Hmmmm, Homer. A place of legendary beauty and former home of our friend Jill Sheldon. It was, of course, raining when we pulled into town. That’s how it always it….the first day. The beauty was out there, we just couldn’t see it yet. We drove around getting oriented while Susan read from the various printed resources cluttering up the front seat. Once we managed to find our way out to The Spit, we found most of the places there were already boarded up for the winter. Good thing. You could feel in the air that’s not far off. We checked out town. A couple cool buildings, a few galleries and an old theatre advertising the film festival, with the opening gala that night. Well, that could be fun. Nowhere was really so inviting that we wanted to stop, though, so we headed out the East Road just to see where it went. Rolling along past individual shops, then houses, then fields and woods with occasional houses, all the while with glimpses of the water beyond, teasing what we would see if the clouds lifted. Around a bend and what did we find but Fritz Creek General Store and Post Office (they are one). OK, we've got to stop there and see if they have a postcard we can mail to our friend Fritz.

In the manner of general stores here, it is a sturdy log building that says “We’ve been here a long time and we intend to stay”. Inside there’s aisles with a lot of different stuff one might need out on the edge of the world. There is also the post office taking up one corner with its rows of old brass po boxes and a window for the clerk with brass bars and a polished old-growth wood counter. But then, unexpectedly, in the other corner was a deli with homemade organic soups and breads. Yummy! We hadn’t been talking about lunch, but how could you pass up squash, carrot & ginger soup? Or a carrot cake with the thickest crème cheese frosting you’ve seen since the last time someone made it at your house? We were not disappointed! In fact, we are still dreaming about that soup. We should have asked for the recipe.

Now unfortunately, there were not postcards, but that’s not stopping us from our mission to inform Fritz of his place here in Alaska. Jim snaps some photos and we pull out the little Dell printer and Voila! A postcard is created, written, stamped and mailed straight from Fritz Creek! Well, it’s not quite as voila as that actually, as the printer and photo card decide they just can’t communicate, so Jim has to download the photos onto the computer, with whom the printer has an issue as well. It was about an hour before the actual voila moment, but well worth it. Until about a week later when we heard from another homemade postcard recipient that the card arrived without the photo-Guess sometimes the satisfaction is in the process.

So now that we were all warmed up by the soup and inspired by our success in the postcard project we decided to head back to town and find out what we really needed to get around to doing in Homer. The nice lady at the Information Center was talking to the guy in front of us when Susan overheard her mention a Meadery. Say no more, except perhaps what hours it’s open and how to get there. For those who do not know, mead is made from honey, sometimes infused with fruit. It’s one of the earliest known intoxicating beverages and is usually very yummy. Off we went to taste the offerings of ‘Ring of Fire’ Meadery and we were again, not disappointed. They are REALLY into it and have been pulling in honey from a lot of different places to refine and enhance their product. We appreciated this and the history of mead and Homer provided by our lovely hostess Beth. By the time we left we had a few good ideas about how to spend our days here and Jim had somehow gotten it into his head that the Barley Wine Festival in Anchorage (in January!) sounded like a great idea. This was not the last time that idea came up…..

We spent the night in the town camp ground up on a hill overlooking Homer and woke to a kind of cloudy, damp day. While we KNEW the next day would be sunny, our second day a town is often a little sketchy. Oh well. We were still up for doing a hike or at least a walk and were interested in the Wynn Nature Center as they apparently had a lot of good trails and highlighted the traditional use of herbs and other plants at their demonstration gardens. Also, the area was in prime wildlife territory so we were hopeful of seeing, well, something. As a bonus, it was located on the hills high above town (1000feet) so the views were pretty spectacular when you could see, as we could now and again through the clouds. We arrived mid-afternoon and found ourselves vying with a school bus for space getting into the parking lot. OK so there are screaming kids running all over the place. We could escape them (hopefully) but then it turned out that the place was officially closed, though we were welcome to use the trails. They have over 140 acres here, but there were not any maps left. Ok. We had made it 7000 miles from home, we could follow a few signs….But before we left for the trail, the woman managing the kids told us, if we were interested in local goings on there was going to be something the next afternoon at the beach-people were getting together to do a human mosaic to create a giant salmon. It’s to raise awareness about the effect of coal on the environment here. Sounds cool. We’ll think about this. It’s always an interesting experience to participate in a local event. …

So off we went out on to misty moose meadow trail. Long story short, we had a wonderful explore out to a huge, cranberry filled bog then through the forest of red elders and black spruce and meadows of fireweed along the ridge, all the while expecting to see a moose or something. No luck. Finally we stumble onto the Moose Wander trail. At last, surely we’d be running into someone along here. And we did see evidenced, in the form of droppings. In fact moose poop was all we saw of the giants the whole afternoon. To make things more interesting, the trail got narrower and less clear as we went along, until finally it seemed to disappear all together. About 20 feet from the road. We turn away from the pavement and begin picking our way over fallen logs and dense undergrowth looking for the trail it seemed must be there. It had been several hours by then hiking around in the chilly rain. We were ready to get to Thumper and have a grilled cheese sandwich. Eventually we give up and walk the mile back on the road. No critters, but a lovely autumn walk in Alaska.

Ba ck into town and down to the spit we head to our next"destination". The Salty Dog was a pub recommended by friends and guide books. Marie & Phillip, our new friends from Switzerland had gone there and marveled. So we decided to finish our day out there then find a spot on the spit to spend the night. The wind was blowing pretty good when we pull up to park at a closed up camp on the beach down there. We had just passed a tent being almost flattened by it’s power. Looked like it might be quite a night out here. Jill had asked that we call from the Salty Dog, and it seemed an easy enough request to fulfill until we got there. The building is appealing from the outside, a stocky lighthouse amended by an old log building. Ducking in we were instantly reminded that Alaska has no tobacco smoking regulations in bars. Wow! Yuck. We stuck it out long enough to admire the thousands of dollar bills covering every vertical surface and most of the ceiling. But there was really no way to enjoy a beer there between the noise and the smoke. Oh well. Out into the blustery night.

Now, Susan had been looking forward to Kenai clam chowder ever since we learned Ninilchik is a huge clamming area (from Janet and Karl while we were still in Colorado). Imagine her delight to find a small seafood place just a ways up the road from the Salty Dog. And still open! Let’s just say it was the clam chowder of dreams and the halibut cesar was even better than it sounded J We were mistaken for Alaskans by our waitress, which was funny, but in a way understandable. We would fit in here. After completely enjoying our meal and the view of the waves crashing on the shore below, we headed out to find our spot for the night.

There really was not any place to camp exactly, since everyone had closed for the season. The spit is, as it sounds, just a narrow strip of sand and rock. Everything is completely exposed, so when we decided to park in one of the closed camps we realized we could be awakened at any point by an unhappy someone there to boot us out. But we figured the risk was worth it to stay on this famed peninsula.

So we pulled into a sandy spot in one of the smaller campgrounds, Jim cautious not to send Susan into flashbacks of the narrowly diverted disaster of a couple days prior. The wind was wild, pushing nice size waves against the breaker rocks just below the site and it was ROCKING Thumper. Jim oriented the trailer to minimize the surface area getting hit directly, but that really didn’t change the experience of the wind moving our 2,200lb trailer like a branch on a tree. We felt as much as watched for a while as nature showed her stuff. After a time we turned to writing and downloading photos, still there was no sign of things dying down. If anything by bedtime it was howling louder than ever. I guess you would have to call it a restless night but something about it, cradled there in our cozy nest, was comforting. It was awesome, in the truest sense of the word.