We had been on the go since we arrived in Alaska, four days earlier. The plan was to have an easy relaxing day around Anchorage, which included attending our church’s temple in the morning. Not all days go as planned and sometimes you just go where the wind blows you. We had rented a pickup for the day and laughed at the fish odor fee in the contract…only in Alaska.

Our hotel was an older place, but very comfortable. When we pulled in, I said half the hotel is burnt from a fire”. Jim said, “Yeah, I knew that, but I got a great deal and extra credit card points”. Jim was able to take a picture from our float plane the day before. He never ceases to surprise me!!

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Anchorage temple is a beautiful building. We wanted to go there as it is slated to be moved to a different location in the next 2 years.

So after spending several hours at the temple, we were hungry. We changed our clothes and then typed in best Guy Fieri Triple D locations in Anchorage. We settled on Waffles and Whatnot.

We met the owner, who was very friendly, funny, and accommodating with great food suggestions. She even came and sat at our table. The food was amazing…like lick the plate amazing!!

During lunch we came up with our exploration plan. We had been to Anchorage in 2017 and had driven down to Seward. So we decided we needed to head to Homer. It is only an 8 hour round trip LOL.

On the drive down, we had great views of Turnagain Arm, just south of Anchorage.

The weather finally cooperated and we had sunshine as drove on Alaska 1 South. We stopped to take in the views across Cook Inlet.

An Alaska “pedestrian

A view of Cook Inlet and the Homer Spit, which is a strip of land that extends into the water.

People will ask where we have been in Alaska and they always say have you been to Homer, now we can say we have. After Anchorage, we are flying to Petersburg to enjoy a few days at a fishing lodge. So Jim did say, “why are we going to Point Baker to fish for halibut, we should fish here” lol…the fishing lodge is managed by our daughter and son-in-law.

The Spit is separate from the town of Homer. There are numerous campgrounds on the beach of the Spit, and every one was full. A combination of the up-coming 4th of July holiday week-end and the halibut fishing was good.

If you are the halibut capital of the world, you might as well embrace it with a sign.  The Spit has lots of shops and restaurants with a party atmosphere and a husband bench.

We drove to the end of the Spit, which has an appropriate name.

It was just before sunset, so we walked the beach. It is abit rocky, but you still have to create a heart, it’s required!!

The purple Lupine along the Spit were absolutely beautiful…

We were too late to eat dinner on the Spit, so we stopped for roadside barbecue from these two young men. They were just closing and had two meals left. Open-faced pork sandwich, grilled corn, and smoked chicken wings. It was excellent.

Our final view of the Homer Spit

Being the end of June in Alaska, we had a sunset glow until almost midnight. The costal mountains of the Upper Aleutian chain are around 2000 feet tall. To the far left is the base of Redoubt Volcano. It last erupted in 2009 and stands at 10,197 feet. It was kind of cool that we flew to Lake Clark the day before.

Next stop in Alaska is Point Baker and Calder Mountain Fishing Lodge.