Homer and Kachemak Bay, First Visit in 1968, Part 2

The remaining drive to Homer proved uneventful. We marveled at the beautiful grassy meadows that topped the sloughing bluffs along the coast, at the sight of the Redoubt and Iliamna volcanoes standing tall across Cook Inlet. We were impressed by the giant fragments of ice floes that had been stranded on the mud flats by the receding tides, some the size of trucks.
We took the main drag, Pioneer Street, through downtown Homer because the by-pass swinging south of there didn‘t exist, so we did not see some major landmarks along that stretch - Alaska Island & Ocean Visitors Center, the Carrs/Safeway store, the U.S. Post Office, McDonalds - all lay in the future.

East End Road is a paved highway offering sweeping views of Kachemak Bay for most of the twenty plus miles it runs along the high ground overlooking the bay. It was not like that in 1968. The road disappeared in a mud rut a mile or two east of town. Wes and I did not explore that feature. Its “cow pasture” attribute was left for us to discover a couple years later.

We went straight through town and headed out the long, narrow sand bar known as the Homer Spit. The Spit is one of the longest in the world, stretching four and a half miles into the Bay. Its not very wide, sometimes no more than the road, and its elevation above sea level allows big storm waves to crest over it at some spots.

In 1968 the Spit could claim a few facilities: the small boat harbor; the Whitney-Fidalgo Cannery; a couple restaurants; the Alaska Ferry dock; and located at the very tip, Lands End Hotel - but not much more. There use to be more to the Spit, a copse of trees in one area for example, but the Good Friday Earthquake of 1964 lowered the whole region by about six feet, and a portion of it now resides in Neptune’s domain.

Four years had passed, but we could still see evidence of the quake’s reshaping of the land. There were buildings along Turnagain Arm, near Girdwood and Portage that sat on land now invaded by tidewater. Standing forests of dead trees offered further evidence. Some of the bridges on the highway were still doing temporary duty awaiting new construction.

It was a bit early in the season for the annual invasion of the “Spit Rats”. That is the term applied to the young, mainly college age summer adventurers that descended on the Spit every year. Many worked the cannery, some found fishing jobs. They camped in make-shift housing: tents, drift wood shelters, etc, wherever there was an unclaimed few feet on the Spit. By mid-summer the spit would be overrun with rat’s nests. It was a free-wheeling time, and when shrimp were present, the Ferry Dock would be loaded with people lowering homemade nets and then quickly raising them full of the wiggling crustaceans. An ice chest could be filled in an afternoon. You can’t even go out on the dock any more.

The Rats were driven from the Spit years ago, and it was gradually commercialized. Expensive condos now block the view of the far shore mountains, and there are numerous piers aligned along both sides, crowded with shops that offer a variety of products: tours of the bay, fishing charters, souvenirs, art, and food - everything that a tourist might covet. Some days, especially during high tide, when there are so many parked vehicles, and people milling around, one has the sensation it’s sinking.

Wes and I explored the Homer Spit, walked the docks looking at the fishing boats, ate dinner at the nearby Porpoise Room, and then started the long drive back to Anchorage.
THE END