July 17 - Homer Day 2

I realize that I didn’t show you the out-the-window view for this spot, so here it is. It’s another lovely, sunny day. I’m beginning to feel guilty for being happy about the sun, since all the locals are fretting about the lack of rain. We visited the Islands and Oceans Visitor Center today to get the rundown on the natural world hereabouts. It is fairly small, but it has a science lab where kids can get their hands wet and play with the microscopes, which is a nice thing to do to catch their interest. They have some guided walks, too, which we will take advantage of later in the week.

We tried to go on a guided walk through Homer Spit, but the docent forgot to show up, so we’re scheduled for that tomorrow. So we went down to the very end of the spit and watched the gulls waiting to greet the returning fishing boats.


After that excitement, we took a drive out of town toward the end of the Kachemac Bay. The road wound up into the hills, so there were some great birds-eye views of the glaciers and mountains across the bay. At the very end of the road there is a community of people who emigrated from Russia after the Russian revolution. They are called Old Believers, and the description of their life style seems very like Mennonites. They use cars and utilities, but are basically self supporting and keep to the traditional Russian orthodox beliefs. As we got to the end of the road and closer to their town, the road first became graded gravel, then dirt, then to a pot-holed track. It was the kind of road you might have if you don’t want to encourage visitors, so we turned back. Their cemetery was just before the road got awful, and it was filled with flowers.

We came back to Cleo, had dinner and went for a nice long walk on the shore. Gypsy wants to get in the water, and we let her do that this morning. She took a bite of water and got the most shocked look on her face. Salt water and fine black sand make a messy combination, so she’s not going to get the chance to do much wading. While we were walking we saw a swarm of birds out on the water, maybe a thousand of them, swooping and diving, and flashes of black and white at the leading edge of the swarm. They looked too small for orcas, so they were probably Dall porpoises, but were so far away the camera couldn’t see any details. Inconsiderate creatures! They could at least do their feeding closer to shore so we can see.