Joey in Homer, AK

12/30/2025

I posted to a counseling group on Facebook about a counseling job opening in the Homer area back in August of 2024. That position went unfilled the entire 24-25 school year. Elementary counseling job cuts across the district resulted in me receiving an involuntary transfer to that same position. I've illustrated where each school location is on a map to give you all a better idea of the driving distances. The roads can be quite treacherous in the winter. Imagine driving on a sheet of ice downhill as the road curves and maybe throw in a moose. There's a Carrie Underwood song titled "Jesus take the Wheel" that I may or may not have sung on my morning commute.

Kachemak Selo is about an hour drive from town and one section of the road is incredibly steep to get out there. I often end up walking part of it. If I had a drone I would get a pulled back shot of the road for you all to see what it entails. There are even days where the tide is so high that school ends early because teachers won't be able to drive the waterlogged road.

The three schools out at the head of the bay are entirely made up of Old Believer Russian students. An internet search will give an idea of what their beliefs and customs are.

Having worked exclusively at the elementary level in my 4 years of teaching as well as my internship being all elementary and then doing 4 years of elementary counseling I wasn't sure how the transition would end up going being at middle and high school level but it has been a good experience and I've really been enjoying learning essentially a whole new job. There was one day I took a walking field trip from the school with the middle and high schoolers of kachemak selo and we walked to the ocean only to have Otto Kilcher (from the tv show) and his buddy pass us with all of their cows.

Getting out and doing wildlife photography has been very difficult as the sun is rising after school has already started and the sun sets before school is even dismissed. I've got some future trips lined up so I've tried to keep myself prepped by taking pictures at the schools.

Overall I've been welcomed at my new schools and am looking forward to the next semester

09/13/2025

I had been hoping to make it up to Denali at the end of August to photograph caribou in the fall colors. Upon arriving, I paid to stay at the teklanika campground and planned on taking the transit buses. An early termination dump had recently closed the park road and the buses were quite full so I walked around from the campsite and spotted a lone caribou on my first day there. I ended up exhausting myself and missed the last bus back to the campground but was picked up by a sympathetic park employee.

Day 2 I was able to get on the first bus through and found out that much of the drive was closed because of gravel being washed away by the teklanika river. I was pretty bummed but it ended up working out extremely well when a group of 16 caribou was located close to the on an early section of the park road. I hopped off the bus and spent all day photographing them, getting markedly better shots than I had in years prior. I also met up with my buddy Jamin right by the caribou which was icing on the cake!

Day 3 ended up being my last day and the road was more fully open to east fork. I spotted a couple of grizzly bears down in a creek bed and realized they were on a caribou kill. It was pretty recent and the park rangers were notified by our bus driver and ended up closing off a large area to hikers as a result. I stayed on the bus and returned to the same caribou herd and had another day of great shooting opportunities and ended up leaving the park that evening. Overall, a very fun trip and one I hope to repeat in years to come!

08/14/2025

At 11 PM on April 26 I got the call from the Homer police I had been waiting for- a moose roadkill. I quickly called my friend to gather a team to process it and not too much later we were all out there quartering and preparing the moose. I was not much help but I was able to lift the legs to help make the process a bit easier. We had it completely cleaned up from the roadside and I was in bed by about 3 AM. Most of it was converted into ground moose meat with some sausage and some left as steaks. I got 1/3 of the spoils which was about 35 pounds of moose meat, filling my freezer. The meat is very lean and tastes like beef (maybe 1% fat). I am now off of the city of Homer roadkill list for the next year. Pretty wild!

08/07/2025

After months of planning out a trip with Maxime Legare-Vezina Photographe to Kodiak, we left on the Tustumena out of Homer with my truck and kayaks. We had plans of using the kayaks to access various puffin islands around Kodiak. Our first day, we went out of Anten Larsen Bay without much puffin success but we had oystercatchers. I was nervous to go out into "open" water even with the sea kayaks and life vests on, but after practicing my self-righting skills with the cowboy scramble technique and seeing how simple the t-rescue looked, we set off for Puffin Island (a far more promising spot) leaving from the boat launch in downtown Kodiak and made the 1.3 mile journey across open water. We ended up going 3 separate times to try and photograph the horned and tufted puffins. Perched shots on the cliffs were difficult to come by but I did get at least 1 flying horned puffin photo I was happy with. Thankfully, there were no unintentional kayak flips.

I also met a travel respiratory therapist for providence hospital on kodiak and we were able to go out kayaking as well. We randomly met at ft. Abercrombie state park and were kayaking maybe 45 minutes later!

I did not see a single kodiak brown bear on my adventures but was okay with that. They were definitely around but did not pursue getting photos of them.

I was also able to meet up with a friend who is spent some time with in Nome, Kris Luckenbach who also lives in Kodiak and went out to Pashagshak (a southern area of the road system in Kodiak) with him as well as fossil beach. I think I was able to find a fossil lodged in the side of the cliff.

The salmonberries were everywhere and along every road and were super ripe and tasty. I had salmonberry breakfasts.

Overall, experiencing Kodiak was pretty amazing and makes me want to go back for more!

07/10/2025

I just got back from a 5 day camping trip to Silver Salmon in Lake Clark National Park. It was a fun trip with great company and plenty of wildlife! We camped out on the beach and had these plant mites all over our tents and blowing sand getting through the screens to cover our gear but we still had a lot of fun!

07/01/2025

about a year ago I went to the homer farmers market and purchased a bracelet with all of my loose change from one of the vendors by the name of "Mari in the sky" (one of the kids I know from school happens to work the booth). Mari in the sky was back in action this year and they added facepainting in addition to their bracelets. With a little peer pressure and some strong salesman techniques me and my buddy Jared were soon decked out as pirates. While I was in the middle of getting face painted I learned of an open seat on a Beryl Air flight leaving in 30ish minutes. I ran out of the farmers market, grabbed my camera and some waders, and jumped on a plane to Hallo Bay. I highly recommend both Beryl Air and Mari in the Sky!

06/16/2025

This summer has already been a whirlwind and it has been less than a month since school was let out. At the end of May I did a trip to Nome with Sergius Hannan leading and me operating as the sort of 2nd in command. We had an amazing time and had my first grizzly bear sighting out there. The weather was perfect and bluethroat (my most sought after species) were on territory all over the place. I was wishing I had more camera reach than my 400mm lens for them but that was okay. I collected as much of the muskox fur as I could find on the ground as it is supposed to be pretty valuable and very warm. A couple of bird species I saw this time I had not seen on former trips included the red knot and the red phalarope. Great company and a great trip!

03/30/2025

03/24/2025

My recent spring break did not really result in the sort of photo opportunities I was anticipating. I started out hoping for lynx, switched to rock and white tailed ptarmigan when that didn't work out, then switched to river otters when that didn't work out. Once the river otters wasn't working out, I switched to a well known red fox in Anchorage and photographed that. As I was on my way to Homer, I stopped for orcas in the turnagain arm just outside of anchorage and the american dipper in Cooper Landing.

There are reports Mt. Spurr, not super far from Homer, has the potential to erupt soon. https://avo.alaska.edu/volcano/
There's potential ash could fall over the Kenai peninsula depending on the direction of the wind. Chapman has been instructing students to make sure devices are unplugged and shut down in case the eruption happens. I still don't quite understand why this will matter but maybe I will find out this week!

I've also been working on a photo blind to hopefully photograph magpies, which seem to be very cautious and not interested in being very close to humans it seems. hopefully they accept my peanut offering and being accustomed to my photo blind!

The winter king salmon derby just finished this past Saturday and the winner got $70,000 in prize money along with side bets for the 30 pound fish he caught. Apparently there were 1200+ people competing. https://www.homerwinterking.com/2025-homer-winter-king-salmon-tournament/2024-official-results/

02/28/2025

I spent a couple of days in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge looking for lynx without any success. My consolation prizes were a redpoll flock feeding off the side of the road and an american dipper diving for minnows.

02/04/2025

Join us TOMORROW to learn about Homer's wildlife hotspots with photographer Joey Hausler! 🫎

As a part of our FREE Tuesday Night Lights talk series, we'll be at Coastal Studies Headquarters at 6:30pm to learn why Homer is a wildlife photographer's dream. See photos Joey has taken, and hear stories of encounters with some of our amazing wildlife.

Visit akcoastalstudies.org/events for more information!

📸 Photos provided by Joey Hausler

01/13/2025

This winter has been low-key without a lot of travel, but the photo opportunities in Homer continue. It seems that every winter I have been here, owls have moved into the area and hunted sections that do not have a lot of snow. This winter has had so many periods of melt that when you look around town there is almost no snow to be seen.

At the start of the year I was reinstated as the elementary school counselor for the Homer area schools, which was a relief to have my job back.

One project that I've been working on is figuring out how to set up a raspberry pi computer to run an indefinite slideshow on a tv monitor. I've figured out how to view the images from a thumb drive with the feh image viewer, but ultimately I would like to figure out a way to have images from a google drive folder automatically sync to the raspberry pi and then display on a tv. Not so easy for someone who knows nothing about how to code!

It seems that every year in Homer there has been an irruption of some bird species. When I first moved into town, I was witnessing hundred of fork tailed storm petrel's right at the end of the spit. Another year I saw thousands of swallows (mostly tree swallow) over Beluga lake. This past winter, there were probably hundreds of thousands of crossbills and redpolls in Homer alone. This winter I haven't seen many cone eating birds, but there does seem to be to some owl abundance. Maybe irregular shifts in bird numbers is regular.