Kachemak Bay Kayaking Part 1

This was one of the best trips I have ever been on. The plan was to drive to Homer on Thursday, get a water taxi across the bay to Kachemak Bay State Park, kayak around Friday and Saturday, and then come back Sunday.

We arrived in Homer around 12:30pm on Thursday. Homer has a huge spit where all the boats are, and we cruised down to the dock to find the captain of our water taxi. When we got to his business hut, we were a little apprehensive about the quality of the kayaks. They were very small! Most of the sea kayaks are bigger and newer but these were old and in need of some repair. Because of this, we searched around for another outfitter that maybe had some kayaks to rent, but everyone was booked solid for Fourth of July. We ended up just biting the bullet and going with the original kayaks.

We figured we couldn't move around because not all our stuff would fit in the smaller kayaks, so we decided to camp on a beach and just kayak in different directions on Friday and Saturday. After we arrived, we set about finding a reliable water source, setting up camp, and exploring in the kayaks. We discovered that one of the kayaks had no working rudder! I decided to take this one and try my best to keep up with everyone else. It is very tiring without a rudder!

After exploring, I started a fire (one match style, baby!) and we sat around and talked and watched the sun start to set. Someone that was camping on the same beach came over excitedly and said they had seen on orca and wanted to know if we wanted to go and try to find it. Billy and I set out in the double kayak to find the orca. Unfortunately, we never found it, but we did see a big school of dolphins! It was really neat to hear them blow water out of their blow hole when they came up for air. It was really hard to get pictures of them because they would only come up to the surface for a second, and then stay under for minutes at a time. We watch the sun set from our kayaks.

The second day (Friday) we set out for Tutka Bay, which is a smaller bay off of Kachemak Bay. It was very pretty. I think the best part was this neat arch that we found that only had about 2.5 ft of space between the top and the water. We found that we could barely get the kayaks underneath if we leaned back really far, so we had fun taking turn going underneath. Along the way I got to see sea otters and porpoises just a few yards from our kayaks, as well as a lot of Bald Eagles overhead. We got back to camp after about 5 hours of paddling. I was completely shelled, so I layed out on the beach and to a long nap, and then woke up for a while to read a book. It was really nice just to relax and take time to get some good rest in. That night, we had another fire and ended up playing card games until about 2:00 am. It still wasn't dark.

I found it even harder to sleep while camping because you can't really black out the curtains in a tent. When I go camping, I usually go to bed when the sun goes down, and wake up when it comes up. In Alaska, I think I would get 2 hours of sleep doing this, so I had to quickly learn how to sleep in broad daylight.

Grilling Salmon over the fire. It was SO tasty!

Me in Tutka Bay. Picture still doesn't quite grasp the beauty.

Sunset while hunting for Orcas. This is now my wallpaper on my computer!