So while in Homer, which will likely be our last time close to the ocean while in Alaska, we had five consecutive days which involved travel over water. The first two days were actually on one trip; the ferry ride from Kodiak Island back to Homer, which was an overnight trip. The rest of the day back from Kodiak Island was spent recovering. We had to catch up on a mostly sleepless night on the ferry and our traveling companions were recovering from their grueling bear-watching trip. If you would like to see some of their pictures from that close-encounter, you can see them here on Flickr.
On our second day back, we book a boat tour to see some wildlife in Kachemak Bay and then to the town of Seldovia, which can only be reached by boat. We spent about 2 1/2 hours in Seldovia, had lunch, and walked around this very quaint and photogenic community.
 |  |  |
The next day, we booked another boat ride across the Kachemak Bay to the Island Peninsula (island during high tide and peninsula during low tide) and the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies. There we took an island hike and studied a lot of the local flora and topology, and got a look into some of the tide pools on the edge of the bay. The hike was a little grueling, as it had some steep up and down hill climbs and many large roots and logs to avoid. Also, the amount of black bear scat, rife with blueberry husks, we had to step over was a problem.
 |  |  |
The third day was our fishing adventure. Ellyn said she wanted to try a fishing trip and Homer describes itself as the Halibut Fishing Capital of the World. So we booked a fishing trip out of the Homer Spit. This was not so much a photo trip as the previous two. We had a two hour boat ride out to the mouth of Cook Inlet, where we set anchor and then started fishing. The hardest thing about it was the heavy sinkers they had on the lines. Also, we were in 200 feet of water, so, once you got a bite, there was a lot of line to reel in. We discovered later in the fishing, that you probably did not have to put the line all the way to the bottom, because a lot of the fish were hanging out right near the surface of the water. Between the four of us we came away with 43 pounds of fish meat.
 |  |  |
