During my 2021 trip to Alaska, I really wanted to revisit Homer, where two friends and I had worked for a summer way back in 1981!  Back then, we went to Homer hoping to catch a ferry to Kodiak Island, where we heard it was easy to find jobs.  But we noticed a couple of canneries and one fish processing factory right in Homer so we asked around.  The folks at the fish factory said, "Start tomorrow morning!"  Thus began several weeks of working on the "slime line", which I won't go into here, but which is an interesting (well-named) process, basically an assembly line for cleaning and processing fish (salmon in the summer).  Being young and adventuresome, we camped on the 2+ mile long spit of land sticking out into Kechimak Bay (the Homer Spit) along with hundreds of other adventurers from all over the world.  On this 2021 trip, when talking with some locals, I was reminded that the locals called us "spit rats".  They have gotten rid of most of the spit rat camping areas but there are still a few places. Most of the former camping areas have been taken over by touristic stores and tour operators, and most of the former camping areas seem to be mostly used by RVs now.  I also found out that the fish factory where we had worked had been destroyed by an explosion back in the mid-1990s!  Apparently there was an ammonia leak that blew the top off the building.  The factory was never reopened and now seems to have been replaced with a waste disposal company!  Anyway, Homer is a still a lovely and lively town, with lots going on in an idyllic setting.