From Homer, back up to Anchor Point and on to Seward

We were greeted in Homer with sunny, clear weather making the mountains that surround the town visable at every turn. We ventured out onto Kachemak Bay for a visit of Halibut Cove, a very small artist community, a short boat ride away. We rode on the Danny J. a converted fishing vessel holding about 25-30 people. Bucky did well braving the somewhat rough seas that we faced on our return trip. While in Halibut Cove we enjoyed an excellent lunch at an outdoor cafe and met an artist named Dianna who paints with sepia colored ink extracted from octopus, or is it octopeii? She went into great depth telling me of inserting the syringe needed to extract the ink into an oriface lying beneath the octopus. This is done after enticing the animal from its rock hiding place and flipping it over onto its back. She told me all this while her eyes danced with sadistic excitement. I found her to be interesting in her insanity and her sepia toned artwork to be very beautiful. I was particularly fond of one stark piece with black stylized crows and long legged cranes flying over the canvas except for the fact that Dianna herself emerged naked from the painting's background. She delighted in pointing this out to me. Unkown to us, our trip was to take on an artistic theme, one of the dangers of traveling itinerary free. We were next to meet Norman Lowell, Alaska's best known artist. As much as the octopus ink was appealing, the knife and brush paintings of Mr. Lowell were more so. He and his wife moved from Iowa in 1948 crossing on the Alcan highway to build a cabin and homestead in Anchor Point, AK. They now have open to the public their lovely studio which houses Norman's life's work. They also welcome visitors to view their original log cabin and flower gardens. We had the pleasure of meeting both Norman and his wife. We found them to be lovely and gracious in the way of all the Alaskans we have met while on the road. After stopping for a beer at Clam Gulch, AK, not part of the "artist trail", we were made aware of the upcoming "minus" tide. This tide is lower than low and allows for clammers to access the razor clams which stay out deep. We made the decision that we needed to harvest the allowed 60 razor clams each provided by our sportfishing licenses. We camped on the beach so as to be ready to head to Cook Inlet an hour before the minus tide with our rented shovel and pail. After watching and practicing different shoveling techniques, Bucky became quite good at digging, grabbing and not breaking the fragile shells. The hardest part was cleaning the 90 or so clams we ended up with. Thanks to the help provided in this area by the campground host, a Middlebury College grad., Bucky learned the proper cleaning technique and within two hours we were done and the clams frozen.