usa: alaska 2 - homer
a couple days after our arrival in anchorage, monica and moriah (both visited us in kenya many years ago so it was a delight to spend time with them again. on a side note, its interesting how some friends you make are friends for life - 10 yrs later we meet up and it was as though we had not been apart.) decide to drive us up to homer, about a 4 hour drive. "Homer - A quaint little drinking village with a fishing problem." as some describe it. apparently it was named after a con man named homer pennock who tried to promote gold-mining in the area.
this beautiful place is located on a bay that is surrounded on all sides by snow-capped mountains. it also has a spit (homer's spit...get it?) that extends into the bay and has all these cute little shops...mainly restaurants and fishing shops. this is the view as you drive down into homer - awesome, innit?
one of the things homer is famous for is its halibut fishing. halibut are one of jehovahs stranger creations: when born they look like a regular fish, with an eye on each side of the body. but because they spend their lives lying on one side at the ocean floor, the eye facing downwards presumably gets fed up with always staring at the ground and thus decides to join its compatriot on the sunny side. so it migrates and the halibut ends up with both eyes on one side of its head.
we stayed at the home of gary and stacie - most kind of them seeing as they had never met us before! they shared their amazing home with us - this is the view out of their windows. wow. i would probably give one of my kidneys for a view like this of the bay and ice-capped mountains and glaciers beyond. thanks again for sharing with us.
their daughter, ellie and son-in-law david were great company as well - hopefully one day we will meet up again, whether in ecuador (where they serve as need greaters) or in kenya, who knows. oh, and another pic from the house - moon rising over the mountains.
so after spending the night, the next day we loaded up into gary's boat and took a trip across the bay for a hike up towards a glacier. what a pretty place. as we walked down the trail (in addition to lots of fresh bear droppings) we saw little openings where we would occasionally catch a glimpse of a picturesque mountain or a bit of glacier. one highlight was a pulley system with a cage to pull ourselves across the river to our picnic spot!
finally we got to our ultimate destination - a beautiful lake with an awe-inspiring glacier running into it. if this was in any other place, there would be a huge line to see it, tickets, mcdonalds or whatever. here it was totally deserted. which only added to the awe-inspiring-ness. (sorry, i may have created my own word there). so this lake had ice-bergs floating in it, and was ice-cold. some of our more fearless friends (you could also substitute 'crazy' for 'fearless') waded in and the most 'fearless' stripped down to her swimsuit and SAT on the iceberg. i would show you that shot but this is a family blog and also, i dont want to die just yet.
this is just to prove that we were actually there and didn't just post a bunch of postcards :)
musa's angels:)
oh, and finally our adopted homer family.
one cool thing about alaska (as if it wasnt already beautiful enough): because of its high latitude, the sunsets take like 2 hours. most photographers know of the maybe 2 or 3 minutes of golden light just before the sun sets...here is like 30 minutes of golden light. this is the sunset off of homers spit...
this beautiful place is located on a bay that is surrounded on all sides by snow-capped mountains. it also has a spit (homer's spit...get it?) that extends into the bay and has all these cute little shops...mainly restaurants and fishing shops. this is the view as you drive down into homer - awesome, innit?
one of the things homer is famous for is its halibut fishing. halibut are one of jehovahs stranger creations: when born they look like a regular fish, with an eye on each side of the body. but because they spend their lives lying on one side at the ocean floor, the eye facing downwards presumably gets fed up with always staring at the ground and thus decides to join its compatriot on the sunny side. so it migrates and the halibut ends up with both eyes on one side of its head.
we stayed at the home of gary and stacie - most kind of them seeing as they had never met us before! they shared their amazing home with us - this is the view out of their windows. wow. i would probably give one of my kidneys for a view like this of the bay and ice-capped mountains and glaciers beyond. thanks again for sharing with us.
their daughter, ellie and son-in-law david were great company as well - hopefully one day we will meet up again, whether in ecuador (where they serve as need greaters) or in kenya, who knows. oh, and another pic from the house - moon rising over the mountains.
so after spending the night, the next day we loaded up into gary's boat and took a trip across the bay for a hike up towards a glacier. what a pretty place. as we walked down the trail (in addition to lots of fresh bear droppings) we saw little openings where we would occasionally catch a glimpse of a picturesque mountain or a bit of glacier. one highlight was a pulley system with a cage to pull ourselves across the river to our picnic spot!
finally we got to our ultimate destination - a beautiful lake with an awe-inspiring glacier running into it. if this was in any other place, there would be a huge line to see it, tickets, mcdonalds or whatever. here it was totally deserted. which only added to the awe-inspiring-ness. (sorry, i may have created my own word there). so this lake had ice-bergs floating in it, and was ice-cold. some of our more fearless friends (you could also substitute 'crazy' for 'fearless') waded in and the most 'fearless' stripped down to her swimsuit and SAT on the iceberg. i would show you that shot but this is a family blog and also, i dont want to die just yet.
this is just to prove that we were actually there and didn't just post a bunch of postcards :)
musa's angels:)
oh, and finally our adopted homer family.
one cool thing about alaska (as if it wasnt already beautiful enough): because of its high latitude, the sunsets take like 2 hours. most photographers know of the maybe 2 or 3 minutes of golden light just before the sun sets...here is like 30 minutes of golden light. this is the sunset off of homers spit...
yes, another beautiful day from alaska. once again, i think that it cannot possibly get better or prettier than this....
