Homer Beach

My daughter, Michelle has been living in Homer, Alaska for a year.

She has a small cabin on the beach. It was pretty cold and overcast most of the time we were there, but at low tide (about 9 pm), it was fairly clear and so I went out and walked the beach.

I was rather shocked to learned that driving a vehicle on the beach is permitted. It was annoying. I was all set for a peaceful stroll, and there were teenaged boys joy riding around in circles on the beach!

Exit Glacier

Exit Glacier is a few miles outside the town of Seward. There is a visitor center and several options for hiking to the glacier. We opted for the 1 mile hike to the side of the glacier.

Our hike brought us up very close to the glacier.

Mail Art Project - Week Forty Two

Red Buttons

Hand dyed cotton, commercial cotton, satin stitching, hand sewn buttons.

This week's quote:
"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world
and a desire to enjoy the world.
This makes it hard to plan the day."
-E.B. White-

Prince William Sound - Seward Highway

Another really beautiful highway is the Seward Highway.
We followed it all the way to Prince William Sound - and the charming town of Seward.

Matanuska Glacier

The Matanusaka Glacier is within easy view from the Glenn Highway. We enjoyed watching it as we drove closer and closer.





There is a nice parking / rest area that offers a really terrific vantage point for the glacier.
This is a very impressive glacier.

Summit Lake near Paxson

There are actually a lot of lakes called Summit Lake in Alaska.
This particular one is located near Paxson along the Richardson Highway.

There is a glacier off in the distance beyond the lake, but we were not able to discover it's name.

There was still ice floating on the lake. It obviously had opened up fairly recently.

Richardson Highway Views

The Richardson Highway is an incredibly scenic route from Fairbanks to Gulkana. (actually, I believe it goes all the way to Valdez, but we didn't follow it that far.

The Alaska Pipeline pretty much follows the Richardson Highway, so there were lots of opportunities to see it.

Again, the weather made for some interesting views. We saw a lot of rainbows during our trip!

Grayling Fishing at Tangle Lakes

One thing I really wanted to do while in Alaska was fish for Arctic Grayling.
We had read that one of the best places for catching Arctic Grayling is the Tangle Lakes system located along the Denali Highway. This was our destination after our night at the Maclaren River Lodge.

It was chilly and overcast (the predominant weather during my entire visit). We fished from the shore.

Michelle was successful - she caught about 6 Arctic Grayling. She released 5 of them, but we thought we would try cooking this larger one - it was about 15" long.

We dined on Grayling that evening. I cooked it in foil on the little gas grill we were traveling with. It was pretty mushy, but we were hungry and didn't have a lot of other options. We ate it!

Denali Highway to Maclaren River

The Denali Highway is a gravel road that passes east to west between the Parks Highway and the Richardson Highway. We really wanted to see this wild area, so we headed there after a quick tour of Fairbanks. It was a long ways and so we found ourselves driving down this gravel road about 9 pm. under cloudy skies and light rainshowers. We went as far as the Maclaren River, where we found a room at Maclaren lodge (below).

We were tired of freezing in our sleeping bags and we were imagining the room (we had to walk outside to get to the toilets) would have heat. NOT. Still, it was warmer than the tent.
The morning dawned bright and partly cloudy - giving us a nice view of the Maclaren Glacier (below)

Mail Art Project - Week Forty One

Saltwater Crow
Fingerpainted cotton, screen printed with a Thermofax screen adapted from a photo I took at Saltwater Park in the Seattle area.

This week's quote:
"I think I've discovered the secret of life - You just hang around until you get used to it."
-Charles M. Schultz-