Alaska or Bust: Day 18 - Homer & Hiking in Kachemak Bay State Park (July 29)

Hiking in Kachemak Bay State Park

Today I wasn’t sure what I was going to do… Tom was going Halibut fishing since Homer is the Halibut capital of the world. I thought he could definitely catch enough for both of us (2 is the daily limit, usually at least 30 lbs of fish) and I wasn’t sure what we would do with an extra 30 lbs of it if I also went fishing. It was a gorgeous morning so I tried to book a kayak trip but just couldn’t get anything that fit, so I ended up going hiking. Kachemak State Park is stunning; there are many glaciers and many peaks above the tree line. It backs up to Lake Clark National Park but is only accessible by air or water.

The lady that helped me book my water taxi and suggested the hike said that the trails were used by a lot of people. Well, I did meet a lot of people on the water taxi that were with a hiking group called counrtywalkers.com. I need to look it up, but they were all very nice, mostly women and several were from Michigan. I really couldn’t tag along with them since they were paying for a guide, but I figured if I got eaten by a bear they would find me along the trail. I’ve never felt comfortable hiking alone and have only done it once before in Northern California in the Redwood National Park last summer but there were no bears there. I started hiking and was doing ok until I entered a densely forested area and had to walk over a couple of huge piles of bear scat, definitely bear scat – it was totally full of half digested berries! I figured if I started to sing I would probably attract the bears, they would want to attack to get me to stop, so I started hitting my hiking poles together. I felt like Christopher Robin in the hundred acre wood with his marching sticks. I counted 30 some piles of bear scat, mostly black bear judging by the size of it, but there was this one pizza sized pile that I’m guessing must have been from a grizzly, a big grizzly! I never thought in a million years that I’d become a bear scat aficionado!

The hike led to a glacial lake that was beautiful, the temperature dropped like 30 degrees once I approached it. There were ice floes all over the lake and I could hear the glacier calving. Some of the ice floes came near shore and I was able to grab them. The glacial ice was the most pure thing I have ever witnessed, well except for a newborn baby. It was the clearest, hardest ice… and it tasted so good!! It was absolutely crystal clear, and who knows when it was frozen???

The rest of my hike was unremarkable. I ended up on a beach and had to wait for nearly 2 hours for my water taxi back to Homer. It was too long, but not long enough to hike an additional trail so I hung out on this beautiful beach. A group of guys that had been backpacking were also waiting and one of them found out that I was a nurse. One of the guys in their group had sat on a thorn so guess what I was asked to do??? The question is, did I remove the thorn or didn’t I??

The water taxi was 35 minutes late and I was beginning to think that I was going to be forgotten on the beach but there was actually a park ranger also waiting for a ride back. so i figured I 'd be ok. It was a long day for both Tom and me. He caught his halibut so now half our freezer is full of fish :-)

Stay tuned for my next blog all about watching bears in Katmai National Park tomorrow!!

Kate