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Published: December 10th 2015
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We flew into Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage, and were greeted by Becky’s brother, Phil, his wife, Ok-Kyung and their two children, Alexander and Sophia who live there. Her other brother, Matt and his wife, Helen, flew in from California later that night so we all had several days together as a family before the next leg of travel.
Matt and Helen, avid birders, had planned a side trip to Kodiak with a particular quest in mind – to capture a natural close up of a tufted puffed on its cliff-side perch. They remembered seeing a great number of puffins on a ferry ride from Seward to Kodiak many years earlier.
We had pre-arranged to join them so the four of us had ferry reservations between Homer and Kodiak, a slight route variation but one that made sense with a return to the Kenai Peninsula to fish with the entire family. Unfortunately, Helen was pulled away for a family emergency so only the three of us completed this side excursion.
The 230 mile drive from Anchorage to Homer rewards the driver with beautiful ocean views and often whales along the Turnagain Arm. If you look at the accompanying map
copied from
http://www.mappery.com/map-of/Kenai-Peninsula-Alaska-Map, you can see the long drive around the Turnagain Arm then the large “C” around the West side of the peninsula until you reach the end at Homer. On the section from Soldotna to Homer, there are five volcanos visible across the Cook Inlet, Spurr, Redoubt, Iliamna, Augustine and Douglas, along the Chigmit Mountains, part of the Aleutian Islands. Augustine is particularly impressive as it seems to be the sole feature on a tiny island.
Homer is beautifully situated on the Kachemak Bay, ringed by glacier and snow-capped mountains even in the heart of summer. The five mile gravel Homer Spit extends five miles out into the bay and is heavily populated with RVs, campers and little stores to serve them. There is even a fish-in-a-barrel Homer Spit Lagoon which has been populated with salmon that return every year to spawn and provide easy pickings for fishing enthusiasts.
We spent the night in a really comfortable Bed and Breakfast Matt and Helen had selected in the town of Homer with views of the bay. It felt like the height of luxury after our weeks camping in the Inside Passage! In the
morning we boarded the 10 hour ferry to Kodiak. We had calm waters, clear sailing, whale sightings but no puffins.
When we arrived in Kodiak, we picked up a rental car and headed to another lovely Bed and Breakfast, thanks to Matt and Helen, within town with a tranquil little pond in the backyard. This became our tufted puffin expedition headquarters.
Over the next 3 days, we drove each mile of road, covered every inch of the beaches and bluffs of Mill Bay, Fort Abercrombie and the Pasagshak State Recreation Area in pursuit of a cliff full of tufted puffins sitting peacefully outside their burrowed homes, waiting for their photo op. Unfortunately, it took a while to see any tufted puffins. We finally did see some flying at sea and waited to observe where they were returning. There were only a few that flew into land and those like dive bombers into well covered areas beneath cliff overhangs. Our primary quest was a bust. We concluded that the puffins must be nesting on cliffs on islands in the ocean only accessible by sea.
We did get some hiking in, the most
memorable a scramble up Barometer Mountain, with a quick 2,000 foot elevation that provided fantastic viewing of the town of Kodiak and the surrounding area.
The one thing we didn’t see were Kodiak bears, the largest bears on Earth. An adult male Kodiak bear weighs around 1,000 lbs and when standing erect, can be over 9 ½ feet tall! Matt had seen them on an earlier Alaskan trip catching and eating salmon in waterfalls at renowned Katmai from viewing decks and confirmed how intimidating they are when seen up close. We did see bear scat when hiking on an abandoned trail behind a blocked road and turned around, deciding we didn’t want to encounter a Kodiak bear in an area where we were the only people to venture in a very long time.
Standing at the ferry terminal at the end of our stay, ready to depart Kodiak, we asked a local resident where Kodiak bears could be seen. He provided a failproof place but unfortunately we were leaving. He said “You can see them every evening – at the dump!”
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