Memorial Weekend in Homer 5

More fun photos of our last night in Homer - the skies cleared and it was sun all the way!

This is the beach area near our campground and Land's End Resort. The time was 8 or 9 p.m. I think?

Huge bald eagles everywhere in Homer.

A fish/seafood processing plant where boats offload their catch. The operators lower the cranes down to the boats at the waterline and bring up fish in the brailers.

Deadliest Catch boat, Time Bandit. The Hillstrand brothers own the boat and are from Homer.

We turn around the dog is already down playing in the water!

Memorial Weekend in Homer 4

I've been posting photos a little out of order, but sometimes it's nice to group by type than by day. Anywho, the following are day 2 of fishing. 

Leaving the spacious boat launch. We were pleasantly surprised at how laid back it was, especially for a holiday weekend. I'm sure the 4th of July weekend will be pure insanity - it usually is.

Rounding the tip of the Spit - that's Land's End Resort and some vacation rentals there on the left.

Mussels and other shells. The sea otters eat really well out here.

Shore break! The water was awfully choppy this day and the swells just about did me in. I kept my breakfast in though - I've only puked on the boat once and I'm pretty proud of that.

The Ramblin' Rose is one of the new Deadliest Catch boats this season.

Eagles everywhere in Homer. This was in a parking lot near the fish-cleaning tables we use.

They're not monster barn doors, but chickens sure are easier to pull up from the bottom! Got our limit of 2 each on this day. The day prior, D pulled up a REALLY nice halibut. If you can believe it, we ended up with the same amount of fillets from that one big halibut as from these 4 chickens!

D does the filleting of each halibut - we get 4 sections from each halibut. Then I wash all of the sections thoroughly with a hose at the table. After he has discarded the carcasses, D cuts the remaining skin off the halibuts and I place them in gallon-size Ziploc bags. At the campsite we plugged in the vacuum sealer and package the fillets to place in the freezer.

Halibut are born with eyes on each side of their body and as time goes on, one eye migrates over to the brown side of the fish. The mouth wraps around both side.

Memorial Weekend in Homer 3

Oops, I forgot about my Homer recaps! We ended up doing a ton of little home projects and clean-up on Saturday and Sunday. The weather was pretty rainy/wet and I'm glad we decided to stay home over the weekend. D is now off bear hunting in the Sound for the next few days. Cross your fingers that he is successful...we need the meat! He took the dog so it is very quiet around the house since it's just me and the cats.

The Salty Dawg Saloon is a Homer institution - usually only open spring to fall, it's THE bar on the Spit. They only take cash and the walls/ceilings are covered with dollar bills, underwear, business cards and whatever else you feel like tacking up. It's an Alaskan landmark and hundreds of thousands of people walk through the doors every year. It's the kind of place where rubber boots and rain jackets are fashion-forward. You can't miss it on the Spit - just look for the little lighthouse.

 

The weather was pretty unpredictable during our 5-day stay, trading off between windy and calm, and sunny and rainy. There was one day that we didn't go out to fish since the seas were so rough. It was beautiful but seas at 4-6 feet, plus the Kachemak Bay swells? No thanks. But the wind brought out the kiteboarders...

You have to be incredibly strong and in shape to wrestle with the kite...

The kiteboarders wear dry suits to keep warm in the 48 degree water. 

Continuing our walk down the beach, on the bay side...

Memorial Weekend in Homer 2

The Homer harbor is pretty big, compared to Whittier and even Seward. There are multiple walkways down to the boat slips and the launch is nice and long - plenty of room for boats coming in and out!

Huge buoys -I'm thinking they're for weather or monitoring?

More buoys.

This is the back side of the Homer Spit. All boats come around the corner and enter the harbor here.

My favorite beach-combing area.

Mouth of the harbor.

Crab pots.

D found out that there are open slips at the harbor - only $250 per year! That sounds like a steal to me.

Memorial Weekend in Homer 1

The weather could not have been better on Friday as we headed out of Anchorage and drove south down Turnagain Arm. It was warm and sunny so I gave all of my outside plants and flowers a good soaking in the morning before we left.

 

D purchased an '06 Toyota truck last fall and it is fairly luxurious compared to his old one. Looks great with the new topper and it's convenient to have second row seating back there.The window between the cab and bed is electronic so it rolls down with the touch of a button.

Whizzing by on the highway. The dilapidated structure is an old home near the Whittier turnoff that was destroyed during the 1964 earthquake.

This is Canyon Creek, the area where D proposed to me almost 2 years ago.

4.5 hours later, we arrived in Homer! The thin piece of land jutting out into Kachemak Bay is the Homer Spit, which is where we stayed this time. 

 

Although the weather was great on Friday in Homer, we knew the rain was coming. This is our tarp city - encompassing part of the boat, truck and tent in our campsite.

We purchased a site with electricity to run the freezer and vacuum sealer.

Vacuum sealer from home, to package our halibut filets.

New Coleman double-burner stove! D made some great breakfasts on this, and we had fresh beer-battered halibut and pacific cod on Saturday night.

One of our smaller chest freezers from home.

This is luxury camping for us! All the extras that we can't usually bring along on boat trips due to weight restrictions...real chairs, a big water jug, lots of food, a big stove & grill (as opposed to our tiny backpacking stoves), extra clothes (for me, ha ha) and of course, running water, electricity and SHOWERS!!!

Time to eat!

 

More to come!

Holiday weekend

Memorial Day is almost here! Can you guess where we are going for the weekend? I was able to get Friday through Tuesday off from work, and D recently finished a year-long construction job so we will have a leisurely and LONG time off for Memorial Day in....Homer! Yay for halibut fishing, trolling for king salmon and party time on the Spit. Although I am sort of over the party atmosphere now - we thought about staying in a secluded campground above town but the downside is no electricity. In order to legally keep more than the 4 halibut possession limit we need to process our catch. And that means bringing a vacuum-sealer and loading a small chest freezer into the back of the truck. I know that sounds awfully weird but we will be down in Homer for 5 days and it's important to get the fish packed and frozen. There is a company in town that will do all that for sport fisherman but I'm cheap and don't want to spend the money!


In exactly one month from today D and I will celebrate our 1-year anniversary. 2010 and now 2011 have both sped by so fast. I'm a bit bummed that I have to work an event on June 25th, so that means no leaving town on our anniversary weekend. Well, D will probably go fishing without me but I am stuck in Anchorage! I need to check the freezer and figure out where our wedding cheesecake is hiding.


This past Monday after work I spent about 4 hours digging and potting flowers. The back deck and front porch look much more inviting now and I can't wait to see how everything looks in mid-summer after the flowers have bloomed.

Sounds like D's brother may come up for a visit this summer so that should be fun. Was hoping my sister could come sometime too but her job and school schedule are pretty packed.


Happy Memorial Day everyone! Will have recaps and photos next week after Wednesday.

Oh grow up

May 31st is the official start of the outdoor garden season in Alaska.  It's industry standard to wait until the holiday weekend to put out plants and flowers, but most of us get impatient and try to push it a week or two earlier. We're supposed to get indoor starts going in mid-March but I haven't invested in a grow light and we really don't have a good area for a mini greenhouse. So, all of my random seeds were started last week: cosmos, peony (not sure if these will grow well here), some other wildflowers and a really cool plant from Tennessee that my mom gave me last November. These all go outside during the day and come in at night.

A friend had given me these 12 petite planters with a different set of seeds for each month and I never got around to doing anything with them. Better late than never, right? I love the colors and how small they are - each can fit in the palm of a hand. Once the seedlings emerge and I plant them in a bigger container, I'll use these ceramic pots around the house.

I tested my flower knowledge by trying to match up the seed packet with the photo of the flower on the front of each pot. I only had to look up 3 out of 12.

 I took inventory of my growing collection of outdoor planters, pulled out the dirt we saved from last year's container gardens and made a shopping list for my 2011 flowers! Most came from Walmart, including two cute little perennial shrubs, because the cost and quality were pretty good. My geraniums are from Home Depot since Walmart's selection was pitiful. It was really windy yesterday when I went plant shopping and the wind was whipping up dust in the outdoor pavilion and knocking plants over, so I was in and out in a flash. 

The back of my car, all loaded up with fun plants! Can't wait to get my hands dirty this week.