I’m starting to think this sounds like a really boring trip. Truthfully, I am super relieved we have not had any real problems. But PROBLEMS make for funny stories. I feel like there aren’t any funny stories… but I must soldier on. But you, dear reader don’t have to. Don’t think you HAVE to read these!
Now that we’ve got that out of the way…
It rained all night and was still raining when we got up. *oh my GOSH* But not to worry: weatherman Dave had a plan. Laundry and showers in Homer. That (necessary) diversion would easily kill a couple hours and give the weather time to burn off. I must say: he has been UNCANNILY accurate in his forecasts…
It took us about 45 minute to get to Homer. The laundry/shower spot was very nice. Funny, how that has become a thing: “WOW… nice laundromat! Let’s look at the showers!” I find myself wondering if Minnesota has anything like these, that have become islands of respite… I don’t think so. I don’t think Colorado does either. They should. My experience with laundromats at home is gross. They are dirty, the machines are gross, there is no one on-site to make sure people are behaving. In Alaska there is always a staff. And they do laundry if you drop it off for a reasonable price. Help me out: does this exist in the lower 48? Am I just blind?
Anyway, the woman in charge was friendly, but also seriously scary. That’s probably why it was nice; no one would mess with her. I know WE weren’t gonna mess with her. She followed us around after we paid for our showers asking us when we were going in so she could start our timer. She was intimidating.
I was so worried that after I finished blow-drying my hair, I crawled around on my hands and knees picking up any random hairs on the floor. I don’t even do that in my own bathroom! I guess you could say she is good at her job.
We took a spin down the Homer Spit (a long, narrow land mass that juts out into the bay) to the ferry depot to check out things out for our trip that evening. We dropped the camper off at long-term parking, since it is not making the trip on the ferry with us (*sob*). Since the wind had picked up a bit and the sun had come out (thank you, Weatherman Dave), we unfurled the awning to let it dry out before we locked our baby up and set about exploring Homer.
Homer Spit is tourist central. A veritable carnival. We figured we’d check it out later and proceeded back onto the mainland to see Old Homer — which was very quaint and cute. We walked the beach and visited a VERY cool used bookstore. The oldest book they had was from 1640! They also had this INSANE old bible from 1817. $5000 seemed a bargain. I kind of wish I had asked him if I could look at it.
We boogied back to the Spit, parked and walked the docks looking at boats…
Visited some famous pub with dollar bills nailed all over… and landed at a restaurant that Dave had read had good fish’n chips. But it wasn’t open. So we waited next door at a taco spot where I ordered MY dinner of rockfish tacos and beer.
We caught up with friends on FaceTime over Dave’s fish’n chips and headed to the ferry.
…Where we waited almost 3 hours to board. THREE HOURS! I didn’t find out until the next day that the ferry was already running at least an hour late when we got there. Not sure why they didn’t tell us that, but the way it works is you park in a “staging area” and wait until you’re told to drive on board. People with vehicles are required to line up 2 hours ahead of the departure time. We got there a little ahead of that, being nervous newbies. We asked the guy in charge (the Purser) if it was possible to be loaded last (with the idea we’d be first off), as we were scheduled to halibut fish the next morning when the ferry was scheduled to arrive in Kodiak. He was super nice and said he’d do what he could and told us to “hide” in a certain area and to wait until he called us over.
It was a super interesting process. During the long wait, we met some New Zealanders who had recently flown here and bought a vintage 1978 Toyota Chinook camper. Super cool. Glad it’s not mine, but still super cool.
Anyway… after what seemed like forever, the Purser came over and said we had to get in line and “hope for the best.” About 60% of the vehicles had loaded by that point, so we were hopeful we’d be near the front.
We got picked out of line almost right after that. Each vehicle has a ticket on it which lists the exact length. They try to put cars in pairs that don’t exceed 40’ and load them two at a time. As luck would have it, we got plucked out of the back of the line and loaded onto the ferry with a pickup — and unloaded on the car deck into the literal back of the bus. Unbelievable.
We grabbed our stuff and headed up to the decks, put our stuff in our “stateroom” and went outside to watch the rest of the loading. It took FOREVER – probably another hour. We watched for about 30 minutes before getting bored and starting to move away. And right about that time (this is now about 4 hours after we were first in line) was when the NON-NERVOUS NON-NEWBIES started to show up. There were probably 4 more cars that drove up right as the last cars were being queued up to load like they owned the place, waited about 15 total minutes and ended up right in front on the car deck.
oh the KARMA!
It was super late by the time we left the dock, but we stayed up and watched the moon rise until we were out of Kachemak Bay and into the bigger sea. Dave had taken a couple sea sick pills just to be safe and was glad he did, as he started feeling a little yuck-o about the time we went to bed and things got much more wild through the night — though we were later told it really wasn’t that bad.
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