We drove to Homer, Alaska for our adventure to Kachemak Bay, Halibut Cove and Gull Island.
The harbor at Homer, Alaska has a lot of fish preparation stations.
We had to walk down this long, seemingly unstable ramp to get to the boat. It moves up and down with the tide.
Where is our boat?
There's Tom, a campground host in the neon green jacket. The guy in the brown shirt in the boat is Jason Osler, a head ranger. He'll be our captain for this trip.
We have to step over the water onto the boat.
Now we're on our way.
That brown thing floating in the water is a sea lion.
More boats.
More boats. I don't know how Jason finds hisway out of the harbor!
A bunch of gulls watching for any fishing boats dropping fish into the ocean.
Now we're on our way.
Beautiful mountains in the background!
The water is kind of choppy. I'm wearing long underwear, flannel lined pants, gore ex pants, a long underwear shirt, heavy shirt, hooded sweatshop, my long down coat and wool gloves. So far I'm warm enough.
Gull Island. See the hundreds of birds flying around and roosting on the island?
All those white specks are birds!
No people live on the island, just birds.
Maybe you see some puffins?
Now off to the bay. You can see a house on the left.
There are ferries that take people, mail and packages from the mainland to the bay and back.
See the long ramp and the houses? Some people live on these islands year round.
Some people live on one island by themselves and some people share an island.
Look at that porch on the island!
It is really beautiful and the water is calm in the bay.
We drove around the islands.
We're driving into Halibut Cove where quite a few people live and the Kachemak State Park is.
We drove into the bay where Kachemak State Park is. There's that long bouncy ramp again. I didn't like walking the ramp because it does not seem to be stable, but I'm sure that it is. The ramp had to be built that way so that it can be removed every winter and replaced in the spring because the ice that would form around it in the winter would ruin it.
Campground Hosts actually live in a cabin here. They don't have electricity and they have to collect their own water. The do have outhouses and 5 cabins that can be rented out by the week. The cabins only have a bed and a table. There are kayaks at the base of the ramp that the people renting the cabins can use. Once every two weeks, the campground hosts are ferried to Homer to resupply.
Once you're on land, there's a wooden walkway because the island is so steep. Across the walkway there are pieces of rope to keep you from falling backward!
This little gem was on the side of the trail! The camp hosts like to paint!
That is the cabin where the camp hosts live. The sign over the trail says Kachamak State Park. Can you see the rope over the wooden trail?
The view across the bay from the cabin.
Now it's back down the ramp to leave.
We watched as the ramp and ranger station became almost invisible.
There's the cool hole in the rock.
Now we're surrounded by mountains.
They are really beautiful!
Colors were always changing because of the shadows of the rocks and trees on each other
Gull Island again.
We stopped at a beach and walked around a little. That was fun. This is a photograph of the boat we took. It was a State of Alaska Ranger boat. Tom is in the green, Kevin is in the blue and Jason is on the boat. Her has on his uniform kaki clothes.
There were hundreds of birds swimming around Gull Island.
Now, we're freezing cold, so we're ready to leave Gull Island and go back to Homer and our warm cars!
One more pass by Gull Island on our way home.
Now, we're freezing cold, so we're ready to leave Gull Island and go back to Homer and our warm cars!
