GIRLS WEEKEND 2025. HOMER, ALASKA

 

A viewpoint between Anchorage & Homer

Friday, October 10, 2025

After a decent night's sleep, I was up and about at around 5:30 am and Kathi was not too far behind me. Our Air BNB home away from home is lovely and we have a SPECTACULAR view of the Homer Spit (a "spit" is a geological formation consisting of a narrow, elongated stretch of sand or gravel that extends from the coast into a body of water) from our balcony, none of which we could see upon our arrival last night because it was pitch dark.  Some perks of this place: a heated bathroom floor, a heated toilet seat and a heated towel rack, along with the view.  It actually was still dark when we got up.  Sunrise was around 8:30 am and as the sun came up it slowly unveiled the view for us.

Sunrise from our Air BNB deck

    According to the weather app, today is the only day        that is supposed to be rain free. So I decided that we        would go to Bishop's Beach for some tidepooling.        Low tide was around 11am so we had a "slow"                morning of coffee and yogurt, while Kathi started            typing up the journal for day 1. Eventually we both        showered and dressed and got ready for our day's            outing. Kathi made sandwiches and packed lunches        while I was in the shower.  After she showered and        dressed we headed out the door to experience some of     Alaska!

    We parked in the parking lot of Bishop's Beach and made our way down to the water.  It didn't take us long to spot a bald eagle up in a tree. 

I have every expectation of seeing many bald eagles while here, which is fine with me because they are such beautiful and regal birds.  That being said, a bit later we spotted one walking on the beach and I was somewhat surprised by how much less regal they appear when walking rather than flying or just sitting perched.  

We walked around on the beach and I looked hard for tidepools, but disappointingly, found none. While I was looking for tidepools, Kathi took off in the opposite direction and was walking down towards the water.  She has fancy duck boot like shoes that are waterproof up to a point, so she could walk through shallow water and still have dry feet. I walked that way thinking I would join her when I realized that I would have to wade through

some water that was higher than I thought my hiking boots would be able to withstand so I just walked around the beach a bit more.  Soon I realized that the tide was now coming IN and it appeared that Kathi was quickly becoming surrounded by water that was gradually getting higher and was out on an island of sand.  She realized this too when she headed back towards me and stepped into a deep area of water and ended up with wet feet.  She shouted, "It seems like the tide is coming in!" and I said "it IS!"

Kathi on her island of sand

Once she made it safely back to where I was, we realized that we were both hungry, so we went back to the car and sat and ate our lunch, while she attempted to dry out her shoes and socks with the heater.  In the meantime we had a nice FaceTime conversation with my daughter who helped Kathi get her phone hooked up to Apple Car Play.  This Benz, while very cool, has had a steep learning curve in discovering all of its little nuances!!

After our little lunch break, we walked the Beluga Slough trail which took off from the parking lot. We ran into an elderly woman a few times while walking and she asked us where we from and we told her our story.  Then she proceeded to tell us her story, which was very interesting. She told us that her husband had passed away a few years ago, but before his passing they purchased 683 acres of land (a little bit at a time) on a ridge above the Bay to create a wildlife preserve.  He died before seeing the project all the way through, but eventually the land was donated to the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies to preserve a habitat for local wildlife.  The name of the preserve is Inspiration Ridge Preserve (https://akcoastalstudies.org/inspirationridge) It was Nina we were speaking to and she still serves as the property manager for the preserve as well as lives on the property.  She showed us pictures of the some of the views from the property as well as photos of the sandhill cranes that come through the preserve every year.  She is obviously very proud of her accomplishments, as she should be.  Unfortunately it is not currently open to the public for tours (only in the summer), so we realized that we would not have the opportunity to visit. 

After our hike we decided to drive out on the spit since it still wasn't raining. I also wanted to check on the status of the boat tour of the bay that I had booked a few months ago.  We were disappointed to find out that nearly ALL of the shops on the spit are closed for the season and the office for the tour company I had booked our boat tour through also appeared closed, so I called them.  "Oh!"  says the woman who answered the phone when I told her I was calling to confirm that the tour would happen rain or shine, "I must have overlooked your name, I thought I had contacted every one.  The tour has been cancelled because all of our boats are out of service." Another disappointment.  So glad I called, though!  After being assured that I would get a refund, and being told that another company MIGHT be running tours, we walked down to the Salty Dawg, which is a very famous saloon in Homer.  Many people who visit the place, write a note on a dollar bill and then thumbtack it to the wall.  There must be thousands of dollars in (mostly) $1 bills tacked up on every wall space in the place.  We went in just to look around but asked the bartender and the patrons about bay tours.  They offered us some suggestions and the bartender even wrote them down for us.  People are very friendly here!  We left and upon returning to the car we called Mako's taxi service and were able to book a "ride along" on one of their boats for 10 am tomorrow morning.  It wouldn't be a tour.  We would just be along for the ride, while they dropped a party of 4 hikers (plus 2 dogs) off at one place and picked up a party of 4 hikers (plus one dog) before returning to the harbor.  This sounded fine to us and we booked it!

We went back to our place and decided we didn't really need to cook a meal.  I edited my photos while Kathi worked on the journal.  I realized while in the air on the way to Anchorage that I forgot to bring our state puzzle pieces to toss to determine next year's destination. I decided that we could just FaceTime Tom and have him toss the states for us. Kathi thought a Zoom meeting would be better, so we did that instead. He found the Ziploc bag with the states and had a box ready to do the shaking in.  After chatting for a while, he put the states in this HUGE box, shook it, then turned it upside down and released the pieces.  The pieces that landed face up were: Arizona, Colorado and New York. NICE.  I love all of these!  We signed out of the zoom meeting with Tom and decided that we needed to watch the documentary "Unknown Number" upon the recommendation of Kathi's friend Katy.  We started it, but I just couldn't keep my eyes open and finally my body gave in and I fell asleep.  Kathi said she was nodding off, too.  She woke me up and said, let's call it a night.  Off to bed we went (at 8:41!) knowing we would have to get up and leave by 9:30 the next day to make it to our date with the Blue Too (our boat).