July 20 - Homer Day 5 - Side trip to Seldovia

I decided to take a water taxi across Kachemac Bay to the town of Seldovia today. Seldovia used to be the bustling city of the area, but when Homer got a road to the outside and a harbor, Seldovia started to fade. Then the 1964 earthquake destroyed the canneries and the town pretty much ceased to have a reason to exist. The people who live there, though, hang on. One of the people on the ferry was a resident, doing her commute back home. She said she liked it much better than driving in LA.

The young woman who was captaining the boat was very interested in the wildlife of the bay, and part of the trip was a long detour around Gull Island, a large bird nesting colony for tufted and horned puffins, glaucous winged gulls, black-winged kittywakes, and pelagic and red-faced cormorants, so we got to see all of them.



This guy is a tufted puffin, and the other one is a horned puffin doing a stretch.

Here is a series of pictures of a horned puffin taking off from the water.





























After the island, we cruised between other islands where there were eagles, otters, and kayakers who were staying in cabins on the islands for a vacation. It looked like they were having fun. Out in the open channel again, the captain spotted a
minke whale. It’s a small whale who is usually very shy, but this one was willing to hang around and show off a little. The water was so clear, we could see it swim under the boat and then surface in a shallow roll. It was special enough a show that even the captain got out her camera.



We docked in Seldovia for a 3 hour lay-over, so the first stop was lunch, and then a stroll around town, which didn’t take very long. The town used to be all on boardwalks and there are a few houses still on piers with boardwalks over the river leading into the harbor.


I had a nice chat with the lady at the tribal store, where I got the Sedovia hat pin – a unique trophy for our wall of pins showing all our stops. The town used to be Russian orthodox, so a friendly local showed me the path to the old church, which is no longer in use, and then I walked back to the harbor and talked to some of the locals, who were all very willing to brag about their “best kept secret” place to live.