TRAVEL: The road to the end of the road

Homer is an end-of-the-road town in Alaska, an end-of-the-road state. One of those quirky places brimming with characters where rambling, restless people end up simply because they run out of
pavement.

Getting down to the dead end on Kachemak Bay is a journey in its own right, a 233-mile trek across the Kenai Peninsula, a giant-sized thumb of land so diverse some locals say it is the whole state in miniature.

“If you don’t have time for all of Alaska, then see the Kenai and you’ve pretty much seen a bit of everything,” says Karrie Ringeisen, who lives in Anchorage.

Half of the state’s people live in and around Anchorage. Their back yard is a paradise of hunting and fishing.

“Gotta do some bloodletting from time to time — good for the nerves,” one hunter tells me while relaxing in the whirlpool at Jake’s, a bed and breakfast popular with the bullet-and-bait set.

One warm summer morning, I pack up the rental car and hit the road. It’s strange how quickly Alaska empties out when you pull out of Anchorage.

The Seward Highway swings out of town and right away the Chugach Mountains loom over me.

The road already has a wilderness feel, underlined by the pontoon-festooned seaplanes flying overhead toward the east.

The highway here parallels Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet, named by Capt. James Cook, the 18th-century British explorer who thought he had found the Northwest Passage, but had to “turn again” when it suddenly dead-ended.

Less than an hour out of Anchorage, I see a long row of cars flanking both sides of the road and a small parking lot overflowing with pickups and sport utility vehicles.

Wedging into a muddy spot on the right shoulder of the highway, I hike down to see one of Alaska’s odder oddities: “combat fishing” on the salmon-choked Bird Creek.

The warlike angling gets its name for the cheek-to-jowl crowds of anglers all trying to get a small piece of the river.

The old saying goes “shooting fish in a barrel.” Bird Creek is the pole-and-line equivalent. Before getting to the sea, the salmon have to pass through a tight funnel flanked by dozens of fishermen creating a colorful panorama

in their red or blue jackets and yellow or black hip waders. Through the narrow watery pass comes what seems like every kind of salmon imaginable: red, sockeye, chum, silver, king.

“I’ve been coming for years and I love it,” says Young Kim, a resident of nearby Anchorage. “There are so many salmon on good days, it seems like there’s no room for the water in the river.

“I’ll take a day off from work because if you come during the weekend, the traffic is backed up two miles and there’s no room on the riverbank.”

Above the creek are a bridge and a large observation platform that’s a kind of rooting section for the families of the fishermen below.

A large poster depicts the various kinds of salmon that can be pulled from the waters.

After a half-hour of seeing salmon pulled from the creek, I’m back on the highway.

At the end of the inlet, Highway 1 swings south, past Summit Lake — a famous summer wildflower spot. The road splits at Tern Lake Junction — left for Seward Highway to Seward. Right for the 142-mile Sterling Highway to Homer.

Dall sheep can sometimes be seen scrambling along the sheer hillsides in the Kenai National Wildlife Preserve, the 2-million-acre wilderness that the Sterling Highway passes through on its way to Cook Inlet.

I stop for a cup of clam chowder in Clam Gulch. It’s not low tide, otherwise I could grab a bucket and go clamming.

Nearby Ninilchik is home to a Russian Orthodox Church, built in 1901. The onion domes look like something out of Siberia. Little Anchor Point prides itself on being the most westerly point in North America.

Down a long hill and the road leads to Homer. Ringed by mountains and water, it’s a place that lives on nature: fishing and oil exploration, mixed with a goodly dose of tourism. But environmental changes and overfishing have changed the town’s economy.

“We used to get shrimp right off the coast,” says Lisa Nolan, owner of the Homestead Restaurant.

“Now it’s from Thailand. The Dungeness crabs are almost gone, too. We’re losing the things that people have always taken for granted up here. I think people are finally waking up to what’s at stake for our future.”

Sports fishermen still make the drive down from Anchorage to take on the big fish schooling off Homer’s harbor.

“Line fishing for halibut is like trying to pull a Buick off the sea floor,” says Walt Campbell, a knife maker in nearby Sterling. “You never forget the feeling.”

I wander along the docks, past the oil storage tanks, and chat up the scruffy-bearded Deadheads who stopped in the Salty Dawg Saloon for a brew. Oil workers with black under their fingernails, fishermen in long-billed caps, and polo-shirted tour guides all share spots at the bar.

It’s a warm summer evening, so I walk along the Homer Split, the narrow wedge of land the highway follows toward the bay.

The Kenai Mountains rise across the water. It’s a beautiful spot. But after 20 minutes, the road peters out under my feet at the front door of my motel. The road ends here in Homer.

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