I don’t have a report from Sarah yet (Sarah!!!), but I can tell you a bit about our time in and around Homer.

The town is ridiculously cute. A big feature is the natural spit, jutting out into the sea, with bars and restaurants and camping grounds, as well as the boat docks. We really enjoyed walking around down there, and eventually found ourselves back on the spit every time we ventured out.

Everyone we told about going to Homer enthusiastically told us to go to the Salty Dawg. It’s a tiny little bar on the spit, with a crazy look, in and out. Adorable and full of incredibly friendly folks.

The ceiling inside is completely covered with dollar bills people have written on, tshirts, and underwear. THe ceilings are very low, it’s like walking into a gnome house or something!

On our second day there we decided to jump over to Seldovia, another small fishing town across the water. At first we thought it was an island, because the only way to get there is by boat or plane, but it is actually a part of the peninsula, it’s just that driving there is rather difficult. According to what we read, Seldovia used to be bigger than Homer and was the major fishing port in the area, while Homer was an agricultural town. Now Seldovia has a little over 300 residents, 30% from native tribes.

We took a tiny 6-seater (including the pilot) plane over. I was nervous at first, I’ve never flown in such a small plane, but it was a lot of fun! We were lucky to have beautiful, calm weather, so the ride was smooth, and wow! the views were awesome!

As we expected, Seldovia is darn cute. The view from our hotel room was a tiny Russian Orthodox Church perched on a hill, and we were near… well, we were near everything. It’s not a big town. We walked from the airport (air strip?) to our hotel! It was very quiet and many of the businesses were not open for the summer yet. At times it was like walking around a ghost town. We walked down the main road, and out to a small beach where we took in the view and poked at the sealife. Then we decided to get dinner and went in to the one open place, a bar & grill. That’s where every one was. Walking in was one of those stranger in a strange land moments, everyone noticed us, and looked at us, since we were probably the only people from out of town there. [on a side note, that once happened to me and Jay in Galway, Ireland. We walked into a pub and I swear to god all conversation stopped and everyone turned to stare. If it had been a movie, the record in the jukebox would have screeched to a stop. In fact, in my memory that sound is there. Seldovia was nowhere near as dramatic, but the feeling was there.]

We spent one quiet and lovely night in Seldovia, and then flew back to Homer. We kicked around a bit, went to the Salty Dawg again to get online and find ourselves a place to stay back up in Anchorage before flying home and took a last good look at the town. We agreed that we would like to return to Homer some day. We’d love to spend more time there, and maybe to hike in some of the surrounding areas. We pretty much steered clear of the forests on this trip because the bears had just woken up and were rather hungry. In fact, shortly before we arrived in Homer a bear took down a moose in someone’s driveway. They caught the end of it on video: and posted it on youtube.

In the afternoon we started the long drive back to Anchorage, where I had found us a true blue fleabag motel to stay in. It would have been right at home on Aurora here in Seattle. I wasn’t aware of its quality when I booked it online, and it was the only place I could find that we could afford, as all the other places had implemented summer rates during the week: a $100 increase over what we paid at the beginning of the trip! As we drove in everyone who lives there was in their doorway smoking and staring at us. It wasn’t too bad in the end. Though it was really run down and creepy, the linens were clean and people were quiet.

I have just a couple more stories left to tell, including Sarah’s. Until then, enjoy this chainsaw art from Seldovia:

Our good friend Sarah, a passionate lichenologist who can hardly go ten minutes without wanting to stop the car to explore lichens, comes up to Alaska sometimes to work. As Alaska is among the dwindling number of states we’ve never visited (and is supposed to be very beautiful), we decided to come up and visit her, and she has extended her stay.

Alaska is home to uncountable breathtaking landscapes. The fly in on Thursday evening was incredibly beautiful. Even more beautiful, we hesitantly agree, than the fly in to Cleveland.

Waiting for Sarah to finish up her work (she was spending 16 plus hours a day doing wacky lichen identifying and such – an intensity facilitated by the daylight hours: fairly light from four thirty in the morning until eleven at night) Keely and I explored Anchorage a bit. It is a fairly unattractive town nestled among stunning mountains and sea. There seemed to be a vacancy in the town with the tourist season not yet being in full swing. We did, however, come across some kind of poorly attended street fair type of thing, where soulful country / folk musicians would, after surprisingly long explanations, play the audience a song. One comment during the preamble to a song we heard was, “many people in the audience may want to sing along with this next one, but don’t, because that’s not the way we’re doing this”.

A culture of eating and wearing animals prevails. Even at restaurant chains you can upgrade your sausage to reindeer. The city was incredibly clean, other than the pervasive gravel remaining from the snowy season. We visited a unique out of the way cocktail bar featuring a dragon water fountain and a fashionably funky wait staff. No pierced eyelids or angry cherub facial tattoos, but modest ink. We probably missed the really wacky kids in town. The mudflats were very nice by land, but quite amazing from the air when flying in.

Saturday afternoon we drove south to Seward. After a couple hours of breathtaking landscape, we arrived at the cute town at the end of Resurrection Bay. Yesterday we went on a boat tour and saw quite a bit of wildlife: eagles, otters, mountain goats, sea lions, etc. No puffins, bears or moose, though, unfortunately. It was a wet and cold trip, but very fun. The half hour or so spent outside the bay on the Gulf of Alaska was quite rough, the slightly under 200 foot boat we were on was tossed around pretty nicely.

Today we’re going to visit Exit Glacier and head back to Anchorage so I can head home to class.

We arrived in Anchorage around 10:30 last night, in time to see a beautiful pink sunset reflecting on the mountains below us as we approached in the plane. It was finally dark by midnight, though the horizon still held a royal blue hue. I’ve been enjoying the lengthening days of spring, it isn’t dark until well after 8pm now in Seattle, and by the solstice it’ll extend until after 10pm, but this is still impressive!

The views around Anchorage are beautiful, snowy mountains and blue sea. Today we walked downtown and to the coast trail, where we took a short walk. Mike has homework he needs to attend to, so now we’re enjoying beers at a local microbrewery where he can work. I had a moment of worry about wasting the beautiful daylight, but remembered that we’ve got many hours left of that.

From our wandering of the town I’ve quickly boiled Anchorage down to flat, small, and full of fur, ivory(!), and other shops that Mike and I cannot (will not) enter. Visually, it’s a cute city, but I wouldn’t come here for the architecture.

Later today we will meet up with Sarah, and tomorrow afternoon probably head down to Seward and the Kenai Fjords and Exit Glacier.