the boat is moving, I am okay it is when we stop to drift or anchor that the motion of the ocean does tricks with me. After a while we start to catch a few fish, but it isn’t going to be a great day however a few of us refuse to concede defeat to the ocean. Yes, eventually I did get sick, but it didn’t slow me down too much when we were fishing. There was one time that I and an unnamed associate were hurling and fishing! Boy am I glad that nobody got a photo of that. Finally, the skipper said it was time to go in! Final count was 14 fish among 18 people fishing. Not a very good day but it was our day and there will be about one hundred pounds of fresh Halibut to divide among the group. I guess it would have been less expensive to go to the fish market and buy some but where is the fun in that? Before the first mate started filleting our catch, we all got our photos with two of the larger fish. I caught two but only got one into the boat. Judy got skunked on Halibut but did manage to catch a few really ugly fish that got used for bait.

Homer has a parcel of land that juts out into the bay called the Homer Spit. There are shops, bars, restaurants, RV parks and all kinds of charter companies. The RV, park on the spit was nice but we are staying at the top of a cliff and to be honest with the threat of earthquakes that could result in a Tsunami I would rather be sleeping up on the cliff! The best-known local hang out is the Salty Dawg which isn’t much more than a clap board shack, but every town has that colorful watering hole, and this is theirs. Way back during the gold rush the prospectors would put a dollar on the wall of the bar so when they came back from prospecting even if they came back busted there would be a dollar with their name on it for a drink and who knew what else. Today the tradition lives in almost every bar we went in while in Alaska. The picture below shows what the Salty Dawg looked like. I am pretty sure that each year a certain amount of the newer money is taken down and donated to charity. The place was so crowded we squeezed in took a few photos and got out.

Saturday August 20 was World Geo Cache Day so in honor of that we are off to grab at least one. As luck would have it, we also found a tidbit of useless information along the way! In the small town of Anchor Point AK, the most westerly highway in North America is to be found. I bet you will never see that as a Jeopardy answer.

Tomorrow we are headed for Seward more adventures await us down the road.