Kachemak Bay’s Cozy Lodges Lie Between the Woods and the Water

In most places, banks reward their customers with a free calendar at the end of the year. In Kachemak Bay, they hand out tide tables.

For there, and all along Cook Inlet, that immense 220-mile arm of the sea that sweeps north to Anchorage, the tides can rise and fall as much as 36 feet, stranding--or drowning--the unwary.

“Five hours from now, the water level will be down about 27 feet, but tomorrow the highs and lows could be completely different,” said our host and fishing guide, Kevin Sidelinger, as he stepped out of the skiff onto the rocky beach one warm afternoon last May.

Sidelinger, owner of Ishmalof Island Lodge, a pine-log wilderness lodge on Halibut Cove inside Kachemak Bay, pulled the tide book out of his pocket and flipped the pages to show us the entry under that day’s date.

An experienced outdoorsman, Sidelinger already had realized that the tide had turned, and that with it ebbing, the skiff had to be anchored far out in deep water. So, balancing the anchor on the bow’s edge and grasping the anchor rope’s end, he pushed the boat back out 25 feet, then tipped the anchor into the water.

“Otherwise,” he said, “we’ll be stranded on the beach for six, maybe seven hours. I can tell you from experience, that boat’s heavy if you have to push it over the rocks.”

A beached boat would have been a hassle for us fishermen, impatient to snag a King salmon running on the tide in schools toward the head of Halibut Cove. The Kings were fat, shiny 40- and 50-pounders the Department of Fish and Game had released as fingerlings five years earlier in the same spot.

But in a real emergency, a boat stranded in Halibut Cove might mean life or death, because Kevin and his wife Cindy, and their neighbors have no roads to the outside world. Motor boats are their only transportation to each other and to the town of Homer across the bay.

Instead of roads, behind the lodge lie 350,000 wooded acres of southern Alaskan wilderness, the Kachemak Bay State Park and Wilderness Park, most of it accessible only by boat and float plane.

Despite the isolation of the lower Kenai Peninsula, Kachemak Bay is known both in Alaska and in the Lower 48 for its rich fishing and relatively mild weather. Twice blessed, it is the site of several wilderness guest lodges, each offering a slightly different sort of Kachemak experience.

At Tutka Bay Lodge on Tutka Bay, activities emphasize quiet comfort and environmental awareness, with nature walks, bird watching and photography the main activities. The owners serve gourmet meals in the main house; guests stay in separate cabins that either private or shared baths.

At the Kachemak Bay Wilderness Lodge, on nearby China Pot Bay, owners Mike and Diane McBride serve up the Alaskan adventure in luxury, with French wine, hot-tub soaks, designer print fabrics and organized outings.

With an established reputation and clientele, the McBride’s cottages are usually booked a year in advance.

But at Ishmalof Island Lodge, guests have a chance to share the Sidelinger family’s life style, their version of what the Alaska license plate calls the “Last Frontier.”

Kevin, a Connecticut native, Cindy, from Oregon, and their 11-year-old son Bowman, are outdoor lovers who like to fish for halibut, salmon and Dolly Varden trout. On sunny days, they hike up to Grewingk Glacier, identifying wildflowers and edible plants along the trail, then feast on Alaskan crab and shrimp pulled from their own traps in the bay.

At low tide, everybody dons rubber boots and digs clams on the rocky beach. Halibut Cove is known for its clamming at low tide. In the summer twilight, which lingers until after 11 p.m., guests gather on the pine-planked deck above the water to watch the eagles, always hunting for fish, and to hear Kevin tell stories of fall hunting trips. They sound like tall tales, but for the moose antler rack on the lodge wall, the thick, white mountain goat pelt in the bedroom, and the freezer full of meat for winter.

Cindy has her own favorite stories of encounters with grizzlies at McNeil River Falls, tracking moose at Tustamena Lake, or running the lodge by herself during the Exxon oil spill, when Kevin took the skiff 200 miles to Prince William Sound and remained for five months to help on the oil cleanup.

Cindy has been a dedicated bird watcher since she came to Alaska. She keeps a bird guide and binoculars in front of the picture window for quick identification of Arctic terns, puffins, kittiwakes and other water birds that breed at Gull Island, a protected rookery at the entrance to Halibut Cove.

Visitors who need a dose of civilization will find it at the village Halibut Cove, whose red-and-green clapboard houses might be a New England hideaway. A long boardwalk on pilings serves as a sidewalk, connecting the dock to the houses perched around the steep hills. There are restaurants, even here. The Saltry, a small cafe, serves fish dishes from $8 to $25.

Anchorage resident Walt Hanni, who builds custom houses in places like Kachemak Bay, had high praise for the construction of Ishmalof Island Lodge. The walls are logs of ponderosa pine, cut two feet thick and fitted in Montana, then shipped by truck and barge.

The five guest rooms, three large and two small, have rough pine walls, big quilt-covered beds, fur rugs and framed prints. Some baths are private, some shared. The lodge is heated and lit by a battery-powered, generator-driven system of modern plumbing and electric lights, and is furnished with comfortable, over-stuffed furniture and sturdy tables and chairs.

A collection of whale baleen, a walrus head, pieces of ivory, antlers and bird eggs sets the tone.

Though Kachemak Bay’s wilderness lodges are usually booked a year in advance for June through August, cancellations occur and free dates are often available during the fall. Ishmalof Island Lodge, now in its third season, had open dates for late summer.

Cindy said the lodge attracts a surprising number of European clients (Anchorage is an eight-hour flight over the North Pole from Europe). “The Germans especially like to fish,” she said.

In July, the Sidelingers lead a photography trip to McNeil River to view the bears who come to feed on spawning salmon.

“The falls there get the greatest concentration of brown bears of any place in the world,” Cindy said. “You have to be there the right weeks, though, because when the fish are gone, the bears don’t hang around. They just disappear back into the bush.”

The Sidelingers’ five-day McNeil River trips include air fare from Homer to the McNeil River, plus tents, food and supplies. Reservations must be made well in advance, because the state issues permits to visit the falls--by lottery--for only 10 people each day.

Guests who plan to fish at Ishmalof Island Lodge should bring knee-high rubber boots for climbing into boats and a selection of layered clothing: shorts for sunning on the deck, cotton and wool shirts for evening, jeans and wool socks, and a warm jacket and hat for motorboat rides on the bay.

And as everywhere in this big, big state, where the animals, the glaciers and even the tides are immense, binoculars are a must.