Steve and Marie, like Wayne and Marilyn, are friends we met in Belize and promised to visit if we ever made it to Alaska. Because our schedule is so indefinite, I hadn’t contacted anyone about visiting plans. I also found that while I’ve always loved to study maps, I don’t truly understand what I’m studying until I’m there and have my own two feet on the ground. I’d contacted Wayne when we first drove into Alaska, and didn’t realize it would be over two weeks until we made it from the Top of the World Highway to Anchorage. When I realized how slow we were going, I decided not to contact Steve and Marie until I had some idea of when we would get there. However, Wayne posted on Facebook that we were in Anchorage, and since Steve is our mutual friend, he contacted me see if we were planning to visit, and to let us know that he and Marie would be out of town at the end of the next week. So, we moved up our plans to wander down the Kenai Peninsula, and left Anchorage with the plan to go all the way south to Homer and do our wandering on the way back north.
We left Anchorage around 1pm and arrived in Homer around 7pm. We’d been texting as we drove south, so dinner plans had been made and we were looking forward to salmon on the grill. However, we were all so giddy at actually getting together in Alaska that it took us a while to get around to dinner, and then even longer to talk after dinner, and we went to bed way too late. Nonetheless, we found the energy for Steve and Marie to take us out on Kachemak Bay in their Tolman skiff from the Spit off of Homer, which was a great adventure for us. We went past an island covered with birds and saw our first puffins in the wild, and then went into Halibut Cove, a town on a small inlet off the bay. When we got back to the house, after seeing a mama moose and two youngsters right in town, we took a hike around the property. We enjoyed views of the glaciers from the deck and every window in the house, as well as over the camper. We managed to get to bed at a more reasonable hour, with plans for a hike the next day.
The next day, Steve took us across the bay to the state park to hike to the Grewlingk glacier. Their golden Skiff went with us, and we decided to take Ty. He surprised us by being fairly calm on the ride across the bay, and he was good on the trail which went up the mountain from the bay to the glacial lake, where we saw our first ice bergs. The hike was amazing, and we ate our packed lunch at the lake before retracing our trail back to the bay. When we got back to the bay, we were a little disconcerted to see that the glass-like surface of the bay had gotten a little choppier, but Steve assured us that he and his skiff had seen worse. We weren’t especially worried, but as we headed out of the cove and into the bay, the boat engine started to beep. Steve made a couple of phone calls, and we headed into Halibut Cove where we’d been the day before, this time stopping at a friend’s dock to take a look to resolve the problem. Steve determined that it wasn’t anything that would prevent us from getting across the bay, so we set out through the chop and returned to the spit without any problems. Ty was actually calmer on the way back than the way out, so apparently nobody was overly anxious. When we got back to Homer, we met Marie at a local brewery where they were having Yappy Hour with dogs, which did make Ty somewhat anxious and he had to sit in the car. However, we met some mutual friends of Wayne and Marilyn’s and Steve and Marie’s, and felt that we apparently know the *right* people in Alaska.
The next morning, Marie had to go to work, but Steve took us on another hike through their property before we headed north. We were brave enough to take our dogs, even with the risk of bears, since Steve was comfortable with Skiff going, and our dogs needed to stretch their legs before we started driving. We didn’t see any bears, and the dogs were happy to get in the truck and settle down as we headed for Hidden Lake Campground.
