September 2007

Bears!!, Homer Alaska, In Search of a Home

Week Ending 1 Sep 2007

Bears - Our cancellation worked out well - the original company was still grounded on Tuesday and we lucked into spots with Emerald Air due to last minute cancellations. This is a husband-wife team who have been conducting tours for 13+ years and who really add a personal touch on their flights and bear viewing trips. The trip was WONDERFUL, with a great opportunity to see Brown (or grizzly) bears in their natural habitat. Our seaplane, with 8 passengers, flew for 90 minutes towards the snow-capped mountains of the Alaska Peninsula and landed on a small lake north of Katmai National Park. We hiked for several miles, and sat down for several intervals when we spotted bears on a stream or by a lake. We tried to be quiet and non-obtrusive and although the bears were aware of us they ignored us unless we moved in their direction. On the way back Ken, the pilot, circled Mt. Augustine to give everyone a close view and photo-op. Bob, as usual, was over-burdened with photographic gear but we returned after a tiring 8-hour day quite happy with the results. We experienced:

Four water takeoffs and landings, Judi's first!
Bears strolling down the beach.
Bears fishing for salmon and eating them.
Two bear families meeting and negotiating for territory.
Two bears meeting and playing, as if performing for us
A close-up fly-by of Mt Augustine, and active volcano.

Week Ending 8 Sep 2007

Offer on House - We bit the bullet and made an offer on what we called 'The Ridge House' below. It is a little bigger than we were planning to get but has a killer view and has 2 acres around it - ample for any moose that wants to visit. It also offers enough landscaping opportunities to fill many fingernails with plenty of dirt.

A Little About Homer - Since this may be our home for a while, we'll share some details although you can get more from www.city-data.com.

Population is about 4000 in the town and 8000 in the surrounding areas.
It is the warmest area of Alaska with summer highs near 70F, winter lows around 20F and 5' of snow.
Air is clean, views are beautiful and wilderness is a short drive away.
Summer daylight lasts 20 hours, and winter nights also last 20 hours - a land of extremes.
People are friendly, environmentally conscious, artistic, and many seem to have ties to the 'hippy' generation of the 60's

Offer Accepted - After a few back and forths with the sellers we have reached an agreement to buy a contemporary house on a ridge overlooking Kachemak Bay and the glaciers beyond. It offers plenty of living space and our only fear is that the exposed walls may require lots of gas to keep the interior warm - we'll see.

Week Ending 15 Sep 2007

Coast-walk - As part of our 'get acquainted' tactics we have decided to go to a few meetings of interest in town, and have found lots that interest us. One was a presentation about the local efforts to keep the beaches clean - and recruitment of volunteers. We signed on the dotted lines and were assigned a mile of beach on Homer Spit, a 4-mile protrusion that protects the southern approach to Kachemak Bay. We collected 100s of cans, bottles, cigarette butts, wire, nails, and assorted plastic stuff. All in all it wasn't too bad, probably because volunteers clean the beaches regularly.

Sustainable Homer - Later in the week we went to several meetings sponsored by the Homer Global Warming Task Force. In January 2007 the mayor, with great foresight, commissioned a task force to look at Global Warming, see how it would affect Homer and what the town should do about it. The task force has worked for 9 months so far and presented their findings, and then solicited input from the audience. It was a very interesting pair of evenings, followed by parties at the local organic restaurant, Sourdough Express, and the next day at a stunning house with one of the best views in town. In fact to show what a small town this is, the hostess placed her invitation in the newspaper and basically invited anyone in town who wanted to come! We will follow this effort and try to do our part in the effort to curb global warming. We will report more in our Eco-Living page.

House Inspection - One hurdle on the way to purchasing the house is to have it inspected - so Duke came down from Soldotna to do the deed. We spent a couple of hours peering in corners, turning on faucets and appliances, and generally trying to find problems. Duke earned his fee by identifying a leak that the owner will fix before we close on the house.

Burning Basket - As a takeoff on the Burning Man event in Nevada, local Homer residents have created their own - for the last 3 years an artistic basket has been burned. This week it was under construction as seen at left. Check back next week to see what happens!

Disk Crash - And since we had spare time on our hands, the fickle finger of fate intervened and caused Bob's computer to go belly up crying "UNMOUNTABLE BOOT VOLUME". Our options came down to:

Toshiba: "Bad disk, send us $435 and the PC and we'll repair it and throw the disk away"
CBL, a disk recovery service said: "Send us the hard drive and we may recover the data, and it will only set you back $500 to $2500, or maybe more"
The local Radio Shack franchise said "Leave it over the weekend and we'll we what we can do". We did, and $65 later we had all of our data and the disk still seems to work. No more drama!

7th Anniversary - As the planet reaches the autumn equinox we have the opportunity to celebrate another year of marriage - in this case our 7th. We had a wonderful dinner out at The Homestead, arguably the best in town as we reflected on our luck to celebrate our anniversaries in:

2000 - Marriage in Auckland, New Zealand
2001 - 1st in Singapore
2002 - 2nd in Phuket, Thailand
2003 - 3rd in Scotland
2004 - 4th in France
2005 - 5th in Ringwood, England
2006 - 5th in Majorca, Spain