Saturday 8/4
In the unending rain, the captain of the giant cruise ship boarded pairs of local animals and headed out to sea. Bon Voyage! We also abandoned Seward.
On the way out, we visited the Kenai Fjords National Park and the Exit Glacier—Seriously, it’s called the Exit Glacier. Must have been named by an early explorer who had the same weather as we. The neatest thing about this park is the way they’ve marked the position of the face of the glacier with dated-signs at certain locations. The sign farthest out is dated 1815—it’s about 1.2 miles from the current glacier face, so the glacier has receded about 1.2 miles in the last 200 years. FYI: there’s 3 miles of unmelted glacier remaining.
We’re on our way to Homer at the western edge of the Kenai to catch a ferry to Kodiak Island. Made reservations yesterday.
En route we passed Kenai Lake and ran parallel to the Kenai River for 40 or 50 miles. Both are a beautiful turquoise. The river looks perfect for a rafting trip in Das Bot. We’ll do that after the Kodiak trip. Wherever the riverbank is accessible by the road, it’s lined with salmon fishermen—the most we’ve seen anywhere. They are comically close together. What must the fish think as they pass through this maze of tackle?
We’re taking only the Jeep on the ferry to Kodiak so we’ll tent camp when we get there. Should be exciting. This afternoon we parked the Admiral at the Beehive campground about 20 miles east of Homer (more about the Beehive later). The Admiral will dock here until we return. We then drove into Homer to scope out the ferry terminal. After our less than perfect experience in Seward, Homer was a very pleasant surprise. The town is famous for its spit, not the expectoration kind of spit, but the land kind, like a very narrow peninsula. The approach to the town and spit is along a high ridge that opens suddenly to a sweeping vista of the spit, the harbor, Cook Inlet, and the surrounding mountains, very theatrical and very beautiful (even on this cloudy day). Up close the spit is crammed with tourist dives and less attractive, but still interesting, and packed with birds including many bald eagles.
On our return to the Admiral, we buy Rocky II—a more durable version of Rocky I.
