Road trip on the Kenai Peninsula to Homer, Alaska! (Hope, Skilak Lookout, & the Homer Spit)

Well, after our last video, things took a bit of a turn. We both got COVID for the first time, which was obviously completely unexpected and not exactly how we had hoped to spend our time here in Alaska, but we've been resting for a little over a week now. We're almost 100%, so we're back to exploring Alaska. Over the next couple days, we're going to be road tripping down to Homer on the Kenai Peninsula with some fun stops along the way. The Kenai Peninsula is a large peninsula south of Anchorage that is known for its vast wilderness, wildlife, glaciers, and coastal towns, and many say it's their favorite spot in this area of Alaska. And first up, we're headed to the very small town of Hope. This town came highly recommended from a local we met in Talkeetna, which is another small town here in Alaska. This town is going to be a lot smaller than Talkeetna, but it still looks to have that authentic, charming Alaskan vibe. Even though it's a foggier and rainier morning, the drive out here has been so stunning. We've been in Alaska for over a month now, and everywhere you drive is just insanely beautiful. There are mountains everywhere. Even at the grocery store, you just have, bam, mountains right there. Alaska just feels like they took all the prettiest parts of the lower 48 and just put it in one area. And this peninsula so far is proving to be just as beautiful as everyone says it is. We are so excited to finally be out here and properly explore it. We made it. Hope was home to the first gold rush here in Alaska, and its heyday was enjoyed well before Anchorage was even established. Gold was founded here in 1888, and it brought a wave of 3,000 prospectors to this part of the Kenai Peninsula. And apparently, the story goes that some men decided that the next person that would get off the boat is who they would name the town after, and that lucky person was Percy Hope. The community sprang up with stores, saloons, and a post office. This heyday didn't last long, though. By 1898, news of the Klondike gold rush caused most miners to pack up and head for the Yukon. Many of the original buildings are still in use in Hope, including the social hall, which was built in 1902, and the original schoolhouse, which is now the library. We just grabbed some coffee at Grounds for Hope, which is a super cute little coffee stand with a tiny little bookstore right next to it, and we're gonna go walk around and check out the town. I absolutely love this town. We decided last night at like 10 p.m. that we were coming here today, so it was a super last-minute decision, and it's one of the best decisions we've made here in Alaska so far. It is just so quaint and small and quiet. It just has this feeling to it that, I don't know, just a lot of places don't have. It doesn't feel overly touristy or anything. And check out the views just right at the end of town. We have the Turnagain Arm back there, all the mountains. Oh, it is just, I'm just so happy we came here. We're also here on a pretty fun day. Today is the Hope Wagon Trail Run, which is a 5k race that's been ran here in Hope for 35 years, and its purpose is to raise money for the town's emergency services. We almost decided to run the race at the very last minute, but we're going to save our recovering energy so we can do a bunch of hiking in the next week. So instead, we're just going to watch other people run. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you everyone so very much for coming to the Hope 5k Wagon Trail Run. My mom started this race back in 1988 to help raise money for our community here in Hope, and it has become such a good part of our summers here. Three, two, one, go! The race was really fun to watch, and the guy that I predicted would win the race won the race with a time of 19-something, so way to go! Good job! But before we head out of town to go for a hike, we're going to check out the Hope and Sunrise Historical Museum, which is a donation-based museum that has a bunch of historic artifacts from the area. There's a one-room cabin that houses the museum, and what's also cool is you can walk outside and they have a bunch of old mining machinery and also some machinery that was used in the past by the town, and there's also a few buildings here that you can walk through that came from a nearby mine called the Canyon Creek Mine. My name is Oscar Brines. Welcome to my cabin. It may be hard to believe, but I taught eight students in this tiny space over a hundred years ago. For being such a small town and this museum relying really on donations to stay open, this is such a well-done museum. I just love seeing all of these old buildings and seeing them kind of put back together to how they would have been back in the day. For the rest of the day, we're heading down Palmer Creek Road, which is just south of town, to hike and hopefully camp for the night. We're hiking to Palmer Creek Lakes, which is about 2.7 miles round trip and has under a thousand feet of elevation gain, so it shouldn't be too bad, but even if you do not want to hike, we highly recommend driving down this road. It is insanely gorgeous out here. The trail has been beautiful so far, but very bushy. The leaves are obviously very wet. My pants are a little soaked here, but it looks like there's a gorgeous waterfall up there and we're going to be going just to the left of it and over the top up to that little bowl up there. This is a little bit steeper than I thought it would be. I think we're just about to see the two lakes here at the end of the trail. There's one. Oh yeah, look at that. Beautiful. Yeah. As I mentioned earlier, coming to Hope was such a last-minute decision. We originally didn't think we were going to have time to come here, but I am just so glad we did. It was the perfect day, even with the rain and the clouds. It was just so beautiful and so perfect. It was kind of what we think of when we think of just a fun Alaska day, going to a cool little small town, being in all this beautiful nature. We saw no one on this hike, so that was a huge perk, but we're going to book it back down the trail because we can see a ton of clouds coming in right now, so we're going to get back to the van and then our plan for the night is to camp in one of these pull-offs along the road that the trail heads on because this whole area is the Chugach National Forest, so we can camp legally for free. Help me. Save me. Save me. I'm whipping up a quick dinner and tonight I'm having something pretty special. The other day, Catherine was at the library and ran into a couple of our viewers, Kyle and Amy and their two daughters, and they were so nice. They actually gave us some salmon that they had caught on the Kenai Peninsula just the day before. Look how beautiful this salmon is. It's only the second time I've ever cooked salmon, so I hope I don't mess it up, but I am excited to try it. The salmon is attacking us. The hot oil is spraying all over us in the van. Ow, that really hurts. Just 10 seconds on there, it was just like a firework. All right, moment of truth on this salmon. Tastes really good. It's hot, but it's good. I got a little crisp on the skin there. Juicy, flavorful. I don't think it can get any more fresh than that. Thank you again, Kyle and Amy. It is delicious. I always say that I don't like salmon, but that salmon might turn me into a salmon fan. That is really, really, really good. Kona approved. Two paws up. Today our plan is to drive all the way down to Homer, which is still a few hours away, and along the way we're stopping to do a hike called Slaughter Ridge, which is going to be a huge butt kicker. This trail is five miles and gains over 2,600 feet of elevation, which means it's going to be over a thousand feet per mile. Sounds like it's going to be the hardest hike we've done in Alaska so far. We're having a bit of a dilemma right now. We have gone up into the clouds, and it's just clouds all around us, so we're kind of losing hope that there will be any views at the top, so we're not 100% sure if we want to keep going. We're about a mile in, a thousand feet up, so we're a little under halfway there. Things could change in that time, but they may not, and it's a really steep hike, so we aren't sure if we want to put forth all this effort for no reward at the end. But every time we turn around on a hike because the weather seems bad, it ends up being beautiful, so that's what's holding us back, because we know if we turn around right now, we'll get down and it'll be clear, but it may not, so I don't know. It's such a hard decision to make. Thinking about how the weather has been the last few days, just almost constant rain, and then the forecast coming up calling for more rain and clouds, I'm not feeling too good about it. We've been standing here for about five minutes just going back and forth, and I think we are going to turn around. We hate doing this, and we're just going to close our eyes when we get to the bottom because it'll probably be sunny and beautiful, but the way we see it, we got to see some views on the way up, and the views that we did have are kind of like what it would have been at the top. It would have been much higher up, but we got to see some views, so it wasn't a total bust, and we can spend this extra time we're going to have now to spend more time in Homer, so it's not it's not a complete loss, but yeah, we hope we're making the right decision. Just like every time we turn around on a trail, the weather is starting to look better, but the peak that we were planning on hiking up to is still completely covered in clouds, and it doesn't seem like it's going to be moving, so we're going to have to keep telling ourselves that we made the right decision. I think we did, but now we're back on the road, and we have about a two and a half hour drive to Homer. Well, we've had a slight change of plans. As we kept driving, the weather seemed to be getting a little bit better, so we thought we would try to redeem our failed hike from earlier. We had this other hike on our radar to potentially do today called Skeelack Lookout, and so since we're in the area, it seems like it's a little bit clearer. We're going to give it a shot. This trail is four miles round trip with about 700 feet of elevation gain, so much less strenuous than the last hike, and it should take us to a nice overlook over Skeelack Lake. We've had so many questions about the mosquitoes here in Alaska, and it's been about a month since our last mosquito update, and to be honest, we still have not found them to be nearly as bad as everyone says. There are mosquitoes on this hike though, so this is definitely more mosquitoes than we have seen in the last few weeks, but it's still just not as bad as some other places we've been. I don't know if maybe we just haven't gotten to the right place yet where they're all hiding. We hope to never go there, but yeah, we haven't found it to be too bad. This hike really wasn't too difficult until the end, and it gets pretty steep, but I think we're almost to the lookout. What a view, wow! This is one heck of a spot. This lake is massive. It kind of goes in this crescent shape around the lookout here, and sometimes the sun will poke through the clouds and create these bright blue splotches on the water. Super beautiful, surrounded by these huge mountains with snow patches on them. There's this river delta across the way. This more than makes up for the hike we missed out on earlier. I feel like we got the best of both worlds today. We originally wanted to do both of these hikes, but we weren't going to have time to do both, but in the end we kind of got to do both of them. We didn't get to see all the views on the first one, but we got a little peek at some of the views, and man, this hike completely blew us away. It honestly could not have worked out more perfectly that we bailed on the first one and we came here, because I cannot imagine not doing this hike. And now to Homer, for real this time. We have made it to Homer, which is located on Kachemak Bay on the southwest side of the Kenai Peninsula, and is a popular jumping off point for Katmai and Lake Clark National Parks, which we hope to visit on another trip. A popular spot here is the Homer Spit, which is a four and a half mile gravel bar that extends into Kachemak Bay with lots of restaurants, shops, and amazing views. And we're going to spend the rest of the day walking around and exploring a bit. It is so beautiful here. Just check out all these mountains behind me. You can see some glaciers off in the distance. Little spoiler alert, we'll be going into those mountains very, very soon. But quite possibly the best part is that there's a sea otter out there right now just floating around on his back. He's like waving his hands up. It is so cute. We were going to camp at Mariner Park on the Spit for $20 a night, but we drove down there and it looked like it was completely full, so we came back to the parking area on the Spit, and there's signs here that says you can park 24 hours a day up to seven consecutive days. And to us, that sounds like you can sleep here, so that's what we're gonna do. We do have one spot we want to eat at here on the Spit, but they're closed on Mondays, so we're gonna check it out tomorrow instead. One thing Homer is known for is halibut fishing. In fact, it's known as the halibut fishing capital of the world, so it's only fitting that we grab some halibut fish tacos while here in Homer. We came to Swell Taco, which is a cool little taco stand right here on the Spit, and we not only got halibut tacos, but they're halibut cheek tacos, which is something that we have never tried. The cheeky halibut tacos come topped with pico de gallo, jalapenos, lime crema, and pickled onions on a homemade corn tortilla. These tortillas look super good. This looks good. That taco is awesome. The pico, and the jalapenos, and the pickled onions in there, and that lime dressing gives it a nice burst of freshness. And then I wasn't sure what to expect with the halibut cheeks in there, but I didn't know if they were gonna be super fatty or what, but they actually have like a really nice meaty texture to them. And yeah, and then these corn tortillas that wraps it all up. That corn tortilla is awesome. If you look in there, it's got all kinds of, I don't know, what they put in there, cilantro, seasonings, all kinds of stuff. Yeah, that is super good. The fish is so tender, and then all the just creaminess and crunchiness of the toppings. It's just such a good texture combo. We also got the fried rockfish taco, which is gluten-free, which is super exciting. It has two pieces of fried rockfish that have corn crusting on them, and it has a chipotle crema on top. That's so crispy. That breading is so good and so crispy. The fish is super fresh tasting too. Everything here just tastes so fresh. Mega crunch on there. I love the crunch on that. The entire time you're chewing on it, it just stays so crunchy and so crispy, and you get the corn chip flavor in there the whole time. Kind of tastes like a little bit of Fritos was dropped in there, and the seasonings in there work so well. It is super good too. But that's going to do it for this part of our Homer adventure. Our time here in Homer is not quite done yet. We're about to go on a backpacking trip, so we need to head back to the van, get all packed up, and then hop on a water taxi. It should be a really fun adventure. We've upgraded our rainy day camera cover from a Ziploc bag to a shower cap. Behind the scenes, face in the hole. I had to lay down to get in this face hole. True face in hole dedication. I'm going to dance. I'm so happy.