NORTH TO ALASKA 2025 DAY 58 HOMER SPIT

We decided to head on down to Homer, Alaska. Yep, do that "tourist thing" by going all the way out on the Spit into the ocean, as far as we could go.

But first, we opted to pull into Deep Creek Rec Area to check it out, along the waters of the Cook Inlet. This is a heavily used fishing harbor where they pull the boats in and out with huge tractors with big balloon tires.

Down on one end as we were looping through the parking lot, we happened upon an eagle. It was sitting there on the log, making a funny screech sound. It was a different garbally sound than what we hear from most eagles in the past.

We aren't sure if it was a female calling out to her mate, or to her babies nearby. Maybe she was trying to distract us from a nest?

We stayed far enough away and used the long lens on my camera to capture photos. Then I happened to notice in the background there were a whole bunch of eagles lined up on the logs in the background!

They're all hanging out there in the same area. I'm not exactly sure why. Nobody was up and flying around or looking for the scraps from the fisherman? They were all just hanging out in that swampy area at the end of the parking lot. Very interesting.

We kept on driving down the Sterling Highway, going through small towns of Ninilchek and Anchor Point until we were reached Homer. 

The piece of land that extends way out from the end of Homer is called the Homer Spit. It's quite a tourist area. We normally don't do "touristy things"... but here we go.

I guess it was kind of a one-time-thing to say "Yep, we've been there". So we did it. See? We've been there!

And here's the proof, 

Our motorhome

 parked in front of the sign.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know we usually seek out the out-of-the-way, rustic, quiet country type campgrounds in natural surroundings. 

But every once in awhile, for our tourist status sake, will do something like this...

Here we are, the middle of Homer. We are at one of the Municipal Campgrounds owned by the city. This one is called Fishing Hole, the other one is called Mariner.  It's $30 just to park in their lot. If you want to use their dump station or potable water, that costs you even more on your way in or out of the campsites. There are no hookups at the sites themselves. 

We were lucky to pull up in one that faces right out over Katchemak Bay. What a beautiful view!

We had some really nice neighbors to one side, and the other side was an open area for people to walk down to access the beach. Right in front of us we had a picnic table and a fire ring. What more did we need?

We watched the tide go out and we soaked in the seaside views up and down the shoreline. It was really pretty and we were kind of glad that we did do a city campground to experience this location.

As the tide went out, we went down and walked along the shoreline. We actually found a jellyfish! I guess it's very common that they wash up on the shore here on Katchemak Bay. You don't dare touch them or try to fling them back out into the water. You can get stung! Plus, I looked it up and it said they rarely live after they've been out of water for any length of time. So throwing them back in, really doesn't save them.

We left it alone.

We made doubly sure that Nick left it alone too. We saw some others here and there as we walked around. It was kind of nice to see the shoreline slowly seep away as the tide went out.

Steve grabbed the binoculars and was checking out the ships out in the harbor. We went on the Marine Traffic website:

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-151.0/centery:59.8/zoom:7

and checked out what ships were there, what they were hauling, where they were going and where they were from. It's very interesting!

Our views right out of the front windshield were absolutely beautiful. It was kind of a nice chance to see something a little different.

I zoomed in on that ship just to see what it was carrying. It looks like great big huge propane tanks or they are tanker trailers to pull behind semi trucks? They look to be about the same size as the ConX boxes up above them.  The Mariner website really didn't detail the cargo on this particular one.

What we noticed about being on the Homer Spit was that although you were down at sea level, in every direction you look there were mountains everywhere. It was really amazing to see everything ringed by mountains but yet you were down level with the ocean.

What's even more amazing is this is getting towards the end of June.  There's still snow everywhere on the tops of these mountains!! I guess in my mind, the snow mostly melted in the summers. Maybe it takes another month or so? It sure was beautiful and added amazing contrast of the trees just below the snow line.

We watched some heavy clouds roll on in. I thought we were going to be due for a thunderstorm. But I guess not, the weather really changes quickly and moves along fast. I am sure that the downdrafts and the updrafts from the mountains have a lot to do with controlling the weather patterns. You'll see clouds ahead of you, then in a few moments later, you will see blue sky. It's very interesting. It must make it very difficult for the weatherman to predict anything!!

Like I said, the cloud formations change quickly. Soon all those heavy angry clouds rolled away and now we could see the soft streaks of clouds and the blue sky. It was clear over to the volcanoes up the other side of the Cook Inlet. 

We had some pretty noisy people move in next to us, across the opening out to the beach. They weren't too close, but they were close enough to hear the country music they were cranking out of their pickup truck--- with all of the doors open and all of the windows down! 

Then the grandma came over to use our picnic table with her grandson to paint rocks. There weren't any picnic tables over by them. I offered to them that they were more than welcome to take the table back to their own site. It was right out in the front of our motorhome. They said they didn't want to move the table, and they would use it right there??? We could hear every word they were saying through the vents on the front dash of our motorhome. They were only a matter of two or three feet away. That wasn't comfortable. So we took the dog, locked the doors, and went for a walk instead for the evening. 

Later on, they closed two of the doors of the truck blasting out the music...  but not the windows. It muffled the country music some. About an hour later they started up the truck and moved it to the other side of their camper. Thank goodness! It made it quieter for us. 

I wish people would understand that maybe people surrounding them might not have the same taste in music. We certainly didn't. I think if you can hear the music beyond your campsite, it's too loud. 

During the night, quite a few people fired up their generators. Then if their generator was running, their voices had to be louder to get over the sound of the running generator! 

So it was not that relaxing of a night for us. We heard a lot of noise of vehicles coming and going. A lot of generators. Car alarms. Door slamming. And people just having a good time. 

I guess that's why we enjoy our remote quiet natural campsites in the woods?

In the morning we woke up to see the tide was out and the area was exposed again in front of our campsite.

It sure had a form of rugged natural beauty, and we enjoyed seeing the secret underside of the ocean floor that only the fish usually get to see...

It didn't look like it was going to be a very sunny day. We had a few rain splatters here and there while we made breakfast. I think that was about it for our "tourist thing" for staying at the municipal campground. Time to start packing up.

We looked around, and most of the RVs had already left. The night before, this entire parking lot was packed solid with RVs of one sort or another.

We drove through the rough and bumpy lot as the city workers were there cleaning up the messes from the night before. All too soon, each little slot will now be filled up by a new tourist! 

We got road-worthy, and exited the campground. Of course we had not yet driven to the very tippy top end of the Homer Spit. So we had to do that now, didn't we? We didn't come all this way to not reach the tip.

This next section of Homer is all commercial, touristy, shops and restaurants and bars. There really wasn't anything we wanted to stop and look at, but we drove down among them just to reach the end of the Spit.

Many of the shops are built up high on stilts to withstand the onslaught of storms and high waves that sometimes can attack the area.

A lot of fishing tours and charter boats leave from this area, as well as commercial fisherman bringing in their catch to the local processing plants. It is known as the Halibut Capital of the World.

Some of these buildings are original structures, but others have been rebuilt time and again, after storms have wiped them out.

We were going to park the RV in some of the public parking access areas, like these two RVs did. Then we could get out and walk around. But the rain started drizzling and we figured we'd do best by just driving around, doing our geegawking out of the windshield instead.

This is the famous Salty Dog saloon. I guess everybody puts their dollar bills up on the ceiling with thumbtacks. It was 11:00 in the morning so we didn't think it would be open yet. Sure enough, we drove past when the door was open and people were in there already drinking. 

But we had some miles to drive today, so we didn't want to start out the day with alcohol. Especially at 11:00 in the morning?

We drove on past the Homer Ferry Terminal. We had originally thought about taking the ferry from Whittier over to Homer. That would have been quite an interesting trip but a bit too long for leaving Nicholas all alone in the motorhome down below deck. But it was nice to see where the ferry lands at the end of the spit.

And yes, we drove to the very end of 

The Homer Spit!

The sign said so!

Here is the YouTube that goes along with today's blog:

Now it was time to head back north, get off the Spit, through the rest of Homer, and back up the Kenai Peninsula.

Next we are headed to Skilak Lake. 

89 miles traveled today 

4,974 miles traveled so far

NORTH TO ALASKA 2025 BUDGET RECAP FOR JUNE

We have now been on the road for 61 days.  It is time to talk about the past 30 days of BUDGET!

Our last budget post for the first 31 days can be read here: 

https://kareninthewoods-kareninthewoods.blogspot.com/2025/06/north-to-alaska-2025-31-days-one-month.html

We get a lot of questions about what it costs to travel or what type of prices are we paying for things. Some people want to know how much things specifically cost in Alaska. Some people must imagine that we are mega-rich and can afford to just go willy-nilly all over the place. That isn't so. We stick to a pretty tight budget. So here are our numbers for the past 30 days...

FUEL 

$800 budget per month

$376.74 actually spent this month

$1,494.73 spent so far.

For fuel we are wayyyy under budget this month.  We had budgeted $4,000 for our total trip. Because we've done so much traveling in the first month, we expected to go over budget for the first 30 days. And we did.  But now for the month of June, we were way under that amount as we just traveled around within the state of Alaska and not such long distances.

We are averaging 14.7 miles per gallon with the diesel engine in our motorhome. 

Any time we pull up to a fuel station that's under $5 a gallon, we feel we're doing okay under budget. 

CAMPGROUNDS

$750 budget per month

$534 actually spent this month

$1,205 spent so far

We have done a variety of camping over the last 30 days. Some of the nights were free at campsites that do not collect a fee. 

We used our Federal America the Beautiful Senior Access Pass at many of the Chugach National Forest Campgrounds--- which gave us half-price camping. Many times we were only paying $9 to $11 per campsite.

Most of our camping is boondocking or rustic type camping without any hookups. We have solar, plus our Bluetti power station to supplement the coach batteries, and holding tanks for fresh and waste water.

Our entire campground budget over the trip is at $3,000 which comes out to approximately $25 a day. So anytime we find a place to camp under $25, or free, it helps our budget when we decide to splurge a little bit more on an expensive place.

GROCERIES 

$400 a month budget

$489.76 actually spent this month

$713.76 spent so far

Groceries is kind of a tough one because we literally cleared out our pantry and freezer and fridge before we left home. So for the first month we did use a lot of groceries that we had brought along with us. The only things we were picking up were fresh produce, milk, eggs, bread etc.

This month, we have picked up some meat items at a few places here and there. Especially when we splurged on the fresh salmon and halibut in Valdez! 

But again, it's hard to budget the food because right now at this given point I probably have 15 or 16 meals worth of meat in the freezer leading us into the third month. So it's kind of an ambiguous number. If we were at home we would be spending and shopping approximately the same way too. When you see a sale you stock up. You don't necessarily use it in that particular month. But with the extra baskets up overhead in our bunk holding additional dry goods and canned goods, we don't need to purchase all that much at the stores. 

The grocery store prices really didn't shock us on the types of things we buy. A few of the smaller mom and pop shops are higher in prices, but they have to because it cost them so much to have items transported to their shop. But all in all, it really isn't bad. We are still under budget for the first 2 months.

PROPANE

$118.93 actually spent this month

$128 spent last month

$246.93 spent so far

We really didn't budget for propane because we weren't sure of our actual usage. The biggest drain on the propane of course is the propane furnace. During the month of May we used the furnace more. Now during the month of June we used it less.  July and August it will probably be minimal. The propane is also used for our refrigerator, water heater, and our cooking stove and oven in the motorhome.  And for running the generator as needed. 

We started off with a full tank of propane so it's kind of hard to figure what we've actually paid in the first 2 months. Our motorhome has a large propane tank built in (13 gal / 55 lb) so it's not like we are refilling little barbecue tanks like some travel trailers or pickup campers use. 

Refilling propane at small fuel stations out in the middle of nowhere is going to be a higher price per liquid gallon then filling in a larger city at a bulk supplier. So again, this price is really going to vary depending on where we are when we need to be refilled.  You can't really shop around per price. You refill when you need it when it's available. We have paid between $2.50 and $4.15 a liquid gallon.

LAUNDROMAT

$60 budgeted

$28 actually spent this month

$67 spent so far

We have done laundry two times in the last 4 weeks. We really hate going to city/public laundromats. Mostly the ones we used are just the coin ops located at some of the campgrounds we have stopped at. We started out with $100 in rolled coins and we will see what we have at the end of the trip.

DUMP STATIONS

Nothing budgeted. 

$40 spent this month so far

For the first 30 days, we didn't pay any dump station fees anywhere that we were at. We were often at campgrounds with hookups due to the extremely cold weather. And they offered free dump and potable water as we entered or left the campsites. 

But now for this month, we've been staying at more rustic campgrounds and mostly in the National Forest. They don't include dump stations very often. 

So we did have to seek out dump stations in other places. This month we twice paid a $10 fee, once a $15 fee, and a $5 fee to take on fresh potable water.

ROADSIDE INSURANCE

Our American Family automobile policy for the motorhome has excellent roadside assistance and windshield glass breakage. In the past years with our other motorhome, we have had to make claims and never had a problem. We know it's great coverage. And we do carry it year-round so it really didn't add to our trip. We made sure in advance that we had out of the country coverage from our agent already included in our policy, and a special insurance card was mailed to us prior to leaving to show we do have coverage in Canada in case of an accident or a claim.

We did have a chip in the windshield earlier in the month, and it was repaired free of charge for us at Safelite in Wasilla. It was covered by our American Family Insurance.

But we did also purchase an additional policy from CoachNet. It is good for one year. It cost $249. Not only is it roadside assistance, which covers us also for tire changing, fuel replacement if we run out, locksmith, and of course towing. But in addition to that it also includes a medivac policy that if you are hospitalized and wish to return home they will transport you and your partner as well as have someone return your RV back to your home. So we felt it was good to pick this up as an additional coverage, just in case.

INTERNET/CELL PHONE

We really didn't have this in the budget because we already pay it whether we are home or on the road. Our cell phone plans are $25 for Steve's Visible phone, which gets boosted up to $40 when we leave the country per month. 

My cell phone is covered under our children's network as a family plan, So there is no additional cost there whether I am traveling or at home.

Our internet is through Starlink, which runs $165 a month. We have the Gen 3 unit which we keep on a post at home. When we leave to travel we telescope the post down and remove the unit. We take it along in the motorhome where it resides up in our skylight. It functions while we are enroute moving down the road. If we are parked under trees, we can take it out and set it on a long cord in an open area.  Either way, we pay for our internet if we were home or on the road so it's part of our regular household budget. Not really part of our special traveling budget. But it's how we handle internet when we are traveling.

TOLLS/TRAVEL

$13 for the toll to go through the Whittier tunnel.

$187 last month for ferry from Skagway to Haines.

So that rounds out for an even $200!

MISCELLANEOUS

$123.95

We purchased a new water filter for adding fresh water to the motorhome. That was approximately $20. We also purchased a little step ladder so it was easier to reach our Starlink up in the skylight. I picked up some cotton jammies I found on sale, most often you only find polyester in the stores. It was so nice to find some cotton ones for summer sleeping.

At about every 2500 miles of travel Steve needs to add a 2.5 gallon jug of DEF fluid to the engine. This is supplementing the diesel emissions with exhaust requirements for our Mercedes engine. He bought a jug at $18.38.

We expect we will probably be buying two or three more jugs of this while we are traveling for remaining months. 

BACK HOME EXPENSES

Of course our household budget still has the same costs back at home. We are paying the security camera costs, the electric bill, the water bill, and house insurance and taxes. Those are not included in our traveling budget because we would be paying them anyhow.

So here is the grand total of what we spent over the last 30 days:

$1,875.83

divided by 30 days 

comes out to $62.53 per day

Last month was higher at:

$2,386.85

$4262.68

Spent so far for 61 days

for the memories, 

that is 

PRICELESS!

Here's the video link that goes along with today's blog: 

Thank you for following along! 

NORTH TO ALASKA 2025 - DAY 57 - MOOSE ON THE LOOSE CAPTAIN COOK STATE PARK

So many well-meaning followers have contacted me about the Alaska wildfires. Thank you so much for being concerned!

The areas that we are traveling in right now are not affected. But that's not to say on our route back home, that we will not run into some difficulties. We will be watching the current Wildfire Maps and regularly checking with 511 to see about road conditions.

The remnants of fires from the past years are very obvious. Here are photos while we are driving along the Seward Highway. We can see the remnants of the Swan Lake Fire from a few years ago, and the destruction of all of the trees on both sides of the road for many, many miles. It destroyed over 170,000 acres!!!

We can see the renewed growth now of green foliage on the ground. But it will take many many years for the trees to replace themselves and for this to be a beautiful lush forest again.

As we drove along towards the towns of Sterling, Soldotna and Kenai, the rains kept on and the skies remained dreary and clouded. It was not going to be a pretty day for scenery, that's for sure.

We did a stock up shopping at the Walmart in Kenai and picked up a few things here and there at the Three Bears and a hardware store. Seeing as we were in town, it was time to catch up on all those extra little things we needed to do. Then we started to look for a campsite nearby.

Just north of the city of Kenai, we saw a state park up on the Cook Inlet. It was called Captain Cook State Park! We drove on up there about 20 miles out of town and found a nice campsite. It was pretty easy to find campsites with the lousy weather, nobody felt like camping? There were a couple people in tents on the other side of the loop, and one other pickup truck camper nearby. That was about it. 

We got all settled into our campsite and started putting away the laundry that we had done earlier in the morning.  It was so nice to replenish our stash of towels and washcloths with freshly washed ones. Not to mention refilling our drawers of underwear and socks! Lol

Nick helped us put clean sheets on the bed. He is quite a helper, can't you tell?

After we got settled in, we made a nice meal in the pressure cooker of roast beef and carrots and taters. Step by step it's in the video down below at the end of this blog.

After doing dishes, we decided to take a nice little walk around the campground loop. Of course we always carry our bear spray, and our canned air horn. We set out on our walk and we were admiring all the beautiful wildflowers that are abundant right now. I don't even know what these little ones are called. Does anyone know?

The wild roses are in bloom everywhere. Their perfume is so strong, and it smells like a beautiful florist shop as soon as we step out of the motorhome.

These little bluebells are so delicate and wave in the wind and move around on the slightest breeze.

So here we are, wandering along, admiring the flowers. Somewhere down in the woods right above the tip of my finger, we didn't know, but there was a big huge bull moose! We were just wandering along on the campground road, only two sites away from our motorhome.

When suddenly CRASH CRASH CRASH he came loping through the woods right across in front of us and leaped up into the woods on the other side of the campground loop!  Not sure why he was on the run? We could hear him crashing through the center of the loop over towards the people with the tents. Our hearts were pounding and we grabbed the dog and rushed back to the motorhome as quick as we could go. We could hear shouts and hollers as the moose crashed through the campsites with the tents and their dogs barking and everything was absolutely crazy for about 10 seconds over there.  

Then it was silent. We were safely inside of the motorhome and evidently the moose kept on going and they were safe over there too. 

Here is my heart rate on my Fitbit when we saw the moose! Lol

That was enough. 

We stayed inside for the rest of the night... Steve took out Nick for one last potty break, and stayed right in our own campsite. 

The campsites were located up on a hilly area quite a ways from the water. You really couldn't see the Cook Inlet from anywhere in the camping area.

So after we got packed up the next morning, we drove on down to the picnic area to observe the waters in the inlet. It's kind of like a big shallow bay that leads up past Anchorage and up into the Turnagain Arm. 

The tide was out so we could see a broad expanse of the exposed floor after the tide had crawled out.

I told Steve that it was like seeing the terrain that only the fish see. Like the "secret world" under the sea.

We didn't want to walk down there, it gets kind of mushy and gooey. There are spots that it can actually suck your boots down in or you can get stuck. So it's best to stay up on the sturdy shoreline and don't go wandering in places where you could get into a dangerous situation.

It was kind of rainy and dreary, we decided to drive down further on the Kenai Peninsula along the shoreline. We were looking for some sunshine and a better place to hang out. We drove all the way down to the Kasilof Special Use Area where there's a beach that is known for free camping.  It's really just a parking lot. But we found a nice spot, everyone was spaced out every other parking spot so it made for a comfortable place to camp for the night. Or so we thought???

See this on the back of the motorhome next to us? This is a huge dipping net for Salmon.  When the salmon season starts (unknown to us it was the very next morning!) Alaskan residents are allowed to take these huge nets and catch salmon as they swim upstream to spawn. It's a huge event and every resident is allowed to get 25 salmon each, and 10 more per person in their household. 

We didn't know about the opening of the season the next morning, we just knew that there were only about 20 campers in the lot, and we were quite comfortable. We had a beautiful view out our side window. We settled in for the day and we were happy to have sunshine again.

We even took a nap with the soft salty sea breeze drifting in through the windows. It was very comfortable and we were enjoying ourselves.

We took a walk around the little Harbor and beach area, and enjoyed the sights and the sounds of being "sea side" on the Cook Inlet.  These are some old unused huge floating buoys for marking channels through the inlet, or mooring up to with larger boats that can't make it to the shore.

We saw plenty of eagles flying around, as they are very prolific in the area along the water's edge. They know the salmon are coming too...

I captured a few here and there with my camera, trying to follow them with the video camera is pretty hard. But it was enjoyable and I got some better pictures the next day at another spot that I will post in the next blog.

Of course there are seagulls all over the place too. They are quite the scavengers. They are pretty brave, they came right up to the camper looking to see if we had anything good for them. They are used to getting fed.

We looked across the inlet over towards the row of volcanoes along the other shore. We saw some strange cloud formations coming across the water. At first I was worried it was volcanic steam and ash!

But no, it was just some weird mist rolling in across the water. It must have had something to do with the change in temperatures. It was like a low rolling cloud with clear sky above. A very very strange phenomenon. We could feel the dampness coming in on the air all of a sudden hitting us like a brick wall.

Instantly, the warmth of the sunshine was gone and we could feel the salty air and damp breezes coming across from the west. This whole embankment of a foggy cloud rolled right along the surface of the water.  We couldn't even see the rows of mountains and volcanoes on the other shore anymore. Everything was covered by this mist.

Then behind that rolled in some heavy heavy dark clouds. I thought we were due for a big storm. It looked really scary and threatening across the water.

Within an hour, it all blew away and we had blue sky again! We didn't even get any drops of rain. It's like it all absorbed up into the drier air above us and was gone???

Now the skyline across the way was all big puffy white clouds again. That was such a strange event.

By evening, after supper time, we noticed more vehicles coming into the lot. Quite a few drove right out to the beach and positioned themselves in optimum spots for the upcoming salmon run the next morning. Others were positioning themselves in the parking lot. 

Before we knew it, all of the single spaces separating each motorhome we're now getting filled with other people's RVs. One couple was trying so hard to back their big motorhome in between us and the next person. They were literally within inches of our side view mirrors. They jiggled and juggled back and forth five or six times to finally get in. Once they were parked in right tight against us, their door could not even open because our door was directly across from them! They had to start up and move their motorhome back about 3 ft to stagger our doors. This was way too close! 

On the other side of us, the people in the trailer next to us parked their extra vehicle right up tight against our motorhome. As they got out of their vehicle doors, they could not even open them all of the way. They were within inches of our rig and had to literally rub their bodies and their jackets against our motorhome to get around and out of their vehicle. We didn't want our paint scratched or get dings from opening and shutting truck doors!  

It was time to move on... 

We would have loved to stay and watch the fishing the next morning but it was beginning to turn into a carnival-like atmosphere. 

People were shouting and hollering, unloading all of their gear (and beer) and people were full of excitement for the upcoming event. This is an annual thing, and the locals anticipate their ritual to fill their freezers. The music and the drinking and the fires on the beach were starting. This was not going to be a fun place for us to be...

It was time for us to pack up and get moving. 

I didn't even take pics, we just started up our engine and pulled out as fast as we could.

Some lucky person was going to get a prime spot where when we vacated our position, right at the end of the parking lot near the beach.

I did find a video clip of the next day, of the people enjoying themselves exactly right out the back side of where we were parked. Here is the link to it below: 

My oh my, what a circus!!! 

We drove only a few miles further out of the special use area and found a nice quiet campground called Johnson Lake Rec area.  It was peaceful and quiet, with only a few campers. We settled in for the night and got a good night's sleep.

Here is the YouTube video that goes along with today's blog: 

60 miles traveled today 

4,885 miles traveled so far