 |
| Sunset at Peterson Research Station |
Stats
When:
Early – Mid August
Where: Peterson Research Station
Summary
Alaska
seems to be the US capitol for berries.
More berries grow in this state than I’ve ever heard of anywhere
else. We’ve got blueberries,
raspberries, blackberries, salmon berries, watermelon berries, elderberries,
currant, marionberries, cranberries, lingonberries (low bush cranberry),
nagoonberries, crow berries, serviceberries, and strawberries. Most of these grow wild, but several
cultivars are grown in home yards and farms as well. Truly, I didn’t know half these berries
existed until I moved here.
On
11 Aug 2013 our neighbors asked if we wanted to take a boat ride across
Kachemak Bay to go blueberry picking at the Peterson Research Station. The Peterson Research Station belongs to the Center
for Alaska Coastal Studies based out of Homer. The station is situated on 5 acres of wild
land and coastline and their lower trails go through extensive blueberry
fields, with a mix of currant and salmonberry randomly distributed
throughout. The berries are fair game to
visitors, although they ask that you leave a few for the bears.
Opinion
This
was a blast. We picked berries for about
2 hours and came home with 7.5 lbs (22.5 cups)
. Our neighbors got 2 or 3 times that. Now I have a freezer full of blueberries and two different kinds of blueberry pie.
. Our neighbors got 2 or 3 times that. Now I have a freezer full of blueberries and two different kinds of blueberry pie.
Advice
Peterson
Research Station and the grounds surrounding it belong to the Center for
Alaskan Coastal Studies. Check with them
before planning a berry trip. Not only
do you need permission, they can tell you whether the berries are ripe and
where to go to pick them.
You
will need mosquito repellent for the berry picking and, if you plan to
overnight in one of their yurts, you’ll need a sleeping bag, dinner, and your
usual overnight supplies.
How to Get There
The
only way to get to the Peterson Research Center is to take a boat. The Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies has a
trip you can take that includes the boat ride over, a guided nature tour of the
area, and, if you want, overnight accommodations in a yurt. If you want to go over on your own, check
with the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies first for directions and special
instructions.
The Experience
Our
neighbors invited us, another neighbor, and a visitor of theirs who was “couch
surfing” with them (more on this in Couch
Surfing in another post in this blog) to go with them in their boat to the
Peterson Research Station for berry picking with an overnight stay in one of
the station’s yurts. Each yurt holds
six, so we were maxed out.
We
all met at their house to assemble our gear, dinner, and breakfast for the next
morning. We dumped our stuff into their
boat and then headed to the harbor. Four
of us--the authors of this blog, our neighbor, and our visitor--took a quick
detour to the Homer Farmers Market
(more on this in another post in this blog) to show it to our visitor and for
me to get the makings for a dinner salad; the fresh picked lettuce is
delicious. Chris and our neighbor
dropped us off and went to the Wagon Wheel (a local gardening center) to buy
berry pickers for us (more on this later).
We
all convened at the boat launch on the Homer Spit at about 1230 and off we
went. The water that day was still as
glass and it was a perfect morning for boating.
I considered trying to convince them to stop for Halibut fishing, but
decided we all wanted the berries too badly to stop.
 |
| Gull Island |
On
the way over, since the weather was so nice, we detoured past Gull Island. This is a tiny, isolated island that is the
local gull hatching area. Cormorants and
murres hang out there as well. There're
thousands of them over the rocks and in the water surrounding it. Puffins and sea otters are also common
visitors in that area although we didn’t see either. The puffins had already moved on for the year
and the otter must have been fishing somewhere else.
 |
| Floating Dock |
Pulling
up to the Peterson Research center was an experience. They are located on an inlet with extreme
tidal changes. To deal with this, they
have a floating dock out where the water is always deep enough for their
boats. Between the shore and the
floating dock is a man-powered ferry. We
loaded all our gear on the ferry, but we had to wait about 20 minutes before we
could pull in the ferry. It had gotten
grounded at the last tide change and we needed to wait until the tide came in
enough that we could pull it to the floating dock. Once it was free, we pulled it over and
started the old “heave-ho” to the shore.
The best way to get the ferry to shore with a group like ours is for
everyone to grab the rope and start walking.
When you reach the back of the ferry, you walk around to the front, grab
the rope, and start walking again. You
get to shore quite quickly with minimal effort.
It’s fun!
Note,
when the ACFS sets up the trip and gives you a time, they aren't being nice. They're
setting the trip on the tide schedule and with changes upwards of 20 feet in a
day being on time and getting on with loading and unloading is the difference
between getting on with your day or being stuck high and dry for several hours
(note the tides shown in the tide table app in the right hand column of this
blog). When dealing with the bay, you need to keep one eye on the tide
and not get surprised. Our tide isn’t faster than a running horse, like
the Bay of Fundy, and you can out-walk it, but it will cut you off if you're
not paying attention.
 |
| Beach Near Peterson Station |
Visiting
Peterson Research Center is a relatively inexpensive way to get a night in the
Alaska wilds. For those who are not members of the Center for Alaskan
Coastal Studies, you sign up for day or over-night trips. The trip includes the boat ride across the
bay (out and back) and a hike around the area led by experienced Naturalist. They
point out the various kinds of flora and fauna native to a sub tropical forest
and the intertidal zone of Kachemak Bay; one of the most popular trips is tide
pooling at China Poot. Where you can see
an amazing variety of small fish (sculpins among others) and a rainbow of
starfish (now called sea stars, since they aren’t really fish). If you choose the overnight option you spend
the night in one of their yurts. These
have electrical power and three bunk beds, but the bathrooms are a long walk in
the dark. In our case, four of the 6
people were Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies members so we took our neighbors
boat over and only had to pay for the yurt.
Once
we arrived we got a quick safety briefing from the volunteer naturalist: move
all food into the station, don’t leave it in the yurt; take your toothpaste to
the station--bears like toothpaste; the rules for using a composting toilet;
and the water at the Station is potable.
After the briefing (and moving everything but our food and toothpaste to
the yurt) we were off to pick berries!
 |
| Trail |
The
berries closest to the trail were mostly picked out, we were a bit late in this
year’s season, but there were many, many off-trail bushes that were chock full
of berries. All 6 of us came home with a
good haul. We got 7.5 lbs, our neighbors
with the boat got 2-3 times that, our other neighbor got about 2 lbs, and our
couch surfer got a nice big bowl full (she couldn’t travel with more than
that).
This was the first time my
husband and I had ever used a berry scoop (see an example of a berry scoop at Forest Harvest Berry
Scoops). Being from places without
significant numbers of wild berries, we had no idea that they existed and we
figured we would be picking each berry individually by hand. But no! Humans came up with a smarter way. You
basically go to the base of a branch and lift up the bucket up along the edge
of the branch and dozens of berries pop off into your bin. My husband
tended to run his scoop up the branch, rather than up the side of the branch,
so he got a lot of leaves as well as a lot of berries. His harvest looked like Sherman's March to
Sea. After about two hours, the
Naturalists asked us to stop picking so there’d be some left for the bears.
 |
| Blueberry Basket and Scoop |
Dinner
that evening was a potluck. For dinner,
we used their potable water, full kitchen, and microwave to cook up a 3-course
meal with food we brought with us. Our hosts, the neighbors with the
boat, provided an excellent halibut lasagna.
For most, the idea of using halibut that way would be horrifying, given
the cost, but in Alaska many have freezers full which allows for more creative
recipes. We also had the salad made from
farmer’s market lettuce, radishes from my garden, onions, and tomatoes with a
gourmet blood orange olive oil and raspberry balsamic vinegar dressing. We got the fancy oil and vinegar at the Vintage Olive
in Montgomery, AL. That stuff is just
amazing! I swear you can drink the
vinegar straight. Another couple that
was overnighting shared their fresh caught mussels steamed in garlic. It was all delicious, but our hosts pulled
out all the stops and we had homemade chocolate mousse with whipped cream (and
of course blueberries with whipped cream) for desert. That, plus the wine, and many of our party were
ready for a short walk to work of dinner before bed.
Our
host’s wife and their couch surfer went for a short hike to China Poot
bay. The couch surfer had a goal to
see both a bear and an eagle. She was
thrilled when they saw a black bear and her cub walk by on the beach below the
cliff they were hiking on.
My
husband and I walked down to the dock to watch the sunset. Sunset from that side of Kachemak Bay is much
better than sunsets we see from our house in Homer. While we were there, he spotted a Bald Eagle
perched in a beetle-killed spruce above the beach. When the couch surfer returned, I took her
down to see the eagle, so she ended up two for two on the trip.
 |
| Sunset from the Station |
 |
| Campfire |
The
others gathered around a campfire for an hour or so before the evening broke up
and we headed for the yurt. You provide
your own bedding whether it is a bedroll or sleeping bag. But the yurts
have three twin-sized bunk beds, for a total of six beds, with a decent
mattress pad. They also have power and a space heater for cold nights.
Getting
to the toilets at night is a little adventure in itself. First you have
to try to get out of bed without waking everyone up. The bunk beds are sturdy, but they creak;
it’s especially bad if you are on the top bunk.
Then you have to find your shoes, but them on, and get out the door
without making too much more noise.
After have successfully made it outside, you now need to negotiate the
long path to the station. Fortunately,
in summer it is never truly dark. A
flashlight was helpful, but not really necessary.
 |
| Rain on China Poot Trail |
The
next morning we had yogurt, granola, and blueberry preserves brought by our
other neighbor for breakfast the next morning.
Yum! Then, since we had some time
and not everyone was awake, we took a short hike in the rain to a China Poot
beach with a detour to a prehistoric native house site. There’s not much to see there except a
depression in the ground. The area was archeologically dug a few years ago then restored to the condition in
which it was found.
China Poot beach was
nice, but with the rain, fog, and clouds we really couldn’t see the view we
knew was out there.
 |
| Beach at China Poot |
After
the hike we were ready to leave, so we packed all our gear and our fresh
berries down to the ferry and made our way back to the boat. The ride back was rainy and colder, but
fortunately the seas were still fairly calm.
Given the weather there wasn’t much to see, but some of out party got
lucky and spotted a seal in the Homer harbor while we were loading the boat
onto the trailer to take it home. All in
all this was a great trip!
View Larger Map
No comments:
Post a Comment