Homer to Seward, a guest perspective from Mason.
Friday began somewhat slowly. Thursday’s beautiful sunset with golden light reflecting from snow-capped mountain tops had segued into a somewhat unpleasant drizzle. This matched the mood of a third of our trio; Madison was pretty under the weather. I thought that the epic night at the Salty Dawg before it had made the whole situation well worth it. We packed up the tents, groundcloths retaining just a bit of sand from the Homer Spit, and moved on toward Seward. On the way out of Homer, we stopped at the Duncan House diner. The breakfast food and Bacon Cheeseburger were good, and our waiter had a moustache that would rival nearly any walrus in the state. This rustic establishment, full of locals (they call them “Homeroids” for a reason) was lined from wall to wall with the advertising detritus of numerous decades preceding my birth.
Human refueling complete, we moved up and across the Kenai Peninsula, stopping in Soldotna only to refuel the car (at the expected despicable gas prices.) With Madison solidly passed out in the back seat, I was able to secure the coveted front seat. This brought me a view that as a local, I have seen many times before, but will never tire of. The phrase “a crappy day in paradise” was genuinely true, and I found myself enjoying a drive that I have been complaining about since before the age of five. We reached Seward in the late afternoon, waking Madison only to hear “what, are we here already?” After a session of sticker shock at the local grocery store, we descended upon the visitor’s center. On the drive over, we had read in a guidebook that there was an abandoned military base with “a warren of underground tunnels to explore” not more than a five mile hike from the road system. The attendant at the visitor’s center was enthusiastic, but not particularly knowledgeable about our destination. We did glean the useful information that the trail we wanted to follow was on the edge of an intertidal zone, and would only be accessible during low tide hours. Since high tide was within a couple of hours of our arrival, we decided to go in, make camp, and wait for the tide to recede. After all, it wasn’t like we had to worry about it getting dark or anything.
Armed with a tide table and a map of the area, we set off on our next adventure. Conveniently, the map promised a full campground not a mile down the trail, where we would be able to divest ourselves of overnight camping gear and continue on to the fort. Finally able to use Ian’s trusty frame packs, we packed all of our stuff (perhaps too much in retrospect) and set off. The trek took us across a pleasant mixture of state-park blazed trails and old army roads, winding with numerous switchbacks over the hills and down to the shore of Resurrection Bay. The theoretical mile that the crow could fly had stretched into closer to two when calamity struck. Not 200 yards from the campground, the footbridge across the south fork of Tonsina Creek had been washed out by some hellacious flooding. After the hike, we realized that there was a sign that read in small print “South bridge of Tonsina Creek Closed, river crossing may be required” at the parking lot. I thought this to be somewhat of an understatement. If the sign had read “South bridge of Tonsina creek smitten by the fist of an angry god, cross the two to four foot deep 33 degree water at your own risk” I think it would have been more of an accurate statement. Also, we probably would have noticed it.
The last area before the creek was a moss-covered forest of ancient Spruce trees, seemingly out of a fairy tale. When our expedition was abruptly stopped, we did the only thing that seemed immediately feasible: eat. Ian cooked an excellent meal of spiral pasta, Alfredo Sauce and spicy Italian Sausage. While we were eating, we stopped to see the amazing sights around us. The distant mist-shrouded hills seemed reminiscent of Ireland or New Zealand, while the rapidly receding tide revealed a vast expanse of beach to explore. The consensus of the group was that it would not be safe for all of us to cross the river with our gear, despite how awesome the fort on the other side was reputed to be. We made camp in the woods near the bridge, and prepared to settle in for the night. Ian, however, was not going to allow something small like a bridge-destroying flood to hold him back from crossing that water.
We surveyed the driftwood and shattered bridge remnants in the area, and hauled the only parts of it that were movable by hand to the area near the remains of the bridge. A massive tree trunk had fallen across two thirds of the far side of the river, and a large shoal was just beneath the surface downstream of it. Using all of the driftwood logs we were able to find, we built a half-assed excuse for a bridge out to the shoal. We spent nearly an hour throwing rocks from the shore to the shoal (about 10 feet) to build it up to something that could be reasonably crossed on foot, provided you didn’t mind a few inches of water on the feet in question. Finally, Ian deemed it crossable, and after handing off his wallet and camera, headed across. With two walking sticks and a piece of lumber that I threw to him from shore, he made it across to the other side and back with no mishaps.
Now before Madison and I sound like wimps (perhaps we were) I wanted to point out that I was afraid of crossing with my camera gear. If I had fallen in and gotten wet, it would have been considerably unpleasant but not the end of the world. I wasn’t willing to risk my gear, and had I made it across without it I would have been sullenly angry to see the fort with no ability to record it. After the conclusion of this small adventure, we decided to call it an early night, and I was happy to see the insides of my eyelids.
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