July 1 was our 9th Anniversary, and we got up early in the morning to drive to Homer. Jared had a business meeting in the morning, then we ate at Sourdough Bakery (same as last time – delish), and headed to our boat for halibut fishing. My dad came with us and it was his first time halibut fishing.
The day looked ominous and we were really scared about getting sea sick, so we headed straight to the store to get medicine. My brother-in-law, Doug, is a pharmacist and let us know how much Halle could have. I did not want her first experience to be throwing up off the back of the boat. It actually stopped raining just in time and didn’t rain the entire time we were out until the last few moments.
That out there is the Homer Spit where all of the halibut fishing charters boat out of.
Our small hope for blue sky:
We get so excited to see the eagles. There are a lot of them in Homer. It seemed like the bad weather was keeping them away though. We didn’t see as many as 3 years ago, but we still saw quite a few hanging out in the trees. See those 2 on the top of those trees?
This one was on top of a building that we could drive right up to. We were really close. Beautiful.
Our boat, the Jackpot.
This is Daisy, a dog of one of the crew members. I actually couldn’t remember her name, so I just asked Halle and she had no trouble remembering. She was so attached. It was really sweet.
As we were approaching the fishing grounds (it took about 90 minutes of driving), Halle fell asleep.
This is a crew member reeling in her fish and her helping (or not so much).
Halle’s first catch! And technically her last. She was not thrilled, and chose to stay with Daisy the entire time. I think the massive fish slaughter was not thrilling. We had a random guy fishing for us, then Jared and I took turns. I think that’s probably illegal, but we tried to make sure she was always there once we thought we had a fish.
Two handsome men, my daddy and my hubby.
This guy in the camo caught an octopus!! The captain was really mad he wasn’t fishing right and broke the pole (a $75 fee), but once the octopus came out the captain calmed down. They ended up cutting it up and using it for bait the rest of the trip. Poor octopus. It wrapped its tentacles around one crew member’s neck, and he looked like he had a ton of hickies. As they cut it up they would attach tentacles to people’s coats so they looked like they had tails.
The captain was so great. The good fishing just stopped. We went to three or four areas to catch three final fish. They guarantee you’ll take home two, and someone else, my dad, and Halle were short one fish. Eventually it came to just Halle being short a fish. Myself and multiple crew members were all fishing for that ONE fish.
I finally caught one for her!
Jared likes taking ugly pictures for me, but it is exhausting reeling in these things from the ocean floor. You can tell the rain and humidity did not bode well for my hair.
Jared’s catch:
My catch: (I think mine were the biggest!)
Dad’s catch: (His were by far the absolute smallest.)
NOT Halle’s catch, but she refused to get near all of the fish, so we took a picture with two random crew member fish.
All that reeling made me exhausted.
Then comes the worst part. The crew guts your fish and such, but then you have to filet it to freeze pack it. Technically we could have had it all done for us, but it would have cost $200, plus another $200 to ship it since we weren’t willing to stay around for 8 hours waiting for it to be done. Erin has the vacuum pack sealing machine.
The fish we were going to eat the next day:
The fish we packed:
July 2 was my mom’s birthday. The kids played outside, Erin made cheesecake, we ate halibut, it was great. And we also made tie-dye shirts, which I have no pictures of since my hands were red and blue.
(That would be a 59 with candles.)
July 3 we drove to Seward where the next day Erin would be running Mount Marathon. Jared and I had an anniversary dinner since we didn’t exactly have alone time on our anniversary.
Calamari yum!
Had we known the calzone would be bigger than Jared’s head we probably would have shared.
We spent the night in Seward, and July 4 while Erin ran Mount Marathon (look it up, people die, I was scared for her) we went on a Kenai Fjord tour. We took SO many pictures I’ll try to narrow it down. Pictures do not do Alaska justice. This was simply incredible.
Waterfalls everywhere!
More bald eagles.
When we started seeing chunks of ice in the water we knew we were getting close to the glacier.
It looks white, but it was SO blue. Everyone needs to see one of these.
Sea otters:
A piece of the glacier:
The glacier was incredible. We could hear it creaking and moaning. There was a cave in it, and chunks were falling in the water, and you just knew that any moment something amazing was going to happen. And it did. The cave collapsed, HUGE chunks fell in the water and made big waves. It was such a site and luckily we got it on video.
Sea lions:
That’s the back of a whale:
You have to click on this picture to enlarge it. See the little tiny people? We got back from our tour in time to watch the men’s race. Two men beat the 30 year old record and made it up and back down in 41 minutes. Yes, 41. All the way up that mountain. It’s shale, so it’s not exactly stable ground like the mountain hiking paths we’re used to. I’m so proud of Erin for doing this race.
There was this huge pond of lily pads.
That night we drove to Anchorage to stay the night to catch our flight in the morning. Sadly I forgot my Chi straightener in the hotel, and after calling 3 days in a row it was nowhere to be found. Hence, my mess of hair on the flight.
It was a wonderful trip. Next I’d like to go in the winter and see the Northern Lights. Supposedly this is supposed to be a great winter for them, so if we can catch a flight at a good price hopefully we can head back.
