Homer Spit

To understand the spit, you have to picture the ice. Thousands of years ago a great glacier ground its way down this valley and out into what is now Kachemak Bay, pushing a huge ridge of loose rock and gravel ahead of it. When the climate warmed and the ice melted back, that ridge of rubble stayed behind. A moraine is the name for the pile of debris a glacier leaves at its edge, and the Homer Spit is one long, low moraine reaching out into the sea.

The bay itself was carved by the same slow work of ice. Look across the water from the spit and you can still see the glaciers that made all this, hanging in the high valleys of the Kenai Mountains. It is a rare thing to stand on the very rubble a glacier left behind and, in the same glance, see the ice that is still busy making more of it.

At the tip of the spit is the Homer boat harbor, one of the busiest small-boat harbors in Alaska. In summer it fills with fishing boats, charter boats, sailboats, and skiffs, and the docks bustle from early morning on. Sea otters float on their backs among the boats, eagles perch on the pilings, and gulls wheel overhead, so even a slow walk along the harbor edge turns into wildlife watching.

The harbor is why Homer is here. Back in 1899 a coal company laid a railroad track out along the spit to move coal from the bluffs to boats waiting in deep water, and the little settlement that grew up around that work eventually became the town of Homer. The coal railroad is long gone, but the spit is still all about the water, a place where boats come and go with the tide and the whole community gathers at the edge of the bay.

Along both sides of the spit run wide gravel beaches, open to anyone, where you can walk for a long way with the mountains as your backdrop. Much of this shoreline is public land looked after by the City of Homer, with the Mariner Park lagoon near the base of the spit set aside as protected shore. It is a fine place to beachcomb, fly a kite in the steady wind, or just sit and watch the light change over the bay.

The tides here are the thing to respect. Kachemak Bay has some of the largest tides in the United States, rising and falling more than twenty feet in a single cycle, so a beach that is dry gravel at low water can be deep under the sea a few hours later. Watch the water, keep an eye on the time, and never walk far out onto the flats as the tide is coming back in. Handled with care, those big tides are part of the magic, uncovering a whole world of tide pools and then quietly swallowing it again.

The spit runs right off the end of the Sterling Highway in Homer, so you simply drive down into town and keep going, out along the narrow road with water on both sides, all the way to the harbor. Homer is the last town on this stretch of road, quite literally the end of the highway, so fill up on gas and groceries in town before you head out onto the spit.

Give yourself an easy half day to enjoy it. Walk the beaches, watch the boats and the otters in the harbor, scan the far shore for the peaks and glaciers of Kachemak Bay State Park, and let the huge tides show you why this place feels like the edge of the world. It is windy, wide open, and unlike anywhere else, a natural bridge of gravel laid down by ice and now reaching straight out into the Alaska sea.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.