Another vacation post? Heck yeah #6 here we go- Homer!

The last leg of our road trip was a stop in Homer.  I LOVE Homer!  It is a hippie/fishing town 5 hours south of Anchorage.  We were coming from Seward so we didn't have to drive as far to get there.  Only about 3 1/2 hours.  We stopped at The Kenai River so that I could show my parents the beautiful turquoise water that the Kenai produces.  There is a nice little board walk that you can walk around to see the scenic beauty and also you can take down to the river itself.  When we were there people were in their rafts getting ready to go fishing in the river.

We made a quick pit stop about half way to Homer to get some lunch.  Then continued on our trip the rest of the way.  We got to Homer a little to early for check in so Nate drove us down to The Spit.  Which has some very cute shops to look around.  We only went to about 1/4 of the shops before we noticed some guys filleting fish and watched them work their magic on the Halibut.  We then went to the hotel to check in.  At this point from all of the driving and the hiking that Nate did yesterday his ankle was killing him so he stayed at the hotel while we went to eat at Fat Olives.  It is a good Italian Restaurant.  I had the Mac and Cheese with bacon on top.  We went back to the spit and shopped the night away or at least until the shops closed which happened to be about 40 minutes after we got there.

On the way home my mom wanted pictures of the ship graveyard (I'm not really sure if it was a ship graveyard but it looked like one so that is what I am going to call it).  I dropped her off at one side of the graveyard and picked her up at the other side.  She walked down the side walk and took pictures of all of the cool boats that were out there.  The next day we went back and got these two pictures.  Mine was supposed to show that I was too broke to afford anything but this boat to take me anywhere. My parents caption their photo by saying that they spent all of their money in Alaska now they have to take the slow boat home. 

We also spent quite a bit of time at the beach that morning.  I just love the beach.  The sound of the waves, the cool breeze and even the smell of the ocean.  I love everything about it.  The kids spent a lot of time gathering shells and just wandering.  I spent a lot of time taking their pictures.  I took over 100 photos at the beach.  My mom took some great photos too.  These are both my mom's and mine.

After the beach we went to the farmer's market.  I remember it from the year before and thought that it was just great.  My favorite part of it was the bagels.  Well guess what folks the bagels weren't there this year.  But don't you fret.  I hunted down those bad boys and went to get some before we took off from Homer.  Anyway the farmers market wasn't all that great. I just wasn't as impressed as I was the year before.  After the farmer's Market we headed back to get Nate and then straight onto Anchorage. As we were passing through a little town called Cooper's Landing I was noticing all of the fisher men out Salmon fishing when I glanced out the window and saw a brown bear on the side of the river.  I yelled bear, bear, bear and pointed to the location.  Natalie and Ella were the only ones that looked up on time to see it.  IT was super fast and disappeared back into the forest.  Nate did flip around to see if anyone else could see it.  Now I am notorious for seeing animals that aren't really there so of course he didn't believe me.  I was at that point super happy that at least Ella and Natalie got to see it too.  We also saw 2 fishermen taking pictures by where the bear was at so I think it is safe to assume that they were taking pictures of where the bear was at. On the way home we finally got an amazing view of Mt. McKinley so that was good.

Vacation with my parents part 5, Seward.

The following weekend we had another road trip in mind.  This time instead of going North we took my parents South to Seward and Homer.  We weren't in as much of a hurry this time.  It doesn't take as long to get to where we are headed on this trip.  As a matter of fact we showed up too early.  We couldn't check in yet.  Our first stop was Seward which is a small fishing town about 2 1/2 hours south of Anchorage.  A long the way we made some stops to go hiking and we stopped at Beluga point to see if we could see any whales.  We weren't really hopeful but it is still a beautiful place to stop.

 

 You can't really tell in this picture plus it is flipped the wrong way but Ella is looking not at the ocean but the opposite direction.  She is looking at the mountains.

This is the first time that anyone from my family has been to Seward.  It was fun to see new places.  On the way in Nate fell and sprained his ankle pretty bad.  He missed out on a lot of the stuff that we did.  When we went to check in they wouldn't let us so we walked around the small little town to see find somewhere to eat.  We were right across from the ocean so we went down to look at that too.

 Then we decided to hike up to Exit Glacier which is right outside of Seward.  Nate made the hike on his sprained ankle.  My mom made the hike too.  It was very steep in some areas.  They made me nervous for her and for my kids.  It wasn't too bad of a hike.  It was one of my favorite hikes that I have been on here in Alaska.  It was gorgeous.  I was surprised that we didn't get to go up to the glacier.  For some reason I thought that  we would be able to walk right up to it and touch it.  But it was too dangerous.  On the way into the park they had signs that had years on them.  The closer we got to the parking lot the higher the years went.  We didn't know until we got out of there that the years represented where the glacier was at that time.  Lets just say the Glacier has melted off hundreds and hundreds of feet in such a short amount of time.  We hiked up to a sign that told you to close your eyes and listen to the glacier. You could hear it creek and groan.

 After out fun trip out to the glacier we headed to the hotel.  Much to our sadness we once again had full size beds to sleep on.  Not a fan might I add.  But on the positive side we did get a window and a balcony in our hotel room.  Both of which faced the inside of the lobby.  Who wants to sit on their balcony and enjoy the goings on of the lobby.  It was weird.  Plus in the morning it was loud because our room was right above the breakfast bar.  Tyler did take to dancing in the hallways of the hotel.  We did enjoy that view from our balcony.  He would disappear for a moment and then show up at some random floor dancing his way across the hall.  One time he was following this old guy dancing behind him.  When ever the guy would look behind him Tyler would stop dancing and pretend to be very interested on what was going on below him.  It was hilarious.  He is quite the funny kid.

 After we got Nate all settled in for the evening all but Nate went wondering through the town.  We looked through a lot of the tourist trap shops.  We then found something to eat (Subway) and went back to our rooms to eat it.  After a little while My mom, dad, Natalie and I got restless and headed to out to walk around the shops again and take pictures of the murals that they have painted around town.  It was a the ideal weather while we were out too.  It was in the high 60's.

 The next morning we got up and went down to the harbor.  Actually my dad, my mom, and Ella went for a walk to explore but I wasn't up that early in the morning. When they got back we met downstairs for breakfast and then went to the shipyard.  We saw lots of little boats and some massive cruise ships.  Nate waited in the car because of his sprained ankle, My dad and Choley disappeared only to reappear with pastries, and the rest of us walked down to the docks. We then loaded up in the car and headed off for Homer for the last road trip day of my parents vacation to Alaska.