Grandpa Comes Halibut Fishing

Back in August my dad came up for some halibut fishing and some other stuff. Here we are taking pictures of each other in Homer.

But we didn't actually go fishing in Homer, we left out of Ninilchik, a little town of a few hundred people. We drove down one afternoon and had dinner in Homer (where there's no shortage of good places to eat) and then back up to Ninilchik to stay the night at a little bed and breakfast where the well water smelled like Old Faithful. We got the shore bright and early on an uncommonly cold morning--our guide told us it was 38 degrees, which is really cold for August, even in Alaska. But it was clear and we could see Mt. Redoubt across the inlet, so we figured it would warm up quickly. Well the clouds rolled in as the sun came up, but it still warmed up pretty quickly.

There's no boat ramp in Ninilchik. Instead they have a modified bulldozer with every size of trailer hitch, so we all got on the boat (we were joined by four guys visiting from back east) and the bulldozer hitched up the boat trailer and pushed us into the water.

We drove for an hour until we got to the chosen fishing hole. Then we baited the lines and within just a few minutes I caught what would be the largest catch of the day. Here I am with the first mate and the fish.

We only fished for a few hours before all six of us on board had caught our limit of two halibut per person and we turned around and headed for shore.

Then for the rest of the week we kept closer to home. We went for a bike ride and saw the rock man.

We went up to Eklutna, where for some reason the water was high and had flooded the shoreline, so we got some fireweed ice cream.

We stopped at the Russian Orthodox church, where the local Eklutna tribe has the unique tradition of building "spirit houses" for the dead in their cemetery.

Then my dad went home, and I believe he had fun. This last picture I think we took the day after he left at the downtown weekend market. The girls can never let us pass one of these cutouts without taking a picture.