A weekend in Homer

The first weekend in April Tyler and I decided to drive out to Homer for a relaxing and well needed weekend away. We had great plans to hike trials, walk along the water and just see the area. We found a hotel that allowed you to bring your pet so we packed up our things and brought Yawkey with us and headed out. The trip started off wonderful - nice weather, great music and a very successful and uneventful 4 hour drive to Homer. We got to our hotel around 10:30pm and settled in for the night with high hopes of a fun filled day with lots of hikes and outdoor fun with the dog and each other.

Around 9:30 in the morning I got up and got ready for the day. I looked outside the window in our room and mentioned to Tyler how gray the ground looked saying "Homer must have gotten way more Ash then Anchorage last week 'cause it was still all over the ground." Tyler didn't really believe me until he walked out of our room with the dog and saw that the car looked like this:


That's right good old Mt. Redoubt blew at 6:00am Saturday morning and covered Homer in a nice fresh layer of Ash. So all our fun outdoor plans were going to have to change...

We had some breakfast and then decided to drive down the spit and look at things from inside the car. When we got down to the spit we saw a bald eagle sitting down and drove right up to him to get a closer look. As we looked around we counted 12 bald eagles all round us - on the ground, the flag pole, roof tops and everywhere. Tyler and I got out with the camera to take some pictures and left Yawkey in the car thinking it wouldn't take much for an eagle to scoop him up and fly away. Yawkey as you can see was disappointed to be locked inside.




After the Eagle sightings the wind started to pick-up and all the ash started to blow around making any outdoor activity very uninviting. So we drove back through town and found the "Bear Creek Winery" which was open. We went in and had a really fun time enjoying a wine tasting and visiting with the owners of the winery. All the wines are made from Alaska grown berries and some of our favorite ones were the Raspberry wine and the Rhubarb wine. It was a nice relaxing afternoon and my first wine tasting experience and I loved it.


What a great weekend away and on our drive home it was so clear and sunny out that we could actually see Mr. Redoubt from the road with it's puffs of stream. (pictures didn't turn out to great of the Mt. but you get the idea)






It ended up being a perfect weekend away -

Lunch with the President

A few weeks ago I got invited to "Burgers with Bobbi" at my work. "Burgers with Bobbi" was an informal lunch of about 20 employees with our President at Arctic Slope Regional Corporation. It was a really nice time where the ASRC president, Bobbi, sat around with the 20 of us and talked about the companies strategic plan and founding. I was a bit nervous to have lunch with "the president" but it was delightful. She is very friendly and welcoming to everyone. What a wonderful lunch and fun time to hear from the "top dog" of the company. I love my job


Oh ya and the burgers were from Arctic Roadrunner - Fabulous!

Wildlife Encounter

Yesterday was no ordinary day. It started out as an ordinary day and then I went on a walk with my friend Natalie and our dogs.

We have gone walking several times together the past few weeks and our dogs love to be out. We got out of the car and right away saw two moose right off the path picking at the trees and just standing around. They didn't even seem to notice us. Yawkey's tale was wagging and he would growl and then let out an excited little bark and kept look at me as if wondering why I wouldn't let him off the leash to go play with those large animals. I am sure if he was loose he would go right up and lick the moose on the face if he could. Natalie and I snapped some pictures of the moose and then proceeded on with our walk.



Fast forward about 45 minutes later as we get near the end of our walk and Natalie spots another moose in the woods. We stop for a moment to look and then we notice him starting to walk towards us. So we take a few steps and see that he is starting to come towards us faster. Now I know we need to find something to hid behind and funny enough (though not funny at that moment) the only thing close was a small clump of trees (if you can even call one measly looking tree and a skinny birch tree a clump.) So Natalie and I scooped up the dogs and huddled together behind the few tree branches we could find. The moose came trotting out towards us and stopped on the path staring straight at us and didn't move. Finally he decided to head down the path a bit more and slowly started walking. Practically holding our breathe Natalie and I stayed as quit as possible hoping that he would keep walking. He did but was sure taking his time and kept on the path. So, after what seemed like a long time to us (in reality probably only a few minutes) he was far enough away for us to get out from behind the tree and head back to the car on the other trial that went around the other side of the frozen pond. There was no way we were following that moose all the way back. What a relief it was to get back to the car.

It made me grateful actually that I had been charged by a moose already my first hiking trip up here because this time i knew what to do. Though knowing what to do doesn't really make it much better the second time. We both ended the night saying how much we hate moose.

It sure is nice to back at home safe and sound.