A picture showing where Homer is in relation to Anchorage. Our plan was to take a water taxi across Kachemak Bay to Kachemak Bay State Park (see yellow diamond on map) and do some hiking. I had hoped to head across the bay to the small village of Seldov

Boats in the Homer harbor.

Homer has a long narrow 'spit' that juts out into the bay (see second map below). This spit is where the harbor is, as well as where all fishing charters, water taxis, and quaint little tourist traps are.

Since we couldn't get to Seldovia on Friday, we opted to camp Friday night on the spit. The beach makes a nice place to camp and it is very popular (a bit crowded). You can see the Augustine Volcano in the background.

I spent quite a bit of time on the beach playing with the features on the camera. I like this shot for some reason.

Sunset from the beach.

The next day we took a water taxi across the bay to hike. On the way we saw this little fellow (an otter) who was in no hurry to get away from us.

Again the zoom on my new camera comes in handy.

We set up camp on the beach (yellow diamond) and then set off on a hike on the Grewingk Glacier trail. The trail is in red on the map. This trail was probably my least favorite hike in Alaska so far. Look at the elevation profile on the map - it is com

Also on the Grewingk Glacier trail was a tram across a river. You know how these trams can be pretty fun? Well, this one is not. It requires a lot more effort to move the thing than it should. You can only go across one at a time because the other per

You do get a decent view from the high point of the trail, but it doesn't redeem the rest of the trail.

This is the view at the end of the trail. Pretty cool if you've never seen a glacier, but it didn't excite us after three hours on a boring trail (Do I sound like a real Alaskan yet?). Next time we'll try the Emerald Lake trail or Alpine Ridge trail ins

On Saturday night, we camped on the beach and had a black bear visit our campsite. He ran away as soon as we made noise, but it was kind of exciting none the less. The next day we did a short hike to near side of Grewingk Lake (blue route). This hike,

Icebergs in Grewingk Lake

We were short on drinking water, and the lake water is very silty, so we tried picking up ice chips and letting them melt in our water bottle. We treated the water after it melted, but we made it back to civilization before we needed to drink it.