Homer Alaska

I took a trip to Alaska because I had already been to all 49 other states and Alaska was one place I knew I would love. After my trip to Patagonia where everyone kept saying it looked just like Alaska I just had to go to Alaska. I booked the trip even before I left Argentina.

I flew to Anchorage on Alaska Airlines and rented a pickup truck at the airport so that I could haul my fishing tackle and bring back some fish if I wanted to. I spent the first night in Anchorage at an inexpensive hotel so that I could take all day driving down to Homer the next day. I drove around Anchorage for about an hour to get my bearings for the place and to see what was there. It was a fairly small place without much of a downtown. I went into a bar restaurant to eat and have a couple of beers.

The bar was crowded for as early in the night as I was there. I was still used to everything starting late from living in Argentina. I sat at the bar and ordered a beer. The guys next to me started to talk to me right away. When I told them I was here to go fishing we talked about where and how for about an hour. It was entertaining. All the females in the bar were playing pool or video games or something and the men and women seemed to be totally uninterested in each other. I thought that was kind of strange. I went back to my hotel alone and had an early night after I ate some king crab legs for dinner.

In the morning I headed south after a nice big breakfast. The road was mostly deserted which kind of surprised me. When I first came over a small rise and saw the coastline I immediately saw a pod of beluga whales playing just off the shore. I pulled over to watch them for a while with a couple of other cars of tourists also stopping to watch. I really felt like I was in Alaska now. The mountains jutting up on the horizon across the inlet and the whales playing totally reminded me of Patagonia. The two places have so many similarities it is weird. I brought pictures from Patagonia and I pulled them out to look at them. I could almost line up the mountains in the distance with the ones in my picture and they were 18,000 miles apart.

I got back in the truck and continued my drive to Homer. The road mostly followed the coastline through a few small towns. I was constantly on the lookout for wildlife and I finally spotted what I was looking for. There was a moose standing in a wet lowland area up to its shoulders in water chomping on dripping plants from the boggy area. It was a classic image of a moose. I looked at it for a few minutes and hit the road again. It was the only one I saw on the whole trip. It was open season on moose at the moment and they knew it I guess. I saw a few dead ones in the back of trucks with their huge spread of antlers taking up almost the entire bed of the truck. I only ever saw heads in the trucks. So I presume they field dress them and cut them up into pieces that can be carried out and only keep the head for mounting purposes. Moose are big. I would not want one to charge me at their size.

I saw lots of people fishing along the rivers I crossed. I stopped to watch a few times and saw lots of fish being caught. I could see the salmon in the rivers just standing by the road. Around the middle of the Kenai I watched lots of drift boats working the river. There were not many nets flying while I watched but there were a lot of boats crowding into the small river. I kept driving and finally arrived in Homer. I easily found my hotel with my google directions and stopped to check in. I went in to the office and got in line. When I looked around I was startled to see my son's best friend standing there to check in. I started to talk to him and we were amazed to find out that we had made our reservations for our trips separately but ended up in the same hotel, on the same boat, on the same days. We decided to just get one hotel room so we could hang out together and save some money. What are the odds to meet your son's best friend and to have the same itinerary like we did.

We checked into the hotel and headed out on the town. My friend knew people here in Homer and we headed out to meet up with them. It was nice to have some locals to hang out with. First we drove over to see where our boat left from so that we could find it early the next morning. We watched some people fishing for salmon in a little pond near the marina. They seemed to be catching quite a few salmon so we decided to try it ourselves. We could not get a bite but those around us kept landing fish. Finally I went over to see what their secret was and they shared their fishing style right away. We changed our style to match theirs and got some fish finally. We also fished out at the end of the spit for a few hours. We caught some cod and other fish there just for fun. Then we hit the bars for a short drink before we went to bed early. The Salty Dog Saloon was a blast to see after hearing about it from so many of my friends over the years. It is a classic bar in Homer with dollar bills stuck to the ceiling from past visitors. The next morning was going to be our first time ever fishing for barn door halibut in Alaska so we made it an early night. We were both excited to get out on the water.