Homer Revisited

Our most recent trip took us back into Homer (which is a town, not a person..that goes out to a special someone) and across the water into Halibut Cover for some clam diggin'. An ER doctor was kind and took us out on his boat. We tied the boat and had to ride an inflatable raft to the shore. On our way into shore, there were so many jellyfish in the water. I was able to see clear ones with 4 spots on top of it and also orange ones with tentacles trailing from it. It was really beautiful!

On our clam digging trip we were seeking the Pacific little neck clams. There were also butter clams, but the little necks are tastier. We went out at the lowest tide of the month into a valley. There were little streams we walked across to get to the bed of shellfish. To get to the clams, we had to remove a layer of little mussels. Under that, there is a layer of dirt. Under the dirt it's like finding what you would when you lift a rock..but a bit scarier because they are more unfamiliar. We found little crabs, huge worms, squiggly eels (really gross), these huge things that looked like a little boy's body part, and of course clams.

We had a group of 6 digging and after about 2 hours, we left with two 5-gallon bucket fulls of clams (mixture of butters and little necks). All in all, even though the mud was super stinky, it was pretty fun to play in the mud! There were also these little tide pools with lots of sea stars (starfish) of different color in them.


After we had our fill of being on our knees, we headed back to the boat for some Halibut fishing. We didn't do very well, except for some ling cod (ugliest fish ever..they have these huge heads and huge bellies) and nondescript organism from the sea floor Ryan caught. GROSS! Halibut are bottom dwellers so you have to send the line out all the way to the bottom. It was hard enough to reel the line in without a fish, I can't imagine when there is an actual fish on!





















Ryan's uncle John and his kids Jim, Tory, and Paul will be here on Sunday. I am looking forward to seeing their reaction to Alaska. Oh and Ryan bought his first boat with his first paycheck (a dream he's always had). I am so very proud of all his accomplishments! :) Here are some pictures of it. I approved of the color.