August 1, 2007

The truck was already packed so we left almost immediately after work and headed south. We stopped for a quick dinner in Soldotna and made it to Homer by about 9:30. The ferry started loading about an hour later.

The loading process was rather slow. Two vehicles, or one large vehicle would drive onto the platform. A hoist system lowered the vehicles to the bottom deck of the ship. The platform rotated on a turntable to align the cars with parking spaces. Then the empty platform would rotate back, raise up, and load two more. It was already getting dark by the time we boarded.

We got the key to our state room, found our room, and dropped our stuff. We took a quick tour of the ship, the Tustumena. It was not a huge ship. I began to worry about how it would handle waves. The wind was howling on Homer Spit. We watched the last few cars load from our room. We headed out into the dark water. We went to bed.

I woke up around two. I got up and checked the outside conditions. A full moon was shining on the calm water. I went back to bed. I woke again at about 3:30 when some large waves started the boat rocking. It was mildly disconcerting, but it seemed to settle back down and I went back to sleep. We got up at 6:30 and took a shower.

We then headed up on deck to see our surroundings. We were passing through a narrow strait. I quickly spotted the plume of a whale exhaling in the distance. It was early morning. The water was wonderfully calm. The skies were gray. The brochure on the wall in ship indicated that it was perfect whale watching conditions. I have never seen so many whales. We saw one breaching in the distance. It came high out of the water several times. We got bored of seeing whales. We went to the dining room for breakfast. I continued to see whales out every window. Two whales waved their tales in sequence at the boat only about 50 yards of the port side.

We arrived in Kodiak around 9:30, but we had to wait for our turn on the automotive turntable/elevator. We were finally set free and we stopped at the visitor center for some information. We then headed to the campground we wanted to stay at and found an excellent site. It is a WWII era military installation high on a bluff overlooking the water. It is a rainforest area with tall moss covered trees. A hundred feet from our site is an old gun placement. Our tent is currently secured to four old concrete foundations arranged perfectly in a square with our tent place right in the middle.

Over the bluff, we can see various seabirds including a large colony of puffins playing in the water and hanging out on the side of the cliff.

Once we got our tent set up, we headed to one end of the road system in Kodiak. We went to White Sands beach, so called because of a large amount of whitish sandish material that is exposed at low tide. It is not really sand and it is not really white. It is ash from a volcanic eruption on the Alaska Peninsula. We arrived at low tide and so we walked on the white sand. It was squishy and difficult to walk in.

We ate lunch and then tried to take a hike. The trail was supposed to loop through the forest to a distant point and then follow the shoreline back. We ended up on an ATV trail that eventually led us into a swampy grassy area with bear scat. Looking at the GPS, we suspected that we were on the wrong trail. Deciding to turn back is always difficult. Maybe the trail will turn in the right direction over the next ridge. We pulled the plug and returned on the same trail we went out on most of the way. We found where we went wrong, but we were almost back to the car and too tired to try again.

After our hike, Kris sat in the car and read while I tried fishing the creek that exited at the beach. I caught lots of really small fish. I also saw lots of pink salmon, but they didn’t seem too interested in anything I threw at them.

We drove around the area a little more before returning to our campground for dinner. I tried fishing for a little after dinner in a stocked lake at the park. I caught one small, but lively, rainbow trout. It is now 9:22. Kris is already snoring. While I think we both slept pretty well on the boat last night, we didn’t get to bed until after midnight, we got up at 6:30, and we have had a pretty active day.