July 6-10 - Homer and on to Seward

 July 6 - Another settling in day.  Time to do laundry and just relax.  In the afternoon we took the girls and went for a walk.  We were told to see the eagles in their nest. 

This mother eagle had two little ones. 

We continued our walk and went to the Cosmic Restaurant for a beer.  A nice relaxed day.

July 7 -  Days become a blur.  We drove to the Homer Spit just to look around and did some grocery shopping at Safeway.  Always at 4:00 pm Jane and Roger and Gloria met at our place for cocktails.  Gloria said she had some tapes from the days she was a musician.  We decided Friday night would be a good night to hear a few songs.

July 8 - Gloria and Roger had to leave at 6:00 am for their halibut trip  - that was a success.  Roger gave Gloria his two halibut ( the limit per person).  We took Gloria's Lexie and drove out to the Homer spit.  (She is a spitting image of our Lexie at that age.) Then we took all three girls for a walk.  Walked by a lake lined with float planes behind houses. We decided we'd get a take-out dinner from the Cosmic Restaurant.  I had halibut and chips, Gary had a burger. Very good!

Gloria fishing - Roger was taking pics so none of him.

July 9 - We took a ride out East End Road.  We could look down and see Homer and the Spit - fabulous views.   Late afternoon we all went to The Salty Dawg on the Spit for a drink. 

Gloria and Gary

Gloria wanted to take us to dinner.  We went to the Sourdough Express - excellent! 

Tomorrow is our big day halibut fishing. 

July 10 - Up at 5:30 for a 6:30 departure.  When we got there we found the office had overbooked them so there were 3 extra fisher persons on the boat - 19 in all plus crew.  It took about an hour to get out to their fishing hole.  Being the "old" one they put me on the back of the boat.  I reeled in so many fish by noon I was absolutely exhausted.  A few were cod but they were large and we couldn't keep them because they have worms.  When I pulled in the second nice halibut I said, I'll keep it and quit for the day.  It was very exhausting.  In order for everyone to get their 2 fish we were out until around 6:00 PM.  We were so tired. 

Six of us on the boat were from Colorado.  One girl was a Senior at UNC - Greeley.  Another guy was a math teach at Cherry Creek H.S.  His girlfriend came out in a light shirt and jacket and sandals. She was freezing.  I had on my down jackets, gloves, rain pants, and heavy shoes.  I felt so sorry for her.

If you fished too close to the bottom you got skates.  Halibut's eyes are on top of their head so you had to have your bait 2 to 3 feet above the bottom.

Our Captain - a very young but great crew.

Two of our fish.  I didn't want to hold mine because I didn't want to get my jacket dirty.

Cleaning our fish.

We had about 30 lbs of fillets.  We had one for dinner tonight - fried - and it was excellent.  Our freezer is full so we are going to have to eat lots of fish before we start catching salmon.

Jane and Roger kept the girls.  They said Lexie really missed us. We are oh so tired.  Early bedtime.

July 10 - Today we drove to Seward and are staying in a city campground by Resurrection Bay.  The people beside us are from Loveland.  I swear half of Colorado is up here.   There was a cruise ship in the dock that just left. 

Don't know yet what tomorrow will bring. We made reservations for Tuesday to take an all-day trip into the Kenai fjords.