Seward

Flower thief. Snagged it before daddy even noticed.

 Little otter playing in the waves.

Grams helping Kit and Andi find the best throwing rocks.

Homer

Long post, lots o' pictures, blah, blah, blah. I had a lot of fun photographing our four fabulous days in Homer, and even Andrew took a few pictures (hint: I'm in them!).

There's nice walking/biking trail that goes the length of the spit.

When we first got to the spit I felt pretty bad since I had planned the whole thing. We had driven five-and-a-half hours and were committed to three nights at an expensive RV park and it didn't look like there was much to do besides fish. The private beach was rocky and we had passed all the stores miles ago in town.

We decided to make the best of it and for an activity we'd walk down the spit as far as we could go. Then we discovered that we hadn't passed all the good stuff. We found shops, restaurants, bakeries, and plenty of pretty scenery further. Whew!

Bird's the word.

The ladies! Kit wanted out of the stroller.

This was the view from the front window of our motorhome from our camping spot. I took this at about 11:15 pm.

Then later that day we thought we'd check out the other side of road from our RV park. Real beach! We've visited a few saltwater beaches in Alaska (Whittier and Seward) but this was the first that gave us the ocean experience we are familiar with. The smell, the wind, the sound of waves, and actual sand! Our time in Homer was getting better and better.

Arlie was the chickeniest chicken that ever chickened.

Sunset looking back up the spit towards Homer.

Saturday morning we went for a walk to eat some brunch at La Baleine. It was so good!

Pieces of coal caught in the sand ripples.

 

We tried taking pictures of our "treasures" instead of keeping them but we still ended up bringing a bucket full home. Oh, well.

P.S. I also added a few more pictures to the Portage Pass post if you're interested.

Exit Glacier

We hiked up to Exit Glacier on Mother's Day. It was perfect and so was the weather. The girls were more impressed with the moose poop than the glacier but that's OK.

After the hike we found a place on the side of the road to pull over to grill some hot dogs. One of the things I really like about Alaska in the feeling of freedom. There's so little private property. See that mountain? You can climb it. See that stream? Check your app for places you can pan for gold on it. See a great place on the side of the road? Chances are pretty good you can pull over and camp there. It's pretty cool.

Seward

Our first motorhome trip of the year was to Seward, AK. It's a beautiful drive from Anchorage to Seward so the vacation feel started almost immediately. Plus, we were so happy to be back in the motorhome. Our rental house is great but we're not fully unpacked and we have little furniture. It was nice to be back in a space that's ours.

Seward is a cute town on the ocean. The RV park was basically a humongous gravel parking lot but the views were incredible so we couldn't be mad. Saturday we were woken up by the largest earthquake of the year. There's not much to do in a motorhome but ride it out! We got so lucky with spectacular weather and we walked around town to points of interest I found on my Alaska app. We also visited the Alaska SeaLife Center - the girls got to see and touch a bunch of different sea creatures, and found a very playful sea lion that chased them back and forth. Each of us picked out a souvenir from the gift shop and Kit's choice was a seal that she couldn't stop "talking" to. After lunch and gelato downtown she made her seal into a pillow and took a nice nap.

The next morning we were treated to a view of the fog lifting up over Resurrection Bay. I probably looked like a crazy person, bursting out of our motorhome in pajamas with my camera around my neck, hoping to catch the light just as it was. It was worth it. Totally.

Hope

We took Harvey out for probably the last weekend of the year to visit Hope and do a little goldpanning.