Cama Beach

This was our first trip to Cama since the park opened in June. Unfortunately, we had to be back by midday Saturday, so it was a short overnight trip, but it was fun to see the place with kids and guests. I think the last time D and his friend A were up here was when I brought them up here for a really low tide when they were in 5th? grade. They played with the football and the frisbee for a while, but eventually started searching for teenager size logs to launch.

Snow Lake

I got up early this morning, swung by Fuel for coffee, the North Bend MacDonald's for breakfast, and was on the trail above Alpental shortly after 8AM. Which meant that I was already heading back out by the time the crowds from Seattle were arriving - heading into the mountains with gym shorts, sneakers, and sometimes, with a small Dasani bottle held in one hand.

The trail on the north side of the ridge, which drops down to the lake, was largely covered in snow and the lake was deserving of its name. It was a beautiful morning and if there was anyone else at the lake when I was, I didn't notice.

Kenai Fjords

Another all-day boat trip to see glaciers and wildlife. Fortunately, it came with dinner and D wasn't too bored to tackle the prime rib. Besides eating, he played cards and slept, although he joined us on deck now and then - probably when sleeping and playing cards got too boring.

We ate while drifting off the front of Holgate Glacier. The sun came out as we headed out to the Beehives and the Cheswell Islands, where we got great views of puffins, kittiwakes, and other diving-swooping-perching things. We managed to see several humback whales - including one or two that actually managed to get completely out of the water (which is pretty amazing for something that big, if you think about it).

Seward

We planned the trip way back in January and for various reasons our schedule had us arriving in Seward on the 4th. In hindsight, it's amazing we were able to find a place to stay, since the 4th is a big, big deal in this place. We arrived by train from Anchorage a little after 11AM and walked the 1/2 mile or so to Murphy's Motel where we unloaded our stuff, then joined the throng headed into downtown.

The big attraction is the Mount Marathon Run - a desperate scramble up and down the mountain behind town that grew out of a bar bet a century ago. They claim this is the oldest organized running race in the country, after the Boston Marathon. We were in time to see the parade, which was colorful and a little hokey, the way parades tend to be. We got to see Ted Stevens, the still-living senator they named the Anchorage Airport after. Then we walked up to the top of Jefferson Street to wait for the men's race to come up from town and disappear up the mountain. The runners scramble through the trees, up the scree, up the slabs and the waterfall, whatever works. 45 minutes or so later, they reappear, tumbling back down the slope, blood on their knees, mud and snow on their clothing, and waving at the cheering crowd.

Seward was pretty gray most of the time we were there - but the hotel had a TV so D could watch football (or at least football news shows about quarterbacks with short-lived retirements) while his dad wandered beaches backed by parking lots filled with RVs.

Ruth Glacier

The weather was so nice that we took the plunge and signed on for a flight around the mountain. We chose to pass on the glacier landing to save money, but then ended up getting it thrown in as they juggled planes and tourists for the afternoon flights. It was probably the most expensive thing we've ever done on a per hour basis, but I don't think we had any regrets. Wow!

They land heading up hill on the snow and then take off going back down. The takeoff was cool - it felt like sledding (in a big enclosed toboggan) and all I could think of was Calvin and Hobbes heading toward the jump...

Talkeetna

The weather stayed clear (or awfully close to it) so we continued back through Anchorage and then kept going north - calling ahead to find a room in Talkeetna - where we pulled in around 10PM. We checked into our room above the dining room at Latitude 62 - not much of a room, but the only place under $100 the entire trip.

We drove up to the big, fancy lodge on the hill to slum a little bit - and check out the views. D wanted stay in the car, but when we returned to tell him that a bunch of college age tour guides were tossing a Frisbee on the front lawn, he perked up. They played with the disk while the sun the sun set directly over the Alaska Range - we had to drag him away after midnight. It would probably have stayed light enough to play all night long!

Cook Inlet

Our last day in Homer we did a laundry and had breakfast at Sourdough Express before hitting the road. We wanted to make it back to Gwin's Lodge in Cooper's Landing for lunch (M had fallen for their salmon chowder on the drive down) - so I kept the scenic stops short while we headed up Cook Inlet through Anchor Point (the western most segment of highway in North America), Whiskey Gulch (beach and volcanoes), and Nimilchik (Russian church).

The next two days were our only unscheduled days of the entire adventure - in part because we thought we'd gauge the weather before deciding to invest in a drive up towards Denali. The weather was great, so that's where we were headed.

Kachemak Bay

Although Homer is a wonderful coastal town, it is mainly long, exposed gravel beaches and poorly planned shoreline over-development, so kayaking tours head for the other side of the bay, which is steeper and rockier and therefore much more interesting to explore. We took a water taxi across to the bay and with guide Ben and three college guys from Indiana, we kayaked along the edge of Yukon Island and around Elephant Island. D got a boat of his own, although Ben noted that adolescent males tended to be the most likely to flip the boats. D did note later that the problem with singles is that you actually need to paddle, unlike our excursion in Bartlett Cove, where there was someone in the back seat doing most of the work.

True North Kayaks deserves credit for one of the nicest outhouses I've seen.

Homer Spit

If towns are defined by place, and Homer certainly is, its defining place is the Spit, which extends out from the rest of town into the middle of Kachemak Bay. The spit's got boats and halibut and souvenir shops and places to eat, and spectacular views, but it also tended to look like a five-mile long RV Park stuck like a piece of duct tape down the center of a picture post card.

Homer

The pictures suggest that the weather wasn't perfect the whole time, but my memory was that it was. We arrived late in the afternoon and, like every visitor by highway before us, including many who have stayed, we rounded the corner and saw Kachemak Bay and the snow-capped peaks spread out in front of us. We were impressed. It didn't hurt that we spent the next three days in a pleasant inn perched on the bluff (which is another story) overlooking the beach and the spit and the bay and the glaciers.

We found the Sourdough Express and Wasabi's and the Two Sisters. We found gravel beaches (although only one of us spent much time wandering on them). We found the Homer Spit, although I think we all found it too crowded and too tacky.

As usual, I got up early and went off in search of coffee and bakeries and walks on the beach, returning later in the morning to retrieve the late risers and lead them to breakfast. Our place had a TV, but no cable and no NFL network, so D watched Seinfeld videos (which his mother could enjoy, too, whereas yet another ESPN counterpoint on the end of Brett Favre's retirement was wasted on her).

Mount Logan

I actually have no idea if this is really Mount Logan, except it was in the right place at the right time, give or take a hundred miles or so, and it was sticking through the clouds more than anything else I could see out of the right side of the plane on the flight from Juneau to Anchorage.

Mount Logan is 19,551' high, the highest mountain in Canada and second only to Denali in North America. Remind me to come back to do this flight on a clear day!

Gustavus

On our last day at Glacier Bay we rented bikes at the lodge and pedaled in the drizzle back towards town. A mile or so outside the park entrance we dumped our bikes in the woods and walked an unmarked trail a quarter mile back into the woods to find the remains of a small transport plane that crashed in 1957. Sort of eery - I guess it would be even weirder to encounter this on a walk without knowing ahead of time it was there.

Glacier Bay

We spent one of our days taking the Glacer Bay tour from Bartlett Cove - the boat wasn't very crowded, which made it easy to move around between decks and seats, depending on inclination and view.

Glaciers and icebergs, otters and sea lions, puffins and kittiwakes, bears and passing cruise ships.