Wednesday, March 21st - Weekend getaways are good, frozen septic systems are not.

Steve and I had a terrific time in Anchorage and Homer. (Thursday, March 15 - Monday, March 19) We had such a marvelous time, that we decided we'd like to make the trip to Homer to see the eagles an annual thing. It would coincide perfectly with our anniversary (April 5th), so we'll just call it an anniversary getaway.

I'm making this entry on a separate page because there are so many photos I want to share, and they would take forever to load on the main page of my journal. I hope this makes things move a little faster!

(As always, please wait for all thumbnails to load before clicking for enlargements)

North Pole to Anchorage

After dropping Sedona at the kennel, we stopped for a breakfast sandwich and then got on the Parks Highway on our way to Anchorage. Anchorage is about 356 miles from Fairbanks. Depending on weather and traffic, this drive can take as little as 6 hours or as much as 9 hours. With a clear highway and hardly anyone else sharing it, we made the trip in about 6 hours.

I didn't take any photos on the first leg of the journey (Fairbanks to Denali Park), because I've done that drive many times and have tons of photos documenting it. Past Denali, the scenery was gorgeous as always - a snow covered expanse of flats and mountains; frozen lakes and streams. We saw moose every couple of miles and counted 14 total on this trip. Not seen as frequently (for us) are caribou. This pair was running along the highway, about 40 yards off in the distance.

We arrived in Anchorage a little past two, checked into our hotel room, and decided on TGIF for an early dinner. After eating, we took a drive down to Earthquake Park so I could get a photo of downtown Anchorage. The skies were a beautiful blue and the lighting was good. I decided to shoot a panorama. As you can see there's a lot of ice floating in the water. (Pano is 840 pixels wide)

We did a little shopping for computers (no desktop purchase, but Steve came home with a new laptop - spoiled man!), before stopping at the Class 6 for some wine and heading back to the room to chill out. I think we were both passed out cold by the time our heads hit the pillow at 9:30pm.

Anchorage to Homer

We were up at 6am, as we wanted to get an early start on our drive to Homer. Homer is about 240 miles from Anchorage, but the driving can be a little slower since you pass through several smaller communities along the way and the speed limit drops down.

When you leave Anchorage and begin your drive around Turnagain Arm, the views are magnificent. This is one of my favorite drives - especially on a clear day. It's also a treacherous drive when the weather isn't cooperating. Since the highway is only two lanes, an accident on this stretch can stop traffic for hours. Likewise for avalanches or rock slides. Being on the road so early gave us the opportunity to watch the sun come up over the mountains. I just had to stop to take this photo in the early morning light.

This photo was taken a little while later. You can see the 'ghost trees', as some folks call them. This area is also referred to by some as Alaska's Ghost Forest, created when a huge tract of land sank during the tremendous Good Friday Earthquake of 1964. Salt water rushed into lowlands thereby killing the trees but in the process the trees were also preserved by the salt water.

We stopped at one of our favorite rest stops on the Kenai Peninsula. I looked forward to getting a winter panoramic of the area, to compare to the summer pano I took a few years ago.

Winter View

Summer View

I took this photograph in Cooper Landing as day was still dawning - another beautiful place to stop for a visit. This is where the Russian River is - a hot spot for anglers when the salmon are running. I took more photos in Cooper Landing on our return trip. I'll share them later in this entry. I like traveling in the early morning hours. It was very serene. In the summertime, the lake is a magnificent turquoise color. You really have to see it to believe it!

Further down the highway, past Soldotna and Kenai, is the town of Ninilchik. Ninilchik is one of my favorite little communities along the Sterling Highway. I always stop there just to see the Ninilchik Russian Orthodox Church. It sits high on a hill overlooking the historic village of Ninilchik. In the background are the volcanos Iliamna and Redoubt.

After a drive up to the church, Steve and I decided to check out the small marina. We took a turn towards an old fish processing facility, and had our first eagle sighting of the day! Someone had tossed what looked like frozen fish guts onto the ground, and this beautiful raptor was enjoying himself/herself. He was so focused on the food, that he didn't move when I got out of the truck and got to within 10 feet of him. (Not wanting to have my eyes pecked out, I didn't venture any closer). It was very windy, as you can see by his head feathers blowing straight back:

With my appetite for eagle viewing surging, we continued on the final leg to Homer. At the scenic viewpoint just as you enter Homer, we saw several more eagles flying overhead and perched in the trees. In the photo at the left, you can see the silhouette of an eagle in the tree. There were also some flying overhead, and others sitting in nearby trees. Instead of checking into our hotel room right away, we made our way to Homer Spit for more eagle viewing. They were EVERYWHERE! The sign at right is posted near the eagle feeding area.

The eagles are fed by a woman named Jean Keene - also known as the "Eagle Lady". I found this information about Jean on the Internet:

Jean Keene, known as the "Eagle Lady," has been living in a campground on the Homer Spit since her relocation to Alaska in 1977. Jean began feeding a pair of eagles on the Spit shortly after her arrival. Jean worked for a seafood plant where she had permission to gather surplus and freezer burned fish for the eagles. After ten years, more than 200 eagles were coming by Jean's place for breakfast. At age eighty-two, Jean still loads the fish into barrels and then into her pickup for the short drive home. Before she doles the fish out to the eagles, she chops them into smaller chunks making it easier for them to carry. Currently, Jean feeds 200 to 300 eagles about 500 lbs. of fish daily from late December through mid April.

Beginning June 1, 2006, the "Eagle Lady" is the only person who can feed eagles within Homer city limits. Jean Keene received a special exemption from the Homer City Council which passed a ban on feeding eagles. She will be allowed to continue feeding the eagles until 2010.

Eagles, eagles, and more eagles!:

Steve wanted me to take this photo because 1973 is the year he graduated
“Eagles: When they walk, they stumble. They are not what one would call graceful. They were not designed to walk. They fly. And when they fly, oh, how they fly, so free, so graceful. They see from the sky what we never see.”

Homer is a very 'artsy' community. There are galleries to check out, a couple of small museums, and it's the home of writers, photographers, and painters. It seems only fitting that there would be places like this in Homer.

Steve and I stayed at the Ocean Shores Hotel. It was right next door to the campground we usually stay at in the summertime, and so we had the same awesome views -and at a nice discounted 'off-season' price. The proprietor gave us a beach front view so we could wake up to the spectacular expanse of Kachemak Bay and watch the mountains change colors as the sun set.

Homer Spit has a lot of activity in the summertime, but in the winter most everything is closed for the season. Steve and I enjoyed watching the eagles (hundreds) flying overhead, and taking our time walking on the rocky beach. As the sun made its way down, the shadows lengthened and the colors around us came alive in the glow. The skies turned a beautiful shade of blue before they transformed to pink.

Homer to Anchorage:

The next day (Saturday), we had a leisurely breakfast and took another drive down to the spit to see the eagles before starting out on our way back to Anchorage. Because it was later in the afternoon, I was looking forward to making some stops along the way - to get photos of some of the areas we missed in the early morning hours of Friday.

Our first stop was Cooper Landing, so I could take a photograph of Kenai Lake and the Russian River access area. We took 'the long way' via the turnoff that goes past Skilak Lake. Things look much differently when winter settles over the state. The pristine beauty of the white snow, coupled with the lack of traffic makes you feel like you're miles away from civilization. It's hard to believe that in a few months, the area will be teeming with fishermen fighting each other elbow to elbow as they angle for that record-breaking salmon.

The remainder of our trip was fairly uneventful. There were a lot of pickup trucks on the road, towing trailers with snowmachines on them. Everywhere we looked along the highway, you could see the telltale tracks of the machines where they crisscrossed the snow. The snow here is deep, so snowmachine traffic has minimal impact on the underlying terrain. However, there are also threats of avalanche in some of the passes, and warning signs line the road.

We soon reached Turnagain Arm and the final stretch into Anchorage. I asked Steve to stop a couple of times so I could take a few photographs. It looked much different in the late afternoon light, than it did early in the day.

We were exhausted from our whirlwind adventure to Homer, so we decided to grab a bite to eat and then just go to the room to be couch potatoes. After all the time we spent in the truck, our backs were aching and all we wanted to do was lay around and watch TV. We originally were planning to go out and meet some Anchorage friends and have a few drinks, but just couldn't muster up the energy to do it.

On Sunday morning, after a stop for breakfast, we went out in search of a new desktop computer. Anchorage has a much better selection of electronics stores than Fairbanks does, so we made stops at Comp USA, Best Buy and Office Depot. We didn't get a new desktop, but Steve walked away with a new laptop. I'm going to do a bit more research before investing in a desktop. With the launch of the new Windows Vista, I'm very leery of anything on the market right now. I need to be sure that my graphics programs will run correctly, or the system will become a paperweight. Just like with Windows XP, I suspect there will be a lot of bugs for at least the first year or so. I don't want to deal with them.

We went to bed early, as we planned to be on the road back to Fairbanks by 9am. I wanted to get home early enough to pick Sedona up from the kennel, which we were. I took two photos on the way home. One of Mt. Susitna - aka "The Sleeping Lady" - and one of Denali, which was out in all its glory!

Mt. Susitna, popularly known in Southcentral Alaska as Sleeping Lady, lies across Cook Inlet from the City of Anchorage. The story of Sleeping Lady has traveled by word of mouth throughout the region since at least the 1930's. The source of the original story is unknown. Here is the folktale retold by Ann Dixon, a librarian at the Willow Public Library in Willow, Alaska.

All in all, it was a spectacular weekend and was definitely the cure for the wintertime blues.

But all good things must come to an end, right? When we woke up on Tuesday morning, I was rinsing a glass in the kitchen sink and I heard the powder room toilet 'gurgle'. I thought to myself, "That's weird!" and asked Steve if he heard it. He didn't.

He went upstairs to use his bathroom, and a few seconds later yelled to me that his toilet almost overflowed when he flushed it. I didn't think anything of it until I used my bathroom and my toilet almost overflowed. Now the powder room toilet (lower level) was really gurgling. I also noticed that water in the kitchen sink had backed up.

Steve went out into the garage (he had been doing laundry), and discovered 6 inches of water in the center of the garage where the drain is. The floor slopes to the center (thank goodness), or we would have had some wet boxes of stored belongings. As it was, all of the carpet remnants we have thrown down on the floor were soaked.

We called the builder, and the builder told us that our septic tank was probably frozen. Apparently this isn't an unusual thing for this time of year - and especially this winter, which has consisted mostly of arctic temperatures and not very much snow (which insulates the ground). The builder placed a call to a septic thawing company and told us he'd pay to thaw our tank.

Due to the overwhelming number of calls (we weren't the only ones with this problem), they couldn't get out to us until this afternoon. If you ever want to test your limits of endurance, try living without operating toilets for two days. I won't give you the sordid details as I'm sure you can imagine. However, we are now up and running again and I will never take for granted the fact that we have indoor plumbing and running water. I will also make sure to not leave town in the middle of winter again - unless I have someone house-sitting and that will come over and run some hot water and flush my toilets periodically.

Today is the first day of Spring. It's 29F here in North Pole. I guess I should dig out my flip flops and tank tops. I won't get too excited though. It's not going to last long.

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