Good morning, my friends. Just after posting yesterday, I stepped outside for a few minutes. While I was out, I heard the distinctive call of a bald eagle. Taking a look around...holy-moly!...there were two perched on a roof not 50 yards away. So I grabbed my camera with the telephoto lens and captured this image. We've seen a few bald eagles on our trip, but this was the first time we got a really good look at them.
Our goal for the day was to hike a couple of trails I'd bookmarked. When we visited the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge visitor center, we learned about the Beluga Slough trail that began in their parking lot, and allowed us to walk along the beach to our RV park. We walked a short distance down the road and met up with the trail just behind the visitor center.
Here's a map of the trail.
As we stood there, our friend the motorized paraglider, buzzed overhead.
The trail took us out to Bishop's Beach, which is the beach we see from our window.
There, we had a great view of the mountains across Kachemak Bay.
The trail was mostly this steel grating. It was really the only way to keep the grasses clear from the trail...lots of weed-whacking, we assume.
The lupines have really captured my photographer's eye. It's hard to stop taking pictures of them.
We came across this sign. I always like the advice I get from animals and inanimate objects.
Now here's something you don't see every day. It's a bird wearing pants and holding up a wind sock. The airstrip is right nearby.
Also, this art installation. It looked like a lighting fixture, but we couldn't figure out the stuff below.
When we reached the beach, the tide was out. (The tide is in now, and there is no beach at all.) From there, we had an expansive view of the mountains surrounding Homer and Kachemak Bay.
We walked along the beach headed for our RV park, which is where I've marked with the red arrow below. That might actually be pointing directly at our camper.
So that was a short and scenic walk. Moving on, we drove to another part of town to walk this Calvin & Coyle Woodland Park & Nature Trail. The ranger at the visitor center told us we might see moose or bear along this trail.
It was a densely wooded area with open meadows. We looked and looked and looked, but didn't see any wildlife along the way. It was still worth the walk.
Looking up, it looked like this. The shade was nice.
These are Sitka Spruce trees. I recognize them for their bark, which looks like alligator skin. We have Sitka Spruce on our coastal trails in Oregon, although ours grow trunks with much larger girth.
Most sections of the trail were covered in these planks. It was wet and muddy through here.
The forest floor was carpeted with these pretty ferns.
Occasionally, we crossed a stream on a wooden bridge.
This next image shows what's known as "shelf fungus."
Here's some information about the fungi and the insects that plague the trees here.
At the halfway point, the trail opened up to this overlook. Do you see any moose? Nah. We didn't either.
Looking a little to the left, it looked like this:
The only "wildlife" we saw along the way were hoards of these damselflies. We assume they were gorging themselves on mosquitos.
From there we drove up a hill to one of the highest peaks in Homer on Skyline Drive. I'm afraid my pictures don't do justice to what we saw there. The mountains appeared close enough to touch. Looking to my left, it looked like this:
Looking straight out, we had an expansive view of the Kenai Range, Homer Spit, and Kachemak Bay. You can see the airstrip running horizontally near the middle of the image.
Looking more to the right, it looked like this:
Moving farther to the left, we could see a glacier in the bowl of the mountains there.
Here, I zoomed in some to get a better look. This might be the
Grewingk Glacier.
There were some new-to-me-this-trip wildflowers blooming on the side of the road. My phone identified these as "Fox and cubs." Cute.
And some more of the wild geraniums.
And that was our day. We might have taken another short hike here, but we felt as if we'd walked all we wanted to. We headed back to the RV for lunch and naps. After that, we made a quick trip to the grocery store. We needed all things cat-related, and so you can see that it was something of an emergency.
Today we'll do some laundry and have a "life" day. There's a McDonald's in town, and I am Jonesing for an Egg McMuffin. We haven't had one since before leaving home. From there we'll do our laundry and then just relax for the day. It's our last day in Homer. Tomorrow will find us heading to Soldotna for two nights, and then on to Anchorage after that.
When I'm planning these trips, I'm using an app called RVParky. It has a space for making notes, but I've discovered it doesn't always work right. When I looked at my notes for Soldotna, I found them identical to the notes I'd made for Skagway (a stop we won't reach until the end of July). So now, I'm not sure why we're stopping in Soldotna. The Milepost has been an excellent resource when I'm looking for activities in a certain place, and so I'll let the Milepost tell us why we're stopping there. For sure and certain, there is a quilt shop, which would be reason enough to stop. I need just one more fabric to finish my Shop Hop quilt.
Okay, so Mike is just finishing up in the shower. My turn is next. Time to get going. Laundry awaits.
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