The Kittiwakes are Keeping Watch

Mile 6021. Quartz Creek Campground, Cooper Landing, Kenai Peninsula.

Homer or Bust. That’s been our motto for the past year. I even doodled it in snow on the Icefield Parkway skywalk outside of Jasper exactly one month ago.

Homer, at a glance and in our minds, was both the northern and western most point of the trip. Sounds good, but technically it’s inaccurate. Fairbanks is the furthest north we’ve traveled and Anchor Point, as you can see in the photo above, is the furthest west. Either way, it’s a milestone for us to reach Homer and reach it we did, this week camping for three nights at the end of Homer Spit, a 4 1/2 mile narrow bar of sand and gravel that juts out from Homer into Kachemak Bay. The west side of the spit looks out on four volcanoes of the Pacific Ring of Fire, two of which of have been recently active (Mount Augustine in 2006 and Mount Redoubt in 2009); the east side looks out on Kachemak Bay State Park, Alaska’s first state park. All of the mountains are snow capped, many containing glaciers. We had grand plans for what we were going to do in Homer – take a day tour across the bay to Seldovia and later to Halibut Cove, go halibut fishing, take a bear viewing tour, visit the local bookstore – the options here are endless. But being on this narrow strip of land surrounded by water and in the distance so much majesty, a certain peace set in and all we wanted to do was relax and take it all in.

A visit to the spit is not complete without a visit to the iconic Salty Dawg Saloon. It started as one of the first cabins built in Homer in 1897 soon after Homer became a town site. It’s worn many hats since then, including post office and railroad station. It opened as a saloon in 1957, two years before the Alaska Territory became the 49th state of the union. Mark’s first visit to the saloon was 8 years ago when he came to Alaska to visit business accounts and agents….in early December, if you can believe that. Mark remembers the trip well. He visited a contractor in Kotzebue, a place you can only get to by plane or sea, who was dredging the harbor by letting it freeze and putting excavators and dump trucks on frozen ice and digging it up in concentric circles. Small world story, the contractor grew up on the same lake in Oregon on which Mark’s family had built a cabin. The agent he visited in Homer was still riding high on her first Moose kill and the contractor he visited on the way to Homer rebuilt the last 25 miles of the Sterling Highway, the only road to Homer. Mark remembers the Salty Dawg as well because every nook and cranny of the place was papered with dollar bills, many with personal messages. He failed to tell me that I could spend hours reading the bathroom walls.

We stopped in for a quick drink on our first afternoon in Homer Spit and ended up sharing a table and several hours of conversation with a couple from New Zealand. The woman had flown in to join her friend on a short leg of his multi-year, multi-country journey, something she does often it sounds like. He’s visited 188 countries to date and is in the process of shipping a vehicle to Vera Cruz, Mexico with plans to drive from there to the U.S. to visit our National Parks. My cousin thinks I’m adventurous and maybe I am in the boundaries of my own little world, but in the big wide world, this guy is a true adventurer. Over beer and cider we discussed traveling and several of the countries he’d visited, how digital photography and the requisite daily processing of photos took time away from the things he used to do when he traveled such as reading and writing, the graffiti on the bathroom walls, and the economies of and healthcare in our countries.

I could have stayed on the Spit for another week; it is my favorite stop to date. What I love most is the tide change. The bay has the second largest tides in the world, 15 feet on average, 28 feet at its maximum, and 20 feet during our visit. I believe the Bay of Fundy in Novia Scotia, which I have also been too, holds the number one spot. When the tide goes out secrets of the ocean are revealed. Every morning at low tide I donned my rainboots (because you have to cross high spots that don’t drain to the ocean) and walked to the water line exploring recently exposed sand and watching the birds. Kind of like a treasure hunt. I stumbled on a stranded jellyfish and ran across a bald eagle scavenging remnants of clams left behind by the ocean on my last morning.

Eagles are another reason I love this part of the peninsula. They are everywhere if you pay attention. Each night, despite the rainy weather (the first night) and the windy weather (the second night) Mark and I walked to the very tip of the spit, where the ferry terminal is. On the second night we discovered, in a cloud of seagull activity, a lone bald eagle sitting on the railing. At least I thought they were seagulls. As I’m learning there are all kinds of seagull-like birds. Here they are Black-legged Kittiwakes.

This was not our first encounter with bald eagles and seabirds. The day before we had seen them co-mingling on the beach at Anchor Point.

I can’t quite wrap my head around an eagle, a bird of prey, socializing with “gulls”, low man on the totem pole. We stopped to watch the eagle at the ferry terminal. It perched on the rail for quite awhile, occasionally taunted by and snapping at the Kittiwakes. Makes me think of the relationship between humans and mosquitos. But seriously, how bold the Kittiwakes were to behave in this way.

When the eagle flew away I trailed it with my eyes excited when it revealed the location of its nest. Others standing nearby, who I’d not noticed before, turned to me sharing a similar excitement – an eagle’s nest, how cool is that we all said. And really, unless you’re from Alaska and see eagles all the time, it is a treat. Now it’s a joyful secret. Only those of us there to witness the flight know there’s a nest in the radio tower, a tower, as it turns out, that bordered our campground, less than 200 yards from our campsite. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the nest once I knew its location. There were two babies in the nest, maybe 7 weeks old judging by their behavior. One of the parent’s vigilantly perched on a nearby crane for hours on end. The eagle was there when I walked in the morning, again when we returned from our visit to Anchor Point, and later that evening after dinner. A lesson in patience for us humans. The other parent showed up in the evening. I was out with my camera when I heard a ruckus overhead. I swung the camera up hoping to catch the eagle, noting it had food in its talons as it flew by and a screaming Kittiwake on its tail. Later, after downloading the photos, I zoomed in, curious about the meal. Despite the photo being terribly out of focus there are enough visible features to know the animal in its talons was a Kittiwake.

These birds are not neighbors who simply annoy each other, the Kittiwake is a meal. Even more interesting, the eagle we watched on the railing could’ve taken one of the more annoying Kittiwakes out, yet it did not leading me to believe they kill only out of necessity. Still, when it does, it’s traumatic. The Kittiwake chasing the Eagle was attempting a rescue or expressing anger and loss. The scene on the railing took on a whole new meaning after that. The Kittwakes are keeping watch.

There are tidelands between the Spit and town proper, one side bordering the main road and another the beach. We saw two Sandhill Cranes near the road when out driving, bachelors as it turns out, and later when we walked through the tidelands a family. I’ve never seen a Sandhill Crane, but I know of them from a book I read many years ago. One of those that stays with you, in this case because how beautifully the author described the cranes migratory stopover along the Platte River in Nebraska. Why do I bring this up? I’m reading a book by the same author right now, this one about trees.

Oregonians moved in next to us our second day on the Spit. They’re from Grants Pass, a town Mark’s parent’s lived in from 1978 to mid-80s. You may recall that our campground neighbor in Lake Shasta played football with Mark’s brother, who graduated high school in Grants Pass. Well these neighbors have friends in common with Mark. They asked Mark to provide them with information they could share with the mutual friend upon their return. Funny how you have to travel 6000 miles for these connections.

Yesterday we broke camp and started heading back up the peninsula to Anchorage where we veer off for our next coastal stop – Valdez. There was so much we missed on the Peninsula that we’re already planning a comeback trip – fly to Anchorage, rent an RV, travel back to Homer to do the things we originally intended to do, visit the other side of the peninsula – Seward and the Fjords National Park – and take a trip a woman on our Denali bus tour told us about – Katmai National Park where we can see bear catch Salmon that are jumping out of the waters.

Fires are better, but not out. We saw patches of smoke from active burn areas yesterday while driving. Rain continues on and off and we continue to be plagued by the leak in my closet, though we’re not so sure it’s a leak now because Mark has caulked everything there is to caulk. There is heavy condensation on the windows when it rains, so the new theory is that there is condensation on the vinyl wall covering as well and when it drips down it dampens the floor of the closet. Inadequate insulation? At this point we’re just shrugging our shoulders and living out of one closet, unless it’s sunny, in which case, we use both.

Our next major milestone…….home.