Day 18 - Whittier, AK to Homer, AK

Holy campfires, Batman! The wildfires at Swan Lake (northeast of Soldotna) sure put a haze and a smell in the air today. When we got up, you could almost taste the smoke in the air and the winds were just a’howling! But, as soon as we crossed the Anton Anderson Tunnel, the winds were calm as could be, so off we headed along the Portage Glacier Rd to meet up with the Seward Highway.

We then continued on the Seward Highway at the split with the Sterling Hwy (AK9 and AK1) and really got into some quite heavy smoke, until just outside of Seward where the skies were clear and blue. We parked the vehicles and walked to the Highliner Restaurant for a late breakfast, followed by a walk down to the foot of Ressurection Bay and the statue in honour of Mile 0 of the Iditarod.

After fueling up, we headed back up the Seward, through Moose

Pass, and on to the junction with the Sterling Highway. There were smoke warnings all over the place, but eventually, after we passed some actual fire zones right around Sterling, the skies were blue again. I thought we would make a stop in at the Kenai Peninsula HD shop, but as it turns out, they are closed on Mondays, so we will have to get to it on the return trip tomorrow. However, that gave us the chance to go across the road to get an ice cream – and to check out some wood carving work done by one of the locals, and it was quite amazing.

From there, we took a short detour to Kenai and the Leif Hansen Memorial Park to get a photo – this is where Dan and Janet (fellow riders from Tennessee) were married a few years ago. We then continued on south to the old town of Ninilchik to check out some of the Russian influence on this part of the state. After a walk about town, and then over to see the Orthodox church and cemetery, we headed down to the port town of Homer, to our destination for the night, the Beluga Lake Lodge.

After getting settled into the rooms, we then drove on into the Homer Spit to check out the Salty Dawg Salloon, where we sat out on the patio, in the sunshine and listened to a trio playing some great music.

Dinner was across the road at the Boardwalk Fish & Chips – since Homer is the Halibut fishing capital of the world, of course, the Halibut had to be on the menu and it was delicious!

For the day, we logged just over 474 kms for a total to date on the trip of 9,140 km