Ride GuideAlaska 101Down the Kenai Peninsula, from Anchorage to Seward and Homer Bill Wood
This is Alaska. Just this morning, we left Anchorage, a place that could be mistaken for a city in the United States. Since then, it’s been a trip into a world very different from any we’ve experienced. And now this. We’ve parked the bikes at an overlook near the city of Homer, located at the end of Route 1, the main street of the 49th state. A couple of miles ahead, we can see the spot that marks as far as you can go in this direction. The view is of Kachemak Bay, a small pocket off Cook Inlet, the northernmost arm of the Gulf of Alaska, which is itself just a backwater of the Pacific Ocean. In other words, it’s one tiny slice of a coastline that stretches 44,000 miles around the south, west and north sides of a state that is big enough to rank as the world’s 19th largest country. In this seascape, water flows through the mouth of the bay, backed by the mountains of the Kenai range. Down below, I can make out a small black dot on the surface. Is it a seal? An ocean bird? The dorsal fin of a whale? Nearby, there’s one of those coin-operated telescopes. I drop in a quarter and train it on the speck. Adjusting the focus, I discover that what I thought was a tiny part of an animal breaking the surface is, in fact, an entire fishing vessel carrying several people. Suddenly, the scale of the scene snaps into perspective. The mouth of the bay, which seemed a few hundred yards across, is actually several miles wide. On the other side is a stunning wall of mountains, their snow-capped peaks rising into the clouds. And as the scenery has grown, our group of six motorcyclists coming face to face with Alaska now seems that much smaller and less significant. It’s a feeling we’ll get used to as we explore the last American frontier. Everything here is even bigger, farther, higher and more impressive than it seems.• • • The sense that we’re someplace very different sets in less than a half-hour out of Anchorage as we begin the day’s ride. Unlike some diehard Alaska adventurers, we’ve chosen to fly into the state’s biggest city, where we pick up the Kawasaki KLR650s we’ve shipped to Don Rosene’s Motorcycle Shop (see “Our kind of bike shop,” right). Anchorage itself looks and feels about like the city of a quarter-million that it is. But it disappears fast in the rearview mirrors, and we find ourselves running along Turnagain Arm, a narrow fjord offering views of open water, sweeping glacial valleys and mist-covered mountains rising straight out of the water. Before we’ve burned a single gallon of gas, we’re well into the Alaska experience. The first clue is the small traffic jam that develops as a group of mountain goats descends a rocky cliff a couple of feet off the pavement. That’s followed by a glimpse of a moose in a marshy meadow. Fifty miles out, we’ve already made a half-dozen photo stops, and kicked ourselves for not making more. Then we hook around the southeast end of the fjord, cross the Placer River, and come upon a sign promising “Scenic View.” Are you kidding? OK, the vista of mountains marching into the distance along chilly, forbidding water is pretty spectacular. But it’s clear that if Alaska’s Department of Transportation wants to point out even a small percentage of the state’s scenic highlights, they’re gonna need a lot more signs.• • • Alaska Route 1 is a mostly two-lane road skirting the edges of the Kenai Mountains. It feels like a remote highway in the Rockies, except that it’s also the only road connecting the state’s busiest city to the coast. That means there’s a fair amount of traffic, most of it moving at a pretty good clip. This is a big state, and people have places to go. We turn onto state Route 9, which bends south to the town of Seward, on a narrow bay leading to the ocean. From the setting, we’re expecting a quaint fishing village filled with antique shops, souvenir stands, ice cream parlors, fudge—that sort of thing. But as we quickly find out, Alaska doesn’t do “quaint.” Alaska does whatever the heck it wants. In this case, that means there are a few shops and restaurants clustered in a small downtown area, but that’s adjacent to a mud flat that serves as a graveyard for broken, decaying fishing boats. And down a gravel road is the major tourism center, an RV park with Winnebagoes wedged inches from each other along a rocky beach. Over a meal at what I can best describe as a pizza-and-salmon parlor, we get some insight into what, exactly, we’re up against. The placemats on the tables show a map of Alaska—not hanging off one side of the U.S. mainland as usual, but superimposed over the heart of the USA. Boy, is it big. The northern coast lines up with the border between Minnesota and Canada. The eastern edge is on the western shore of Lake Michigan. From there, Alaska’s southeastern panhandle stretches all the way to the South Carolina coast near Charleston, while the Aleutian Islands curve west across the entire country, ending near San Francisco. Apparently, this is going to take a little more time than we thought.• • • Back on Route 1, we unexpectedly cross an invisible international border. Here, the towns are named Soldotna, Kasilof and Kalifornsky. They’re reminders that before Alaska was an American state, it was Russian territory. A little further on, we stumble across another of Alaska’s strange faces as we try to get a view of Cook Inlet, which we know should be right off Alaska Route 1. We turn onto a narrow sandy lane headed toward the water. And without warning, we come upon more cars, trucks, vans, trailers and RVs than we’ve seen since leaving Anchorage—all jammed along what we figured was going to be a deserted, unpaved road. Each parked car, truck or van seems to be associated with several locals and one or more 3-foot fishing nets, each invariably bolted securely to a crutch. The endless line of vehicles leads off into the distance, where we glimpse the water of the Kasilof River emptying into Cook Inlet. On one side, the road is bordered by a huge chain-link fence surrounding a fish-canning plant. It’s a lot to take in all at once, so we stop for a minute to get our bearings. Almost immediately, we’re warned that the drivers of semis serving the canning plant think they own the road, and they’ll come screaming through fast, without warning. Um, OK. So why do all these people have their cars arranged like haybales on a truck-rally course? As it turns out, it’s because the river has been opened for the locals to take their share of the salmon run. And as near as we can figure, the fishing drill here apparently involves wading into fast-moving, icy water with one of those odd-looking crutch-nets, then attempting to snag a salmon that may weigh 50 pounds or more and wrestle it to shore, while those on land play dodge-the-cannery-trucks. It’s a strange combination: part county fair and part WWE Smackdown, mixed together in frightening proximity. And apparently, it’s entirely normal up here.• • • Approaching Homer in the early evening, we’re both impressed and confused by our first taste of Alaska. And that’s before we see the Homer Spit. Located just a few miles from the spectacular overlook of Homer and Kachemak Bay, the Spit is like—well, it’s like nothing else. In fact, the Spit is a true original, and it’s probably more accurate to say that other things may be like it. The Spit is a narrow finger of land curving into the bay. At no point is it more than a couple hundred yards wide, and in places it seems that its name is particularly apt, since you could spit all the way from the sheltered water on the east side to the more open water on the west. But somehow, along the two-lane road headed out to the point of the Spit, you’ll find the strangest collection of stuff you can possibly imagine. On one side is a junkyard full of cars, trucks, buses and boats that made it this far and not one inch farther. Amidst the rusted junk, you can spot the remains of various pieces of heavy equipment, buoys and even a 10-foot chess rook. Just past that is a terminal for a logging operation, right on top of an RV park. On the other side of the road is an open beach, where so-called “Spit Rats” can pitch a tent and spend the night. As we pass by, there’s a bald eagle picking at the carcass of a fish along the water. Then there’s the “business district,” a section of shops and restaurants, some on stilts and most looking like they were nailed together out of scrap lumber and corrugated metal. Beyond that? Oh, there’s an oil terminal and what seems to be a pretty nice hotel. It’s part Wild West town, part tourist trap, part post-apocalyptic movie set. And with the near-endless days you get in mid-summer at 60 degrees north latitude, we’ve got hours to soak it all in. The Spit would make any self-respecting planning commission in the Lower 48 nuts. But here’s the thing: Right now, anybody can go to Homer and find a place on the Spit where they can savor the view and the general weirdness in equal measures. If this were anyplace else, big, luxury condominiums would long ago have blocked the view for those who couldn’t pay the cover charge. Ultimately, the Spit is like Alaska itself—big and beautiful, raw and unruly. The unspoken rule is clear: You can take it on its terms, or you can go somewhere else. We look around at the mountains, the water, an eagle soaring over the waves, and the sun, still well above the horizon at 10:30 p.m. And we decide that we’ll stay, thanks. —Bill Wood© 2005, American Motorcyclist Association |
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