Today was a day of glaciers....

Hello from Homer!

Well, as the title suggests, today was a day for seeing glaciers as we drove from Anchorage down to Homer. Unfortunately, it was a little hazy due to both warm temperatures and the smoke from two different wildfires that are currently burning in the area up here. But, even with the haze, we were treated to some of the famous Alaska landscape as we drove down!

Our first stop this morning was at the Portage Glacier visitors center, not too far outside Anchorage. From there, we following the Sterling Highway all the way to Homer, with only two other stops along the way. One was at a place known for its chainsaw woodcarvings, including a carousel that has all Alaska wildlife as the "horses" and a restaurant called Sal's, based on the recommendation of another Coastie Wife. The woodcarvings were VERY cool - parents, you'll be happy to hear that I picked out a cute rocking moose to be purchased on the way back from Alaska in three years, if all goes well - though I'm going to skip those pictures tonight in lieu of glacier pictures. Sal's was YUMMY - definitely worth the wait for our late lunch, Denise! Thanks! Jason had the Alaska burger, a GIANT burger on an even bigger sourdough bun, while I decided on the reindeer sausage sandwich. Rudolph was DELISH!!!!!!!!

We're now getting ready to head to bed after poking around Homer a bit this afternoon and enjoying a fantastic gourmet dinner tonight - the last of that kind of dining we'll be doing for a while. Homer is a very cute little town, too... Jason and I have already made plans for maybe a long weekend or something, hopping the ferry over from Kodiak if we can. We would've loved to have a little more time here, but we were also glad we made the extra stop at the glacier this morning... it was well worth it!
So, we have to be at the ferry tomorrow morning by 8am, which will be a very early morning for us! But it'll be worth the early morning when I get to finally see our new house tomorrow night! I've had butterflies all day, just getting excited about finally seeing it in person!!!

Without further ado, though, I'll get the pictures up here from the glaciers. Enjoy!

This first one is from a stop on the way out to Portage. That's a glacier moving its way down the mountain! I may have opened the exposure just a little too long on this, so it's a little washed out, but you'll get the idea.

Next, we have an iceberg... yes, an actual iceberg which theoretically calved from the Portage Glacier. It was right in front of the visitor's center, which we didn't go in, so I'm not sure if it was brought there for people to look at, or if it really just ended up there!

Here's Jason and Fred in front of the iceberg. Fred just wanted to go swimming... in the nearly-freezing water.

And these are some smaller chunks of ice with the glacier in the background. It was freezing cold out there, but worth the frozen toes (I was wearing flip-flops!) to see the sights!

So that's it from Homer (it's midnight now, and I have to be up in 6 hours.... oh, and it's still light out!!!)! We'll try our best to post from Kodiak tomorrow, but we're not scheduled to get our internet connected until sometime on Monday, so I can't make any promises. We won't get there until long after all our East Coast friends' bedtimes, though, so it won't be too big a deal to wait a while.

We hope everyone has enjoyed following our cross-country trek. We made it through the driving part without killing each other - we even still like each other! - and now we get to go enjoy our new house together! Stay tuned for regular updates, though they probably won't be as frequent as they've been.

We love and miss you all!
Becca