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:

There’s plenty to write about Hong Kong (sorry we’ve been lax) but first the craziest thing.

We’re on this Vietnam Air flight from HK to Hanoi, which is kinda ramshackle seeming. It’s no Cathay Pacific, kind of more on the Southwest side of things, but way more ghetto. Anyway, we’re all crammed in to the tiny, old seats, with the teenage boys behind us horsing around and turbulence threatening to spill the tomato juice that is being handed over people by the steward who sways naturally with the plane when bam, those oxygen supply masks that you hear about every flight but have only seen in the demonstration drop out of the ceiling.

After looking around a bit thinking, “oops, must be a mistake”, the combination of a sharp response in the ears and seeing the steward groping for a mask, it becomes evident that something is actually happening and we’d better get the stupid masks on.

So now the plane is full of a couple hunded people sucking air out of plastic bags, all looking around nervously wondering what is going on. Are we going down? Will we all die? Did the pilot start dozing off and accidentally hit the “depressurize cabin” button? Well, we all continue wondering as no one comes on the PA to tell us that we aren’t all going to die, so we just sit there, terrified, watching the plane slowly lose altitude out the window. Concerned we might have a water landing, I think how lame it would be to have to swim with my shoes on, socks getting wet and all. Plus, I’ll be expected to leave my new camera and computer on the plane, which will mean I’ll lose the picture of the masks dropped. Lame!

An older woman is not taking the dramatic pressure change to well and the plane staff is fussing around her. One flight attendant gestures to his mouth and says, “off”, so people start taking off the masks. But they continue to dangle there for the rest of the trip.

A bit later the pilot comes on and explains everything to put our fears to rest an restore confidence in his, and the airline’s, competence. “There has been a minor situation but everything is under control now”. Yay. Maybe he’s got cup of coffee, or taped some cardboard over the “make everybody panic” button in the cockpit.

Coming in to land with the cabin depressurized is quite uncomfortable. All you can do is madly work your jaw to get the occasional air movement which, while relieving, is a bit painful. But we land safely and are thankful that we do.

So that’s our adventure for the day. Now we wait at the airport for our flight to Da Nang on Vietnam Air. Goodie. Uh, I mean, please let that have been our adventure for the day.

Update: the second flight was uneventful. We weren’t worried - the plane seemed to be in better condition