Alaskan Vaca 2022 - Day 8, A Trip To Homer and His Spit

Today is a rare day with little planned. The idea is that we would drive down to Homer and the Homer Spit, have a late lunch and then the critters could clean up leftovers from the night at Kenai Brewing Company.  

That didn't work...

But first:

This is what it looked like outside as I went to bed. There was heavy cloud cover so much darker than previous nights.

We, meaning Mama and I, went to get breakfast at The Moose Is Loose while the critters were getting up, showered and ready for the day.  We got in line to order and I noticed that it was all donuts and pastry's and crap that I don't really care for, so I told Mama to just get me a coffee and I was going to go across the road to fuel up the vessel with some petroleum distillate for today's drive.

On the way back "home", we called Rob to make sure he was up.  He sluggishly answered and said that he was just getting into the shower.

We had breakfast and then loaded ourselves and our coffee into the vessel to head South for the afternoon.

We made it to Homer without incident and went to Bishop's Beach first.  

My peeps!  This is in the parking lot at Bishop's Beach.

Looking back towards Homer with the beach behind me.

The tide was out so we could walk a good way out.

Caleb out front in the pic, with Mama not far behind him and Robby in his slides...   You had to be a little careful as the leafy crap could be kind of slick.

I was unsure what this stuff was.  I still am.

That's the "leafy crap".  It reminded my food-loving-butt of a lasagna noodle. 

Caleb.

My peeps again!

I should never be in charge of taking selfie's...

We crossed paths with three lovely young ladies from the East coast and they asked us if we would take a picture for them.  We would.  They reciprocated. 

I like helicopters.

Choose your steps wisely!

We didn't go into this place, but it sure caught our attention!

Next we drove to the Homer Spit for some shopping and lunch.  

That didn't work...

The shopping stuff went off ok other than the fact that I bought myself a sasquatch social distance t-shirt that didn't fit... again.  I quit.  I give up.  I will wear the clothes that I currently own and once they've all disintegrated, I'll lay down and die to avoid more shopping.

Rob and I had a task to carry out.  He is taking my pic as I accomplish the task.

Not amused!  lol

First one of these that I actually found "in the wild"!

From one of the decks of the restaurants that we couldn't eat at.

Drinking his coffee out of the wind.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh, the shopping!  lol

 

I liked this piece of art.  Not for $25, but I liked it.

Shopping is over with and we're ready to get food. Now we're talking!

I asked the lady at the check out where we bought my ill-fitting shirt along with some other things, where the best local food was and she replied, "Crabbie Patties", while the other worker said, "The best fish n' chips is at The Boardwalk Ends".  Duly noted as I love me some fish n' chips!

However, we had some peeps who were wanting seafood and fish n' chips did not satisfy that so we walked up to Crabbie Pattie's.  There was printed out sign on the door that said, "Closed for mechanical issues".  Ok then...  we headed across the road to another large restaurant that had a full parking lot but the sign on the door said, "Closed, reopening at 4pm".  We went back into Homer proper and it was a 40 minute wait.

We stare at our phones for a painfully long time instead of just admitting defeat due to so many places being closed.

We decided to go to the local Safeway grocery store and get a few snacks and I would also relieve myself.  I didn't tho...  there were customers waiting everywhere and not an employee in site.  I gave up and just went back to the car as the heavy tourism of the spit had sucked the life out of me.  I just wanted to be out of there.  

We left town shortly thereafter and had a mostly silent drive back to Soldotna where we ended up eating at Mykels.

Caleb had a fishing store that he wanted to visit so on our way back to the AirBn'b, we stopped there and I went into the store with him.  It was a rather eye-opening experience as there are a LOT of commercial fishermen here and they had sinkers from a couple of ounces up to 5 pounds!  They had fishing rods that were an inch in diameter and 16 feet long.  We didn't buy anything but we left the store with a young lad with a serious desire to go fishing when we get back to Iowa.

We headed back to our lovely AirBn'b to do laundry, pack, clean and get ready to head out in the morning.  We played some blitz too.

We will weep openly when we have to leave this place tomorrow!

I Discourage This Behavior!

About 2 hours after splashing ~200 degree cooking oil on my fingers.

24 hours later.  Virtually zero pain, only slight discomfort.  

My Peeps!

 

We look pretty good for being old farts...

Alaskan Vaca 2022 - Day 7, The "South Airport", Bears & A Volcano

We woke up to a beautiful morning as the weather too a break on our vacationing arses.  No rain. Slight breeze and some blue in the skies!  52 degrees of near perfection!!

But before we wake up, I would have had to go to bed, but this is usually when I do most of my writing about vacation.  I walked out to the back of the AirBn'b yard and took a few pictures around 2:30am.
That's the first 3 pictures below:

The first thing I did when I woke up was to grab my eyedrums (glasses, since I'm blind without them) from the nightstand and peer out the window towards the Cook Inlet, which was beautiful! 

The Redoubt volcano from our bedroom window with some zoom.

So what is on the docket for today?  Well, it involved another "Buddy Holly"  (a 7 seater this time), bears, volcanoes, a glacier, some seals and missing moose.

Sounds great, right!

It was great, BUT, it's not great enough and as such, thru a conversation with Carl, the owner of our fantastic AirBn'b, I learned that his daughter was bringing some Jack Russel Terriers puppies by in an hour or so and we were certainly invited to come out to meet them, and pet them.  Pet them we did!!  Back to the timeline...

The alarm went off at 8:30 this morning and I was "sort of" ready to go. 

I have been purposefully not paying too close of attention to this vacations details as I knew my wife was pouring a ton of time into it and if something got cancelled, it wouldn't be her planning that had caused it, but most likely, it would be the weather.

This is at Natron Air in Soldotna.  The dogs name is Derby.  He was born in Kentucky but I'm unaware of why he's named the way he's named...   He was adopted to Alaska and is a big hit in the offices of Natron Air.  Derby was the second dog that Caleb and I met on this find day.  Xena was the neighbors dog at our AirBn'b and came over to greet me when I walked out to make sure everything was fine with the Cook Inlet since we would be flying over it in an hour or two.  Xena's last name was Schmidt.

Our Buddy Holly for today.  I love these small planes and airports because once you taxi out to the runway, the pilots just throttle up and you blast off!  Our AirBn'b host, Carl, used to charter Tim, our pilot, to run supplies for winter and other chores.  Carl now goes to his AirBn'b in Cabo for the winter months so he no longer cares...

On the plane and taking off soon!

Lift off! The winds coming over the hill caused a lot of low-level turbulence but it straightened out once we got above the tree line.

I love the instrument panels in these small planes.  I wish I would have learned to fly these as a younger lad...

Over the Cook Inlet.

The Redoubt volcano that was straight across the water from our AirBn'b.

We've reached the other side and appear to be landing somewhere... Tim the pilot keeps mentioning the South Airport over the radio and I can't see a dang thing that resembles an airport!

That dark spot on the beach is a grizzly bear and it's becoming more apparently that the "South Airport" is indeed the beach as the pilots need to circle until the bears are clear of  the runway.  What the heck???

Everything is beyond beautiful here!

Grizzly's and people.  Are they nuts???  Yes, but we're going to be with them in their nuttiness in mere moments...

I took a pic of our plane at the "South Airport" so that once we're killed by grizzly bears, they'll have an easier time linking everything together while identifying the bodies.

Low tide is when the bears come out to hunt.  Which is why we're here and walking out into the inlet.

Grizzly's and peeps...

That is gorgeous, I don't care who you are!

Big boy is coming right towards us!

This guy went around us and Rob was worried that they were being strategic and surrounding us for a buffet!  lol

The same fella coming towards us.

There is a bit of zoom on this pic, but not much.  He was about 25ft away from us and just casually went around our group and the other group that was out there.

And there he goes...

Picture for the senior graduation board pics!!  Love this fella!!!

Fams!

The pilots allow you around 20 mintues out with the bear.  Apparently, if you stay 25 minutes or longer, the bear start seeing you as competition and become aggressive.  We don't need that!  This pic is of the tire tracks of our Buddy Holly landing at the South Airport.

Back in the air we go and I have no idea what the rest of our time in the plane will involve.

Rob got the co-pilot seat on the second part of our flight.  He was super excited about this as we had seen Top Gun 2 just before vacation and like me, was all in with airplanes and piloting them.  I was excited for him...  and jealous.  lol  It sucks being fat!

The volcano!!!!

This is the North side that blew out the last time it erupted, I believe in the 90's.

This is the ice floe on the North side of the volcano...  we're are flying down it and not very high above it.  Super cool.

And once we're down, it's back to green lands, open to a lot of wildlife.

There are some harbor seals down there but they're very hard to see in the pic...

What looks to be boats out there are oil platforms.  Tim gave us all sorts of good info about them and the revenue they generate for the state, but I no longer remember any of that.

Nearly back to an actual airport here.  That's Soldotna in the pic.  Lovely place.

The puppies!!

After a long afternoon of simply chilling (and petting puppies!!!),  we headed to Kenai Brewing Company for some fantastic beers, poutine, a reuben, wings, fries and a burger that were all great.  We spent some time in the...  uh...  lean too, watching the water.  

Good stuff!

Better stuff!!!  Although, my ugly arse should NEVER be the closest to the camera.  Distance is my friend, for sure.

I didn't even notice the smoker or I might have fired that bad boy up!!!  This pic was taken very late after I had finished up my journal entry and was thinking of a walk to the water again.  Rob came out in his Mickey Mouse undies (mine, 30 years ago) with the same idea.  We walked out to the couch in the lean too and had some fantastic conversation.  When these fellas (and I assume, fella-ettes) get older, it's tougher to get them involved in deep, meaningful conversation.  We cherish these moments whenever we get them!!

 Rob had to dip his toe into the water to check the temps.  It did NOT last long!  lol

Off to bed...