The Trip to Homer

Let me step back a bit and begin when Eric and I arrived in Anchorage. He came in first and made his way to the Spenard International Hostel. Then I arrived at around 10:30 p.m. AT. Not a bad place. We bunked with four other guys. Sheets were clean as was the bathroom. Met some great bicyclists in the morning at breakfast. One fellow was a retiree from Boeing having lived in Wash St. for over 30 years. He was originally from Fayetteville/Manlius. His father had a Ph.D. from SU and his son graduated from ESF in the late 90's. There was this biking team of 3 on a tour around AK. One of them was from Banff and it was good to chat about second home development and what it has done to his small village.

Saturday, July 14, morning Eric and I went to the House of Harley to do the paper work for the bikes. We were blown away with their beauty and we literally drooled over anticipating taking them out on our trip. The dealership was very accomodating. We went through a very poor orientation regarding the operation of the bikes, picked out some t-shirts, listened to biker war stories from the Sales Manager, Bob, and took off mid afternoon. By that time the sprinkling rain had given way to dull overcast. We made our way to Lou's buddy, Jon Tone's shop. Jon sells Hunter equpment and Mohawk and Rotary lifts like Total Tool and let us use his car, his shop and all his tools to get our new rides ready for the trip. We installed integrated brake/signal ligths, luggage racks, and a protective vinyl coating to the paint. Lou pulled in at mid-afternoon and after going out for a quick bite we continued working on the bikes until 1:00a.m. Sunday morning. Unfinished we gave up and decided to start again at 8 in the morning. We finished up and got on the road to Homer around 10 a.m.

Sunday morning was overcast in Anchorage was overcast and we started out with rainsuits. Two miles out of town riding along Turnagain Arm the sun broke out and we run in very good weather ever since. The road was well paved although there were acouple of sections of constructing. The bikes pulled like tractors and were very comfortable. We ran along the Kenai River. It's water is a milky, opaque turquoise blue and flows into Kenai Lake that also has the same color and opacity. The road runs right along the river and lake and was startling to see patches and glimpses of the pale blue down below us through the deep green of the forest vegetation. I felt right at home with the broad-leaved trees dominated by balsam poplar. There is paper birch and white spruce. The odor of the poplar was incredible as we road through mile after mile of its groves. The road gained elevation from sea level and went through some amazing twistys at the bottom of slopes so steep that we were amazed that vegetation could cloth them. There was much evidence of avalanches and landslides, with whole swaths of forest vegetation replaced by low growing sucessional species. We saw a cow moose at roadside and magpies and ravens.

We decided to stay in Soldotna so our ride back to Anch. on Monday wouldn't be so long as we had to be back to the dealer by 10 for the 1000 mile service. We got a motel in Soldotna and headed out for Homer. What a ride. About halfway be tween Soldatna and Homer we ran into dense fog blowing in from the coast on our right. Picture bright sun blasting through dense fog so that when you're in the fog it's not dark but incredibly light. It's what you might think heaven would look like. We broke out of the fog just before Homer and we stopped at a roadside viewing station overlooking the bay. ALthough it was clear above where we were the water was totally obscured by the fog. Across the bay were jagged, very high moutains with hanging glaciers in the valleys. We went down into Homer and drove out on the Spit where we watched folks fish for flounder and had dinner. We saw another moose on the way back to Soldotna. We really have to start controlling our urge to stay up as long as it is light out. I'm typing this outside on the porch of our cabin in Talkeetna by the ambient light at midnight. Very dangerous if you want to ride safely. I'm going in now. I'll try to catch up on today's activities tomorrow.

Dan