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It takes a boat or plane from Homer to reach the greenest tip of the Kenai Peninsula and the quiet little town on the south side of Kachemak Bay. But you're in Seldovia, Alaska, your feet will get you around just fine.

From Seldovia's harbor, it's a few minutes' walk above Susan B. English School to the "Otterbahn." Many rustic trails weave through adjacent Kachemak Bay State Park, some reachable only by floatplane or boat. But none is more accessible than the Otterbahn, built largely by local students.

It soon immerses you in the rain forest, knee-deep in ladyferns. Club mosses coat the fallen logs. Lichens and liverworts beard the rough-barked spruce. Shelf fungi ladder the busted snags. And where the going gets marshy, the city parks and recreation department has eased the way and lessened the trail's impact on wetlands with a long stretch of volunteer-built boardwalk. The stroll leads to Outside Beach just north of town.

We'd barely left sight of the school when, with the sharp crack of a branch, a bald eagle abandoned its perch high above to our left, then shot down and away, threading the sparse timber ahead like a B-52 through a chicken yard. In the distance, an unseen woodpecker responded with a rat-a-tat-tat.

The attractions of Seldovia and its surroundings don't begin and end with the woods.

"The best part is just to be here," Mary Jane Lastufka says of her job as proprietor (with husband Tony) of Across the Bay Tent and Breakfast. "And to see people really relax and maybe just stare at the sea."

Many a guest would likely agree. Tent and Breakfast also offers guided kayaking, the taking of clams and mussels at low tide, mountain biking, hiking and berry picking. It also hosts art seminars through the summer.

With an international clientele, the dinnertime conversation can be intriguing. Among the guests during our stay were Brooks Jackson, a CNN journalist; his wife, Beverly Jackson, a National Institute of Drug Abuse spokesperson; and their daughter Courtney, a freshly minted M.D. from Oregon Health Sciences University. Father and daughter were planning a road trip from Portland to Chicago, where Courtney would intern at the Cook County General Hospital of "E.R." fame.

Lastufka's main cabin, about five miles out of town, looks across to Yukon, Hesketh and several smaller islands dotting the waters beyond Kasitsna Bay, one of several coves scalloped out of the Seldovia side of Kachemak Bay. In a misty light, the island's cliffs take on a heroic bronze cast.

Kayak tours around the islands can take you within snapshot range of endlessly playful sea otters.

"Sea rats!" one Seldovian said with a smile.

They may take their share of clams, but it's impossible not to be charmed as you run alongside and they lounge lazily, a wave for a hammock. With only their feet and heads in view, they bob like swamped canoes. They have the tool user's trick of breaking clams with stones while similarly reclined. Identifying their cracked shells ashore is no mystery; unlike the kind dropped by gulls, they're broken on just one side.

You don't need a kayak to see the otters. Keep your eyes open on the boat to and from town; the otters are comfortable enough with humans to come right into Seldovia Slough. Or you can hire a water taxi for a closer look.

Among other sights are ancient middens (piles of discarded seashells left by nomadic hunter-gatherers) still visible on Yukon Island and the striking red striations on Hesketh Island. The stripes are evidence of chert colored by radiolarians, a deep-sea protozoa deposited on the sea bottom in ancient times. Its presence above the waves reflects a part of the state's tumbled geology.

The "tent and breakfast" concept is a bit like Scout camp with much better cooking. Visitors are put up in floored, 10-by-12-foot tents, use pit toilets and take plenty of hot showers in a central cabin. In a bigger main cabin, guests gather to eat, read or simply stare out at the rain from a cozy chair. The musical may try their hand at a piano, guitar or accordion during these interludes. Others may take a trip down memory lane with the "Best of the Carpenters" and other hits of the early '70s, in their native format -- the eight-track tape.

Not up for camping? There are 13 conventional bed-and-breakfasts in Seldovia, including the one that proprietor Susan Mumma says is the granddaddy of them all on the Kenai - and even Anchorage.

"The Seldovia Rowing Club B&B was the first in 1980," she says. "People didn't know the concept. They gave me quite a ribbing. They'd say, 'We know what you're doing.' "

The comments went away after a Seldovia friend and his wife spent a night at the Rowing Club -- and a picture of the man "resting peacefully in a nice frilly bedroom" appeared in Mumma's front window. Folks have been coming ever since for the comfy bed, bath and kitchenette overlooking Seldovia Slough. The Rowing Club is on the short section of historic boardwalk that survived the '64 quake. Most of the walk was destroyed as the land subsided and Seldovians found the next high tide in their living rooms.

Moored back of the boardwalk at Mumma's place are three skiffs with classic lines, hand-built locally by the late Mike Balough. They're extremely photogenic, but if you're looking to get out on the water under your own steam, direct your feet to Kayak'Atak, in Herring Bay Mercantile, for daily guided kayak tours or kayak rentals. Local historian Susan Springer runs the Mercantile, a gift shop featuring some of her own designs, with a dab of whimsy. Out the back door, a tiny gazebo offers her two springer spaniels a "canine harbor observatory." It may be the only such in the world.

Messing about with boats is just one of the watery fascinations of Seldovia.

"I was a teacher here for years," Mumma says. "The tide pools brought me here. I see nudibranchs here. They're my favorites -- and every time I go out I see unique species."

Just up the street from the Rowing Club, 11-year-old Ryan Zimmerman of Anchorage fished happily from the bridge over the slough. Lifting the lid on a big Coleman cooler, he revealed the catch of the day, a 10-pound king salmon that stretched across the bottom of the cooler with its speckled tail turned up. This is a "synthetic run," stocked by hatchery. There are no natural spawning beds. At a time when other Kenai runs were being closed or facing restrictions, Ryan and his family were happily landing big ones.

The really big fish hug the bottom of Kachemak Bay. We spoke with Toan Vo, an Anchorage resident and guest at Across the Bay Tent and Breakfast. Sunburnt after a day of halibuting, Vo was rubbing a round and massive left shoulder.

"I thought I'd strained it when that big one first hit," Vo said.

Soreness aside, he had the huge smile of a young man with two 32-pounders and a 40-pounder in the chiller after a day's play. Halibut weighing more than 300 pounds have been landed. But cooks prefer smaller, less ancient "chickens."

Back at the dock, the Fantasia II (Fantasy North Charter) and Peggy'N'Me (Seldovia Fishing Adventures) had just pulled in, and the crew was laying out pale-bellied flatfish -- some as big as boogie boards -- to be weighed and cleaned. Halibut and salmon charters too numerous to name are available out of Homer and Seldovia.

If landing a big one is your chief object, you might check the monthly standings in the Homer Jackpot Halibut Derby at homerhalibutderby.com/standings.htm. The summerlong derby awards prizes for the biggest halibut, for releasing fish weighing more than 80 pounds and for landing previously tagged fish. Releases are encouraged because the bigger halibut produce more viable eggs.

What about other big animals? Black bears roam Kachemak State Wilderness Park. Encounters aren't likely, but the usual bear precautions apply. Brown bears and whales don't hang around Seldovia, but they're easily reached. A few floatplane operators -- Bald Mountain Air Service, Emerald Air and Kachemak Bay Flying Service -- offer flight-seeing out of Homer. Bald Mountain and Emerald do brown bear trips across Cook Inlet; Kachemak specializes in glacier and fjord tours. Hallo Bay Wilderness Camp, with offices in Homer, operates a camp near Katmai National Park across the Inlet and offers packages ranging from a day to a week.

A number of operators offer seasonal whale-watching. Rainbow Tours combines a tour with daily taxi service between Homer and Seldovia. The tour departs Homer daily at 9 a.m., drops off shuttle passengers in Seldovia by 10 a.m., then continues on a whale-watching trip to the Barren Islands. Minkes, humpback and gray whales are seen, as well as orcas, puffins, sea otters and many other seabirds and mammals. After returning to Seldovia, the boat departs for Homer at 5 p.m. daily.

Seldovia's more than wildlife. Don't leave before you've had a chance to meet some of the easygoing residents or to spot "the few old crabs" that the city's Web site warns you about. Sample the ice cream at the Sweet-N-Clean and wash your duds at the same time -- what a concept!

Take a self-guided walking tour that includes such sights as St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church, built in 1891 and renovated in 1981. With sufficient notice, groups of six or more can arrange for guided walking tours. But these tours are not available daily; inquire at the mercantile.