The bottoms of the mountains were shrouded in the mists.

Docking was tricky at low tide. The line handler in the small boat had to climb a ladder to haul up the light line and it took 3 guys to pull the hawser up to the dock and slip it over the stanchion.

We took this photo from the ship thinking it was the lighthouse, but no... It's the Salty Dog Saloon.

Homer's dock space is on a long spit of land and is filled with companies that offer boating tours, fishing, or local artisan works. There are also quite a number of restaurants.   

 
We by-passed most of the "attractions" because Dean had read about the Danny J, an historic wooden boat that makes two trips out to an island and Halibut Cove each day. The boat is owned by the island's restaurant called the Saltry. We made our reservations and then walked around in places not filled with tourists while waiting for departure time.

 
The Seafarer's Memorial.

There were a lot of fishing boats in port, but...

  
none were as graceful as the Danny J.

The Danny J crew were 2 capable gals. The capt'n opened the front window to give us a running commentary.

Part of the deal was to circle around Gull Island. 

 
It's estimated that there are 20,000 birds out here. The gulls nest on the merest of ledges on the sides of the rocks, while the common murre nests on top in dense colonies. 

When eagles harass the murres, they take flight or drop to the water.

It's impossible to capture the massiveness of these birds' populations in these few photos.

A close-up of the guano on the gull nesting sites.

A natural bridge at one end of Gull Island.

 
Plus there are the cormorants (the black birds) that also inhabit these rocks. 

    
While we didn't really capture the eagles in these photos, they were there every time there was a massive fly-off. It's amazing that any young get raised here, but obviously they are successful despite the interruptions.

We sailed by the picturesque lighthouse on our way into Halibut Cove.

The official greeter runs out to do her job.

The restaurant includes seating on the deck or inside. Since we were hungry and the setting was amazing, we decided to have a bowl of soup before heading out to explore the island.

The soup was yummy and so was the freshly baked loaf of bread. It took us a minute to figure out why the water tasted a little off--it was cucumber water where they float slices of cucumbers in a glass urn of water.

We have 3 hours on the island before the afternoon boat ride back to Homer. We walked along the boardwalk--this is a shot looking back at the Saltry.

The fish tile work is located on the back of the woodshed in the photo below.

 
It's quite cozy inside the lighthouse building and we guessed that it is one of the houses for rent on the island.

 
The horses were friendly. (Note the red elderberry bushes.)

Field daisies ready to pop...

We came down from the highlands and walked along the boardwalk next to the green guesthouse with the red roof to the beach. The natural land bridge over to the next island was heavily damaged during the '64 earthquake and is now maintained by the residents to protect the cove. 

How picturesque! Oh wait, do you see those pink things on the beach? We thought they were pieces of plastic litter.

But no, they are rock fish stripped of their meat. One resident motored by on his ATV and was happy to have one for the ball game this afternoon. They always throw out a dead fish for the first pitch; we'd never heard of that tradition. He put the larger of the two fish near the roadway so he could get it more easily when he came back. 

Out in the bay some cute harlequin ducks swim fairly close to shore.

We moved away from the large rock near the fish and the ravens came in for lunch... then the eagles. This one is immature and is trying to scare away the ravens who moved eventually. It does end up with a nice meal.

We watched for quite a while and Dean sneaked up pretty close to get these photos. Pretty soon a mature eagle (maybe a parent of the juvenile) swooped in to join in on the free meal. We thought it was interesting that the eagle used its wings for leverage to pull the meat from the bones. Eventually it was over when a family came down to the beach and the kids scared everyone away. Fun while it lasted...

It was time to go to the dock to catch our ride home—we'll be returning to Homer in a larger metal-hulled boat because the seas had picked up.