Four Days in Alaska 2023 – Homer and Seward

To go all the way to Alaska and not see as much as possible would have been silly. We only had four extra days before we headed to Bear Trail Lodge, so we resolved to see as much as we could in Homer and Seward.

Check out how much we crammed in, and be sure to watch the video so you can get the full essence of how much fun we had. I hope it convinces you to go on your own or – better yet – join us next time (we are thinking summer of 2025).

Thursday July 27, 2023

Up at 4 am to shower as we had a long day ahead of us. The Uber to the airport got us there in plenty of time for our 6:30 am flight to Chicago (ORD) to meet our connection to Anchorage.

At the airport, we met up with two of our travel companions, Lisa and Carl Vicars, and grabbed breakfast before getting on the 6+ hour ORD–ANC flight. Make sure you always bring snacks – O’Hare was super-busy and the store-bought breakfast options were slim to none.

After an uneventful flight, we arrived in Anchorage, picked up our rental car (fill the car up before dropping it back off and if you have insurance don’t take theirs) and decided to forgive our hunger pains and get on the way toward Homer.

First stop, Beluga Point, 6.5 miles south of the Anchorage city limits, where the namesake whales are most often seen mid-July through August. Unfortunately, we didn’t spot any whales but we knew our wildlife sightings for other species wouldn’t disappoint so we moved on – WE WERE HUNGRY.

St. Elias Brewing Co. was highly-recommended when rolling through Soldotna, AK, so we stopped for a heavy meal and some fun beverages. Our tummies were fully satisfied, and we had the GPS set for the geographical landmark, on the southern tip of the Kenai Peninsula, the Homer Spit. More about what we did at the spit during tomorrow's adventures.

There’s a Safeway right on the Sterling Highway, the main road in the town of Homer. It also features a fully-stocked liquor store in case you needed a night cap. We picked up lunch and snacks for the next day’s adventures.

We laid our head down for two nights at the Beluga Lake Lodge. Accommodations were adequate and inexpensive by Alaskan standards. The room décor hadn’t been updated for a very long time, but the room was clean, had a refrigerator and microwave and was between the middle of town and the spit. We weren’t there to hang out and for the price I would recommend staying there.

We didn’t have the chance to eat there but the newly remodeled Beluga Bar & Grill, attached to the lodge, gets decent reviews and couldn’t be any more convenient.

Friday July 28, 2023

You can sleep when you die – so we got up and did our morning routine and headed to the Spit to get breakfast. Pete and Carl strongly recommend the breakfast sandwiches at La Baleine Café. They had a full menu of food and beverages (free coffee with a meal) with inside and outside tables to eat but it seemed most did grab and go.

Our adventure for the morning was a half day kayak tour with Go With The Flow Kachemak Bay Adventures.

“NOTE: You can book online, but I had questions (surprise surprise) so I called, and I am glad I did. I was told that going early was typically better as the weather moves in many times by the afternoon sessions and it’s not as pleasurable a trip and/or they get cancelled. Also, no experience necessary!”

We packed up our dry bags and took a water taxi to Gull Island where we picked up our two person kayaks and paddled the Kachemak Bay, while seeing phenomenal scenery and spectacular wildlife all while getting a live tour from amazing instructors who could double as professional naturalists.

I’m not sure what the full day excursion had to offer but the half day was certainly enough to wet our whistle.

Speaking of wetting your whistle, after our return to land we headed over to the famous Salty Dawg Saloon. Pete had been here 30 years prior, and he said it looks exactly the same, inside and out. It’s customary to sign a dollar and pin it to the wall, wherever you can find a spot. I read that this started many years ago, when a visitor tacked a dollar on the wall, explaining that his friend would be by later. The dollar was intended for buying the friend a drink.

It was early afternoon and the kayaking exertion made us hungry, so we decided to have “linner” (the meal after lunch and before dinner). I’m pretty sure any place we chose would have been appetizing (it’s hard to find a bad meal up there). We selected Harbor Grill Seafood & Steak and it didn’t disappoint.

We headed back to the Beluga Point Lodge to relax (I twiddled my thumbs; I can’t relax, but in a group situation you do what the majority wants) and then back to the Spit for ice cream and shopping.

Saturday July 29, 2023

Up and at ‘em, saying goodbye to Homer and driving to Seward today.

The ice cream dinner wore off and we were all famished. The Catch in Soldotna provided way more than we needed but we all joined the empty plate club. Don’t miss their huge portions going into or out of town.

The Milepost suggested we stop in Ninilchik at the Russian Orthodox Our Lord Church, along the Sterling Highway. There are two cemeteries next to the church, one for veterans. It’s quiet and very pretty with all the wildflowers in bloom. It sits on a bluff overlooking the town of Ninilchik and it’s worth a stop and a few pictures.

The drive to Seward was beautiful and Lisa and I saw a black bear cub almost run out into the highway. It was sooooooo cute.

The weather turned to rain. Although the Exit Glacier was our next stop, and we came prepared with rain gear, we decided to drive into town (Seward) and explore the Alaska Sealife Center, hoping the rain would blow through and we would backtrack.

The Sealife Center is a popular tourist attraction, especially for cruise ship patrons. It provides marine research and conservation for Alaska. The best part was we were able to touch some of the sea life in their displays. We saw a lot of fish, puffins, other birds and sea lions up close and personal.

I won’t lie, it was pricey and unless you are reading every plaque you won’t spend more than an hour or so inside. However, if you have time I would suggest going, especially if you have kids.

The rain became a mist and we decided to circle back to Exit Glacier – Kenai Fjords National Park.

After parking we walked a little more than a half mile on the Glacier Overlook Trail and we were able to see the exposed rock and the glacier itself. There are guided and self-guided tours but because of the weather the timing wasn’t in our favor -- next time.

On our way out of the park, I saw something moving in the distance. “Keep your eyes on the road, Hanna,” I thought. But how could I, a moose was grazing and walking on the side of the road? I stopped the car, everyone grabbed their phones and cameras and I opened the sunroof and shot video with my GoPro. I know these are like deer to citizens of Alaska, but we are from the east coast. This was out-of-my-mind-exciting. For me this was magic, I didn’t see one last time we were in Alaska, and this was my wish. I got my wish plus some as mama moose had her baby in tow. The baby was skittish, as you will see in the video, but mama must have been hungry because she didn’t pay any mind to us big dummies hanging out the windows, an arm’s length away, taking her picture.

I could have flown home that evening, because seeing my target animal made my trip. Little did I know what more was to come in the days ahead.

After all of that excitement, I needed to relax, so we headed back into Seward and checked into the Hotel Edgewater just two blocks from 3rd Avenue, the main drag in town.

Great timing, we met our other travel companions Jason and Douglas just in time for everyone to check in, clean up and all of us to go for drinks and dinner at The Highliner Restaurant – highly recommended but make a reservation. Be sure to get the blueberry ale.

After dinner, it was off to Safeway to get food and drinks for our all-day fishing excursion out of Resurrection Bay on the Gulf of Alaska.

Sunday July 30, 2023

We had a 5 am wakeup call so we could be ready for 5:45 am meetup at the Outer Coast Adventures out of slip K24 at the Seward Harbor. We were there for a multi-species fishing trip: halibut, salmon, rockfish, lingcod and more. We had a spectacular day with Captain Chuck, from Hawaii and Ricardo from San Diego. They helped us score a freezer full of fish. The ride out to catch salmon was a little brisk but the sunrise and scenery made it worth hanging out the window and taking pictures.

The water was nice and smooth, a really nice ride out to our first stop to fish for silver salmon, five per angler, ready-set-go. It took a short while to find the school but we each caught our limit and then off a little way to get to deeper water to catch halibut and other pelagic fish.

Halibut are bottom dwellers, so we had several baited lines around the boat, let out to about 250 feet. Then you watch them and wait for the rod to not just wiggle, but to bow over completely. That means the circle hook is embedded, so at that point you reeled as fast as you could. I wasn’t so sure what the fight would be like, but I was told that since I had reeled in an 80 pound yellowfin tuna this would be no problem. It required effort and a little bit of fitness, but I’d say it was a good opportunity for anglers of all ages and skill levels. The 2023 halibut regulations limits each angler to 2 halibut per day, one under 28 inches and one of any size. It took some time to limit out, but we were determined and we made it happen.

We caught other species of fish while waiting for the halibut to bite, including lingcod, black cod (aka sablefish), pink salmon, yellowtail rockfish and some sort of mackerel.

Captain Chuck timed the day perfectly so we could make it back in time in order for each of us to catch our limit of rockfish. The limit was three per angler, which was no problem. The question was who would be the first to finish. You would lower your jig down to a count of five and jig your bait up and to be honest I think I caught my limit in an equal number of casts – that’s how productive his spot was. Not to call you out Douglas but it seemed the final fish of the groups limit took you as long as the rest of them combined.

The thrills didn’t stop there. On our ride back we were surrounded by “baby orcas,” and they gave us quite a show. Then we stopped to see sea lions on Lowell Point but for me watching the mate fillet all the fish we caught was just as enjoyable.

Once back at the dock we had our filleted fish separated into like kinds, put in garbage bags and wheelbarrowed to the J-Dock Fishing Co. The bags were weighed, we split the different fish three ways and J-Dock vacuum packed, froze and shipped the fish directly to our houses. Our freezers were filled long before we were finished with our vacation.

What a day, what an experience, for some it was the first time they had ever fished before. For me that made this day even more gratifying.

We made the long four-minute drive back to the hotel to wash up and head back to the harbor to eat dinner at Chinooks Restaurant. We had a table looking out on the heart of the harbor. Most of us ate salmon and halibut -- we couldn’t eat what we’d caught that day, but we knew what we were eating was just as fresh.

A great day had an even better ending -- we all went out for ice cream and headed back to pack up as we were headed back to Anchorage in the morning.

Monday July 31, 2023

Although we weren’t fishing today, agreeing on a departure time with some non-fisher people was quite a debate. In the end, we were on the road by 8 am. Good job, Jason!

We stopped to get some breakfast sandwiches and coffee on our way to our next destination, the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center – Animal Sanctuary. It was like going to the zoo but it was nice to know that these animals who were either injured or orphaned are now provided with roomy surroundings and will be rehabbed and then likely become permanent residents.

We saw musk ox, moose, reindeer, wood bison, fox, elk, eagles, porcupines and brown bears. We were so excited to see brown bears and hoped we would see more during the next part of our trip. Little did we know!

Lunch and a post office were critical next stops, so from the animal sanctuary we took a fifteen minute ride up Alaska-1 N to Girdwood where we found both. The food at Basecamp was really tasty and if you are ever in the area you should stop in for a quick and casual lunch.

Girdwood is about 45 minutes from the Anchorage airport and at this point we were pushing the limits of time as we still needed to get gas and return the rental cars. We had to stop at Beluga Point again as Jason and Douglas didn’t have the opportunity to do so on the front of their trip. No whale sightings, so pedal to the metal, gas fill up and airport or bust.

“NOTE: We were very worried about not getting the rental car back by the specified time and having to pay for an extra day at the exorbitant Alaska summertime rates. We called and were told we had a 30 minute grace period.”

We made it, a little late but that was ok as we were within the 30 minute grace period and our plane was delayed going to King Salmon. One flight a day and iffy weather means this happens all the time.

I hope that you enjoy the following video. It may be a little long but it was tough cramming four-and-a-half fun-filled days into 22 minutes.

If you have any questions and would like to book a trip next year or join us in 2025, please email us any time. If you want to go on your own, the links we shared should be a good starting point. Alternatively, we may go in a different direction on the next trip to see more of the Last Frontier. Of course, you can always go just to Bear Trail Lodge, but why limit yourself if you’re traveling all that way?