Adventure - 4-Wheeling with Alaska Wilderness 4-Wheeler Tours - Riding On the Beach at Homer

Sea and Sky on the Beach

Stats

Difficulty: Easy Time: Half-Day +

Summary

Dan Eidem runs Alaska Wilderness 4-Wheeler Tours, an tour on ATVs, for small to medium groups. He usually tours the Homer backcountry, but when we joined him on 26 May 2013, the backcountry was still deep in snow and mud. So he took us to his alternate site, the beach starting at Bishop’s Beach.

Opinion

This trip was a blast! We were hoping to see
vistas, views, and seals. We didn’t get everything, but we will definitely be doing this again. In fact, we’re planning a backcountry trip in Aug 2013. The price is comparable to the cost other types of guided activities around Kachemak Bay.

Adventure Advice

Bring a jacket. The temperature at the beach in Homer is rarely warmer than 60 degrees and the wind from driving can be downright cold.

Bring water. It’s a long day and you’ll get thirsty

Bring a camera. You never know what you might see.

Talk to Dan about anything else you should bring.

Contact Information

907-235-8567 - During the day, leave a message; in evening, talk to Dan

Suitability

Dan tailors his adventure to his customers and doesn’t encourage daredevil driving with his ATVs, so this trip is suitable to people of all ages. He also has a limited number of 2-person ATVs for people who don’t or can’t drive. The start of the tour is a familiarization with driving ATVs so you don’t have to know how to drive one ahead of time.

Starting Point

When you schedule your trip with Dan, he will tell you where to meet him and give you directions.

The Adventure

We chose the day and starting time based on the tides. To do the beach tour it needs to be at low tide on a day when the tide will be lower than -2 ft; the lower the better. We also chose the day because the weather forecast was for sun. Unfortunately, the weather guessers are wrong in Homer at least as often as they are right and the day turned out to be overcast: no rain, but almost no sun.

Dan at Bishop's Beach

Our trip started at the parking lot at Bishop’s Beach. Dan gave us a quick familiarity tour of our ATVs (there were small differences in equipment like parking brakes), packed lunch and then we were off down the beach.

Waterfall to the Beach

We started close to the cliff side of the beach. The driving in this area was interesting. It was early May, which is barely spring. Most of the plants hadn’t even started to grow and the trees on the cliff hadn’t even started to leaf out. The cliff has varying strata of sand, dirt, clay, and coal. Periodically, small waterfalls from run-off creeks break the steep cliff. In other places the coal seams have cracked and the ground is littered with fragile coal stones. Later in the spring, the cliff is covered with lupines, but in May it appeared completely lifeless.

We drove 3 or 4 miles up the beach, stopping periodically to take pictures and look for seals and otters. The seals can often be seen sunning themselves on the rocks at the edge of the water and the otters often hang out in groups just a little deeper. We didn’t see either, but we suspect it isn’t very much fun trying to sunbath on a rock when there is no sun.

Lunch on the Beach

We found a likely stopping spot and broke for lunch. Dan built a fire using the driftwood on the beach and we had a gourmet lunch of bratwurst and fresh shrimp. There is a company that drives into Homer every week or so to sell fresh caught and then quick frozen shrimp, scallops, and sometimes fish.

Down the Beach

Our Host in the Lead

After lunch, since the tide had turned, we headed back. This time we drove along the tideline. In this direction, the sun was at just the right angle to create fabulous reflections of sky, cliff, and mountain in every tide pool.

Cleaning the ATV

At the end of the ride, Dan took us on a high-speed ride up the freshwater stream that empties from Beluga Slough. The water shot high on either side until we drove back out of the stream. It turned out the reason we did that was to clean the worst of the saltwater off the underside of the ATV.

The ride was great and we are planning to do go on a backcountry trip in August.