Alaskan Vaca 2022 - Day 9, Our First Glacier On The Road To Seward

It has come time to check out of a great AirBn'b and none of us were happy about this fact.

Rob and I were still up at 1:30 am and I told him that I was going to walk down to the lean-to on the beach as I did NOT want to leave this place and he asked if he could go with me, like I'm going to pass up an opportunity to spend time with a teenager who asks to spend time with me!

1:30am; Rob and myself listening to the waves and having a fantastic conversation.

We had a visitor!

The water was cold!  lol

Drippy Caleb slightly out of focus on the upper half.

Next up are some pics of our AirBn'b...

You can see the top of the lean-to just to the left of that camper and pine tree in the left part of the pic.

Carl, the owner, lives upstairs for the summer and lives at his other AirBn'b in Cabo during the winter.  That is some kind of life!

I did a TON of writing  at that table where if pondering something, I could simply turn to my right,  look out the window and see the Redoubt volcano across the waters of the Cook Inlet.  Absolutely beautiful.

Robby in the chair where I took my most favorite and best nap of my life.  The breeze off of the water was blowing across my feet as I napped.

Carl was building a cement whale tail to put out in the back yard.  I said, "Dude, you need to put that out front for your guests to guide them in.".  He really liked that idea so I'm curious where he eventually put it.

Morning came quickly and we found ourselves packing, drinking coffee, doing dishes, sweeping and other stuff all the while dreading leaving.  The feeling was similar to the feeling when we left the Big Island in Hawaii and Rob was so sad as I think it was his favorite place that he'd been to that point.  His posture in one of the early pictures that represented how we all felt leaving here. 

Once everything was cleaned, loaded and so on, we left and locked up. I ran into Carl as I was heading out and thanked him for everything including getting to play with his daughters Jack Russell Terrior puppies.  He then told me about the jumping fish about 1.5 hours previous as they were migrating North not far from shore.  That would have been cool to see...

So we left for Seward, heading thru Kalifornsky and Soldotna.  Mama Chaos spotted a bear in the St. Elias Brewing Co. parking lot as we were leaving Soldotna.  I spotted a bear many more miles down the road in a private drive but that was about it.

This was on the way to Seward.  Airplanes instead of boats at the docks.

Looks like an album cover if he ever becomes a musician.  Love him!

Before getting into Seward proper, we took a detour to Exit Glacier and went on a bit of beautiful hike.  It's cool as they have signs with a year on it to indicate where the base of the glacier was at that time.  Cool stuff.  It was good to do a little hiking for once instead of driving/sitting/riding or something...

That's the glacier from a distance.

The glacier from a much closer, and colder, view.

My fams!

Rob with a sign representing his birth year.

Caleb and Mama went up further for a closer view.

Sasquatch with a coat!

 

Caleb dancing across a log bridge.

I like bathroom signs that I find funny.  Apparently, there was an issue in this bathroom with people flushing...   Thank you kindliest.

This is in Seward, Resurrection Bay.  We went to the Alaska Sealife Center and had lunch at Seasalt.  The Alaska Sealife Center was ok but would have been "more gooder" if the boys were 5 & 7 years old instead of 15 & 17.  That scar on the hillside is from a fairly recent landslide.

That's the Seasalt Restaurant.

From the balcony of our hotel.

Cool shot showing a fairly recent landslide that happened.

Then it was back to the hotel to chill for the evening, playing blitz and watching Impractical Jokers.  We're pretty tired at this point...

A Wanting Steve

When Stevie goes outside and does his "major" business, he runs back inside, halfway thru the basement, jumps up on the couch as I take my shoes off, lock the door and hang up his leash, and when I turn around, I see this!   When I get close, he rolls to his left side for a tummy rub.

 

Alaskan Vaca 2022 - Day 8, A Trip To Homer and His Spit

Today is a rare day with little planned. The idea is that we would drive down to Homer and the Homer Spit, have a late lunch and then the critters could clean up leftovers from the night at Kenai Brewing Company.  

That didn't work...

But first:

This is what it looked like outside as I went to bed. There was heavy cloud cover so much darker than previous nights.

We, meaning Mama and I, went to get breakfast at The Moose Is Loose while the critters were getting up, showered and ready for the day.  We got in line to order and I noticed that it was all donuts and pastry's and crap that I don't really care for, so I told Mama to just get me a coffee and I was going to go across the road to fuel up the vessel with some petroleum distillate for today's drive.

On the way back "home", we called Rob to make sure he was up.  He sluggishly answered and said that he was just getting into the shower.

We had breakfast and then loaded ourselves and our coffee into the vessel to head South for the afternoon.

We made it to Homer without incident and went to Bishop's Beach first.  

My peeps!  This is in the parking lot at Bishop's Beach.

Looking back towards Homer with the beach behind me.

The tide was out so we could walk a good way out.

Caleb out front in the pic, with Mama not far behind him and Robby in his slides...   You had to be a little careful as the leafy crap could be kind of slick.

I was unsure what this stuff was.  I still am.

That's the "leafy crap".  It reminded my food-loving-butt of a lasagna noodle. 

Caleb.

My peeps again!

I should never be in charge of taking selfie's...

We crossed paths with three lovely young ladies from the East coast and they asked us if we would take a picture for them.  We would.  They reciprocated. 

I like helicopters.

Choose your steps wisely!

We didn't go into this place, but it sure caught our attention!

Next we drove to the Homer Spit for some shopping and lunch.  

That didn't work...

The shopping stuff went off ok other than the fact that I bought myself a sasquatch social distance t-shirt that didn't fit... again.  I quit.  I give up.  I will wear the clothes that I currently own and once they've all disintegrated, I'll lay down and die to avoid more shopping.

Rob and I had a task to carry out.  He is taking my pic as I accomplish the task.

Not amused!  lol

First one of these that I actually found "in the wild"!

From one of the decks of the restaurants that we couldn't eat at.

Drinking his coffee out of the wind.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh, the shopping!  lol

 

I liked this piece of art.  Not for $25, but I liked it.

Shopping is over with and we're ready to get food. Now we're talking!

I asked the lady at the check out where we bought my ill-fitting shirt along with some other things, where the best local food was and she replied, "Crabbie Patties", while the other worker said, "The best fish n' chips is at The Boardwalk Ends".  Duly noted as I love me some fish n' chips!

However, we had some peeps who were wanting seafood and fish n' chips did not satisfy that so we walked up to Crabbie Pattie's.  There was printed out sign on the door that said, "Closed for mechanical issues".  Ok then...  we headed across the road to another large restaurant that had a full parking lot but the sign on the door said, "Closed, reopening at 4pm".  We went back into Homer proper and it was a 40 minute wait.

We stare at our phones for a painfully long time instead of just admitting defeat due to so many places being closed.

We decided to go to the local Safeway grocery store and get a few snacks and I would also relieve myself.  I didn't tho...  there were customers waiting everywhere and not an employee in site.  I gave up and just went back to the car as the heavy tourism of the spit had sucked the life out of me.  I just wanted to be out of there.  

We left town shortly thereafter and had a mostly silent drive back to Soldotna where we ended up eating at Mykels.

Caleb had a fishing store that he wanted to visit so on our way back to the AirBn'b, we stopped there and I went into the store with him.  It was a rather eye-opening experience as there are a LOT of commercial fishermen here and they had sinkers from a couple of ounces up to 5 pounds!  They had fishing rods that were an inch in diameter and 16 feet long.  We didn't buy anything but we left the store with a young lad with a serious desire to go fishing when we get back to Iowa.

We headed back to our lovely AirBn'b to do laundry, pack, clean and get ready to head out in the morning.  We played some blitz too.

We will weep openly when we have to leave this place tomorrow!

I Discourage This Behavior!

About 2 hours after splashing ~200 degree cooking oil on my fingers.

24 hours later.  Virtually zero pain, only slight discomfort.  

My Peeps!

 

We look pretty good for being old farts...