Homer, Alaska

The view out our window is simply stunning – a long string of mountains across Cook Inlet. Take the view of the Tetons across Jackson Lake, multiply if by five, add the massive Grewingk Glacier, and that is what we see.

We aren’t paying very much for this view. It’s expensive to be here, but more money does not buy more view. It’s all the same up and down the streets of this town, the whole peninsula, in fact. Everyone gets a piece of it.

I did not bring the cord that allows me to upload pictures from the camera, so someone else took these photos. Our motel room is a square box facing the inlet, simple and functional. The only thing interfering with the few is another set of boxes like ours fifty yards away.

We are animal-starved. We’ve been up and down the highway looking for moose and bear with no luck. We hiked in a nature preserve yesterday with no sign of bear – no scat, no tree scratches. The brown bear only occasionally wander through and are rarely seen, but black bear are common – to everyone but us. And moose – you’d think they’d offer up one lousy moose.

The drive up the other sided of the peninsula last “night” was uneventful. The area is one suburb, Alaska-style, with houses on five and ten and thirty acres lots instead of quarter-acres. We went sixteen miles, and in all those miles did not see one convenience store. The area is a rain forest with houses every few hundred yards. It covers an area perhaps the size of Spokane, but with only a small fraction the number of people.

The houses are all functional, no McMansions. The essential businesses are located in the little town that started this place. People drive many miles for a quart of milk. The roads are good, and the winters mild by Alaska standards, we are told. It’s an idyllic life, on the surface, but there’s a veneer of faux wealth over the poverty of the area. You can see it in the old cars and in the businesses that have not done a face-lift in decades. Occasionally there is a 20×20 box-style two-story house, and a few people living on buses. The only industries are fishing and tourism, both tough ways to make a living. There isn’t much prosperity here.

We were to fly over the inlet to see some brown bear yesterday, but everything was socked in. They said they would call if it opened up, but cell phones only work in town proper, and we weren’t about to sit around waiting for it to ring. So we headed out to see some country on foot. And, sure enough, around 4PM they called telling us to come on down and hop a flight. But we didn’t get the message until 5PM. So we are set to go Wednesday morning, our last chance at seeing the famous brown bear before we head north to Seward Wednesday afternoon.

We did go on a short flight out and back yesterday – the pilot, Scooter, from Boulder, CO, was just checking to see if he could land across the inlet. It was only my second time on a small plane, and exciting. In the next life … gonna get me a plane. A friend in Bozeman owns, or owned, a small plane. He could not afford to keep it post-retirement. It is expensive, and if you do not turn those machines into cash flow, they will consume your IRA in a hurry.

Oh yeah – the “Spit” – a five mile landing strip jutting out into the inlet. It’s in the photo above. There’s a large marina, and maybe a hundred little businesses, mostly fishing-related. There’s the usual gift shops, and all of those bear things – watch chains and statuettes that are made in China and sold in every part of the country that has a bear. Nothing is fancy here, but everything is expensive. We paid $22 for a cheese pizza out there. It’s a tiny building. We paid downstairs and then went up a flight of stairs outside the building to a small sun room overlooking the Inlet. Very nice.

Two days ago we went down to the ‘beach’ below our motel room. It’s rough and unwalkable, made of rough rocks and littered with natural debris. There’s a makeshift hut up a few hundred yards, and nearer us were two young boys who had ridden their motorcycle and ATV down there and built a fire. They were friendly, but talked about how “punks” and “hippies” come down there at night and build bonfires and drink beer. I told them that every beach in the world is a magnet for young people to build fires and have parties. But they only know this beach, and are already developing a redneck attitude. But the boys were tan and muscular specimens for twelve-year olds. They are Alaskans, through and through.

So today we aging punk-hippies are going to walk the beach – maybe get ten slow meandering miles in. We can’t drink beer, as we might stumble and fall and break something. We didn’t come here to fish or hunt – just to see the place and walk some trails. But the forest here is very thick, and trails are a rarity. Not that we care – we would walk the highway just to feel the breeze and smell the flowers and trees and salt air. This is Alaska!

Flying up here, looking out over the Canadian Rockies, was reassuring. As far as I could see was nothing but snowy peaks jutting through the clouds. No one lives there! May it always be so.