Alaska: Homer (Days 1-4)

Overview

Click on the links to go directly to the specific days or events

Day 1 (Aug 27): Arriving, Relaxing at Homer Ocean House Inn, dinner at Cafe Cups
Day 2 (Aug 28): Homer Ocean Charters Halibut Fishing, relaxing at inn,
Day 3 (Aug 29): Homer Spit, lunch at Fat Olive's, Islands and Oceans visitor center, Beluga Slough Trail
Day 4 (Aug 30): Grewingk Glacier Trail, Grewingk Glacier, Glacier Lake, Saddle Trail, Halibut Cove

Day 1: Getting to town, Settling in, Dinner at Cafe Cups

We made it to Homer around 6:15pm on August 27 and checked in at Homer Ocean House Inn.

Homer Ocean House Inn

We were pleasantly surprised by the nice accommodations and views from the hotel, although the bumpy road and lackluster appearance of the place from the front leaves something to be desired.

The view from our room was out of this world! One of my favorite places was the little back yard area there in the Adirondak chairs :)

Cafe Cups

We got a great recommendation to try out Cafe Cups for dinner and decided to have dinner there. It was quite a wait, but without reservations, we didn't expect speedy service. We'd recommend having reservations if you decide to go, but the food was good! We split the seafood linguine, which was plenty for the two of us. It was a busy night, but we were glad we tried it out!

They had all these broken dishes as a sort of landing pad off the patio. Not really sure what the point was.

We had about a 40 minute wait, so we decided to wait on the patio.

This guy came along after long, which made very little sense, but was fascinating.

It was a long wait, but really good!

After getting back to our room, we were so exhausted that we went straight to bed.

Day 2: Halibut Fishing Charter with Homer Ocean Charters

The next morning, we slept in to catch up. I had breakfast in the Adirondak chairs overlooking Kachemak Bay and worked on uploading pictures and writing a baby blog post.

Homer Ocean Charters Halibut Fishing Charter

We headed down to Homer Spit around 12:30 to check in for our halibut charter at 1pm, with a sack lunch in tow. We had a great day of fishing, perfect weather, and 3 nice-sized halibut caught!

We were a tad bummed to learn that the Time Bandit from Deadliest Catch had JUST pulled out from harbor the day before.



We didn't get a chance to actually see a whale, but we saw lots of blow holes!

Before we knew it, it was time to drop our lines!

And not long after, Mark reeled in his first halibut!

And not long after, he reeled in his second catch of the day!

But I wasn't too far behind with mine!

The guy told me that it's bad luck to not kiss your first halibut. I took my chances and decided not to lol

All in all, we had a great day! We ended up with 3/4 of our allotted fish for the day (my 2nd big one jumped off the line right at the end there!)

We took 2 filets with us for the grill and had the rest packaged and froze to be sent home.

After fishing, we stopped by the store to pick up some sides for our fish and then hit the hot tub for a while. (Or rather, Mark hit the hot tub while I dipped my legs in from the side.)

After a short while, we fired up the grill and cooked us up some delicious halibut - grilled with just butter, lemon, and a little Old Bay seasoning. It was delicious! We paired it with a couple baked potatoes and some broccoli.

After such a big day, though, we were wiped, and conked out super early this evening as well.

Day 3: Lazy Day Exploring Homer and the Spit

Our third day in Alaska, we once again slept in (hey - it's vacation!), and putzed around in the morning for a while before getting showered up and dressed and wandering into town to check out the Homer Spit.

Homer Spit

LOVED these cool flowers and this bench!

Salty Dawg Saloon

I had gotten lots of recommendations on travel forums that we just HAD to stop and have a drink at the Salty Dawg Saloon, but after taking one step in the door, we decided it wasn't going to happen. Kinda gross, really.

We did a little browsing and shopping while we were there, but the only things that really stood out to us were over $200, like this little guy for $219 (and that was cheap!), so we passed on really buying anything. But the shops were really pretty cool!

Seafarer's Memorial

It was a little sobering stumbling across the Seafarer's Memorial down there on the spit - a tribute to those who lost their lives at sea.




The views surrounding the Memorial were wonderful:



After exploring the town a bit, we were planning on having lunch at Captain Patties, but after checking out their menu, we decided against it. (At that point, we were kinda "fish"d out, and that was pretty much all that was on their menu.) So we finished looking around on the Spit and then headed into town to find food elsewhere.

Fat Olive's

We got a great recommendation from a guy on the plane from Homer for pizza at Fat Olive's, so we decided to try it out. GREAT recommendation - the pizza was fantastic!

We ordered a large caesar salad and a 12" pizza with mushrooms, pepperoni, sausage, canadian bacon and green peppers, and it was SOOOO delicious!

Islands and Oceans Exhibit

After lunch, we took the advice of a lady from a water taxi service in town and decided to check out the Islands and Oceans exhibit. It was interesting enough, but not really worth spending more than an hour or so at most. But it was also free, so we weren't complaining.

There was this little memorial sitting outside on our way in, which was neat.



It was an alright exhibit, in my opinion, but skippable for anything but a rainy day.

Beluga Slough Trail

After spending about an hour at Islands and Oceans, we hit the trail right out front, which was also pretty short. It started off not really being too interesting, but along the back was really beautiful!

After the trail, we went back to the inn and grilled more halibut and potatoes for dinner.

We happened to catch the beginning of "The Proposal" on TV, so we watched it with some popcorn and strawberry lemonade in our room, after which we decided to take a walk along the beach.

Walk along the beach

It was low-tide, and we were able to walk quite a ways out, so we were able to see a lot of the beach, rocks, and whatever the ocean left behind on the rocks.

We even saw 2 bald eagles, which was really incredible!





Around the same time as our eagle encounter, we happened upon the guy who owned the B&B next door and visited with him for a while before returning back to our hot tub, then room for the evening.

Another great day, and so very relaxing :)

Day 4: Water Taxi and Grewingk Glacier Trail

Our final day in Homer, we slept in a bit, then headed on down to the Spit to find out pricing and availability on a Water Taxi over to Halibut Cove for the day.

After a bit of research and arm pulling, we finally decided on a 12:30pm charter to Glacier Trail Head to take a nice trail hike, ending at Halibut Cove.

We went back to our room for lunch (some good ol' PB&J sandwiches and soup), then headed back to catch our water taxi. The ride took us about 25 minutes to get to the drop off point.

Grewingk Glacier Trail

This was the guy who dropped us off ($160 later - OUCH!)

And this was the insanely beautiful view once we got on the beach:


And then he took off and left us in the wilderness all by ourselves. It was kinda an eerie feeling at first, knowing we wouldn't likely see any other humans for another 4-5 hours!

But we figured if this little guy wasn't scared, we were probably going to be fine.

So we started out on the trail!

We took a left at this sign, heading to Glacier Lake!

It wasn't long before we saw a LOT of piles of bear scat, which left us on edge for the first half of the hike that we'd run into a big black bear or something, but we didn't end up seeing any major wildlife the entire day. I'll spare you the pictures of the bear poo, but we DID end up seeing this enormous paw print as well!

We took a right at this sign, headed toward Glacier Lake and the Saddle Trail Head.

The trail had been heavily wooded for so long we hadn't been able to see much beyond the trees, but we finally came through this clearing and caught this glimpse:

Grewingk Glacier

And finally, after 3 hours of hiking, we came across the main attraction: Grewingk Glacier!

We also finally came across some other human life, and we swapped cameras to take this great pic:

We were happy to see the next sign just a few more minutes of hiking, and knew we were now within half a mile of Glacier Lake (based on the last sign post we saw).

Glacier Lake

And finally, after 3 1/2 hours of hiking, we made it to Glacier Lake!

We fully plan on holding it over Baby Johnson's head that yes, he has in fact been to Alaska - and here's a reminder :) I was also grateful to find an outhouse, but was bummed when it had no tp - doh!


The glacier was incredible, though!


Mark had a blast throwing rocks at the big chunks of glacier ice, trying to get some to break off.

We were exhausted and tired at this point, with sore feet and dried sweat cooling on our skin, which made it cold out there, but all the better to cuddle up, huh? :) My hubby is such a stud! :)

I was able to fanagle a piece of the glacier ice from the lake with a walking stick I found:

I don't know how many pictures I took of Grewingk Glacier like this, but here's one more for good measure - absolutely stunning!

Saddle Trail

After a short hiatus at Glacier Lake, we headed back on the trail, unsure of what to expect ahead, and wanting to make sure we didn't miss our taxi back to Homer!

The leaves were just beginning to change color here (a foreshadowing of our experience in Denali, perhaps?), and it was beautiful!

We finally made it back to the sign post to realize we had another mile to go. We weren't anticipating much, but it was a doozy, as we soon found out!

Some of it wasn't so bad, but we went up a lot of hills.

And then even more elevated (at which point my legs were screaming!), after which we would occasional get the slight decline.



We felt like we had been walking for hours (remember, it was only 1 mile to the trailhead), when we came across this sign:

Ugh! Another .4 miles? But the good part? All downhill!! And this was about when we stumbled across this incredible view of Halibut Cove!

Halibut Cove

We saw a little sea lion making his way across the cove, but he didn't end up coming too close.

And just like clockwork, the clouds began to clear and the sun came out! Another beautiful day in Homer!

But best of all? We made it! And in plenty of time to meet our water taxi! Mark even had a few minutes to chat with his brother!

By the time we got back, we were so exhausted and worn out that we decided to just grab another Fat Olive's specialty and stay in for the evening.

We did manage to make it to the hot tub for a while before we got to bed nice and early.

Well, that's pretty much all for Homer! We had a wonderful time and most definitely would recommend it to our family and friends. Homer boasted the nicest of accommodations of our entire trip, so we'd highly recommend staying at Homer Ocean House Inn and the halibut charter, as well as the Grewingk Glacier Hike!