Well, the good news is that we had a wonderful lunch with Don and Julie. The bad news is that we couldn't find our dollar bill. We don't know whether it was buried in this haystack of a pile of bills --
-- or whether it might have been taken down by the owners to make room for patrons to tack up more money. Anyway, we couldn't find it.
This shouldn't stop you from visiting the Salty Dawg if you visit Homer. The bar has a lot of character, and served good beer, too. Look for this building toward the end of the spit --
-- and, just in case you are luckier than we are in finding that bill from 2016, here is a photo of it from the day we tacked it to the wall:
Julie and Don are headed to Portage and then to parts unknown. We might see them again when we're in Valdez, but we weren't able to determine quickly, from memory, whether we'll be in Valdez at the same time as them. Stay tuned on that issue.
Homer is about 84 miles south of where we are camped between Soldotna and Kenai, so we did not have much time to sightsee on our way down to Homer. However, on our drive back, we took the opportunity to visit Deep Creek State Recreation Area, which is a popular spot for people to put their fishing boats into Cook Inlet. We had visited Anchor Point State Park, a similar site, when we visited the Kenai Peninsula in June 2016, but we were curious to see what Deep Creek is like.
Timing in life is everything. Just as we arrived, the commercial tractors got a call to haul a fishing boat out of the water, and we were in the perfect position to watch!
In case you'd like to see the whole process (including a fun "victory" salute from the tractor guy, here is a video of the tractor pulling the boat out of the water.
Turning to look up the beach after the tractor show, we were surprised to see a . . . lighthouse! This was as close as we got to it, because it is on the private property of a fishing club (as we discovered on a later drive up to the top of the cliff where it perches).
That's all right. We were content with a walk along the beach to hunt eagles. We had learned on our visit to Anchor Point in 2016 that eagles are just as interested as the gulls in greeting fishermen who return and clean their fish on the beach. In fact, Anchor Point has our personal record of more than 24 eagles in one spot; so we were curious whether Deep Creek would challenge that record.
We had nearly finished our walk and had only seen one immature bald eagle on a far sandbar when we spied 8 or 9 eagles soaring from the cliff by the lighthouse, out toward the beach tractors, presumably to see whether the returning fishermen had left any snacks that the gulls had missed.
Nope. No treats. The eagles swooped to the cliff overlooking the tractor and completely disappeared into the low brush. We're sure they had a panoramic view of the beach, but they had become invisible to us.
As we walked down the beach toward the tractors, we did finally spy one bald eagle hanging out near the water. He let us get very close before getting impatient with our predatory behavior and flying off in a disgruntled manner:
After all, Deep Creek was disappointing relative to Anchor Point. However, Deep Creek has a campground on the beach that is very attractive. While it does not provide any water, electric or sewer service, it is open to the sky and anyone who, like us, has solar panels, would enjoy uninterrupted solar power for these 24-hour days of the Alaska summer.
This ended our drive to Homer. We returned to our RV in time to enjoy a tasty dinner and retire to bed just after 8 pm to prepare for rising in the VERY wee hours to go salmon fishing with a local guide. You can find the story of our fishing trip in the next blog entry. Don't worry -- it has a happy ending.
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