Beer and Birds

Beer and birds - the Kenai Peninsula has plenty of both. Oh, and there’s a lot of fishing goes on here too!

The campsite we stayed at in Homer was pretty cool – about 5 miles from the touristy Homer Spit, 2 miles from the Homer Brewing Company and 100 yards from a bald eagle nest (with 2 eaglets). We were very happy campers.

Mine's the big one :-)

I didn’t take too long to decide that I just had to go halibut fishing whilst I was in Homer – when in Rome… Nina and the children weren’t interested, so I went alone. Well, not exactly alone – there were ten others on the charter boat, named Whistler, for the 6 hour fishing trip. Halibut fishing is not difficult. The boat goes out about 25 miles, you put a big weight on a line and half a herring on the hook, drop it in the water, let it hit the bottom and between 30 seconds and 5 minutes later (when you feel a tug on the line), reel it in and “Viola!” – a nice big fish. Or, in my case, an octopus and a halibut on the same hook. Now that is cool! It was a little sad to see the deck hands kill the octopus, though. It was a beautiful creature. There’s a limit of two fish per person, and one of them has to be 29 inches or less. There’s no limit on the size of the second one. I caught about 7 or 8 fish altogether and kept throwing them back – not because I wasn't satisfied with the 32 and 33 inch ones, but I just wanted to get my monies worth in terms on time spent fishing. In the end I settled for 34 inch one, since all but one of the other passengers had finished fishing and the rest of the passengers seemed to be waiting for us.

Rhys, Dylan and I also went fishing off the beach at the end of Homer Spit. Not too much success, but Dylan did catch his first fish and was chuffed – even if it was too small to keep. Now everyone’s getting into fishing and even Anwen asked me to buy her a rod and reel. So, I did.

We spent a lot of time watching bald eagles on the beach last week. Okay, okay….. I spent a lot of time watching bald eagles on the beach last week. It was fantastic. There were so many. I must have taken about 6 or 7 hundred photos. I’ve put a few on the photos page.

After leaving Homer we spent one night back at the Fred Meyers parking lot in Soldotna. It’s free to park there and just a 50 yard walk to the St. Elias Brewing Company. Once again, we were happy campers. After Soldotna we continued around the Kenai Peninsula to Seward, where we’ll be staying for the next 5 nights. The children are all super excited because we meeting friends of ours from the Bay Area – Seeling, Newton, Jayden and Clarisse. Rhys cannot contain his excitement at meeting up with his friend, Jayden, whom he’s known since he was 18 months old.