A short Expedition on the Beluga Trail

After dinner, and before the Roes came up, we took a short walk on the Calvin and Coyle Trail that takes you to the Beluga Lake Overlook.

It was a pleasant woodland walk:

 with some nice meadows, in which we had hoped to see moose.

We looked and looked for moose.

We did see some huge plants

And we never saw Moose.

But we did see Squirrel.

An Expedition on the Homestead Trail outside of Homer.

The Homestead Trail is a pretty easy four mile hike just outside of Homer:

That is the route back.  I use Runkeeper to track my walks, and sometimes it forgets, so I have started cutting most hikes in two.

There are disadvantages of that, however, as if we get lost, it will not help us get back.

We prepared rigorously for this hike:

and we plotted our course carefully:

and were ready for wind or sun:

It turned out to be another beautiful day in Alaska

and stayed that way all day long.

We did not see many birds. Some Little Brown Jobs, and some birds that looked a lot like Robins.

Some of them were robins but this one:

was a Varied Thrush. Nice!

You can see that there is a lot of fireweed and other long weedy grasses that we had to walk through.

Doreen liked to go first through this, earning a new nickname, "Dew Catcher" as she cleared the dew off the grasses so I wouldn't have to get wet.

You can also see that there were s number of places where we had to walk through trees.

Doreen earned another nickname in these areas, "Spider Catcher" as she liked to go first and tear down all the spiderwebs that crossed the train. Sometimes she didn't get the high ones though. It wasn't nice when I had to walk into them with my face.

It was a beautiful walk through the meadows and the copses of trees.

We did see the eponymous homestead:

and the big payoff was at the top of the trail, that was setup as an overlook of Kachemak Bay:

We bought some nice new Nikon binoculars before we left Houston (10x25) and have been using them plenty.

Quite a place.

There were many plants that we didn't recognize on the route. Some with interesting berries:

and some that looked like little forests.

with my finger for scale:

We saw a baby bird on the way out, and were fussed at by the momma:

and caught the glimpse of a bald eagle (we have seen plenty already) as we got back to the cabin.

A Quick Expedition to Homer.

Alaska is so big that a five hour drive doesn't even come close to touching the scale of the place:

That little blue line between Anchorage and Homer was our route.

 We did see a train.

and some Dall Sheep. See it?

Now you see it.

The view from  the cabin deck was worth it, though.

An Expedition to the Independence Mine

We too a trip to the Independence Mine State Historical Park the day before yesterday with Josienne and the kids:

As close as that looks to Anchorage (which is at the top of the Cook Inlet) it is over an hour and a half drive away.

This was an old underground gold mine that was shut down in 1943 because gold was not (and still is not) an essential mineral for wartime production. A "Barbaric Relic" according to Keynes.

Because the mine is at 3,500' and there was really no easy way to salvage the equipment and buildings, most of the stuff is  still there.

You can see the old prime mover diesel engine, which no doubt powered an electric generator:

The site is, of course, spectacular. It is Alaska!

They recreated some of the living quarters:

That was a manager's house. The miners lived in bunk houses.

They also had a gravity powered air tram that the used to bring the ore down from the mine:

And a rail road that looked like it should be in a Bugs Bunny cartoon:

This is the frame for thee tram:

Amazing views down the valley:

You can see some of the tailings piles in the distance here:

And that railroad. It gave me the willies just to look at it.

They dug a "water tunnel" that the miners used to get to the stopes, saving them a 22 story climb:

Most of the wood structures were falling down: (but Doreen didn't care!)

Here is the old mine train. It included a Gardner Denver mucking car:

and Ore cars, which turned into Kid Cars:

There is a ground squirrel in this image:

Quite a place.

And a good time was had by all. (well, except for one little girl in the corner)

Yes, a good time was had by all.