On a clear day...

July 11, 2009
Homer, AK

...you can see forever. With haze and a marine layer, not so much. We thought we might get a clear day for photos, but it wasn't to be - this time. At least we haven't had any rain for a while. Oops, probably shouldn't have said that!

Today was our last day in Homer so, what else, we took a drive somewhere else. In this case, that somewhere else was only 15 miles back up the Sterling Highway to a wide spot in the road called Anchor Point. An explorer centuries ago lost an anchor here, and it's been called Anchor Point ever since. In modern times, the local claim to fame is that it's the farthest western point in North America that you can reach solely by road. Sure, there are a lot of roads in areas west of here; there's still a lot of Alaska out there - but - you have to take a ferry to get there. So, we've captured both east and west, as two summers ago we got to the most eastern point on our trip to Nova Scotia. Not bad for two old farts roaming around in a "camper".

We started out with a stop at the local Farmer's Market (like many, light on "farm" but plenty of "market" - trinkets and crafts). On the way back, we stopped at the Norman Lowell Gallery and saw many nice (and spendy) paintings from over 50 years of work by the artist. Since we couldn't afford the art, we got a few free pictures in the garden before heading back to Homer. We wrapped up with a few shots of the local boat (and more) graveyard, basically a junkyard by the sea.

Click here for pictures...

After dropping the pups back at the coach, we headed out for a late lunch: a dozen oysters on the half shell. They're local, fresh and reasonably priced - who knows when we'll see that again? From there, it was picture processing time, grilling steaks, posting backlogged blog entries, and packing up for tomorrow's departure.

We'll head back up the Sterling Highway past Soldotna (possibly with another stop at the Moose Is Loose Bakery), then north to the Anchorage/Palmer area. We'll see the sights in Anchorage on Monday, and then have Geri's follow-up MRI (from the kidney operation in April) done in Wasilla on Tuesday morning. From this point, we're pretty much "headed home", as we're on the downhill side of the trip. We still have quite a bit to see in Alaska, though, and our next stop after Palmer/Wasilla will be Denali National Park and Mount McKinley. From there, we'll head to Fairbanks with a possible side trip to the Arctic Circle. Then it'll be back on the Alaska Highway at Delta Junction, headed for The Yukon, BC, and the "lower 48".