Thursday, Friday and Saturday

As I sit here in the Anchorage Airport (the Board Room... la tee da) I am filled with mixed emotions - I feel so blessed to have been able to come back to this amazing state and witness first hand some of God's most beautiful creations... I am also terribly sad to be leaving! At some point during our trip in 2011 someone told us that they came here and couldn't leave because Alaska "got in their blood." Jason and I completely understand that! We are so torn between Virginia - the place that we we both born and raised and this place that just seems to call to us!! Rest assured (MOM) that we still have two more seasons to visit in before we make a decision!! Well that's enough of that... this is what our Thursday/Friday/Saturday in this amazing state have been like...

Thursday: We packed up and headed out of Anchorage with the small coastal city of Homer in our sights. Yes Deadliest Catch fans - our destination was the home town of the fishing vessel Time Bandit and her ever entertaining captains!! Homer is about 3-4 hours from Anchorage but with many sight-seeing stops in between it was more like a 7 hour trip for us. We started with a stop at the Portage Glacier, the weather was FAR from the beautiful blue skies and warm temperatures that we had the past three days but nothing would stop us from enjoying this trip - even rain (even cold rain) was created by our God! :) The Portage Valley consists of 5 Glaciers, all ranging in size. At the bottom of the valley is a Glacial Lake (with broken ice chunks and all) that flows out as the Portage Creek. Here we got to see something REALLY cool - salmon - in crystal clear water... and some of these were late spawning sockeyes (YUMMY) so they just absolutely shine through the water. On the banks there was evidence of a bear's recent dinner (proof that they do actually exist even though one never made an appearance for us).

From there it was a few hours of stopping at random pull offs along the Kenai and Russian Rivers (both filled with spawning salmon) in hopes of spotting a bear - with no such luck!! But those were two beautiful rivers - both a glacial blue/green in color! At one stop I spotted and picked some fresh raspberries that I munched on for some of the trip. Oh... and a moose sighting too...

We arrived in Homer around 4:30pm checked into the hotel and headed down to the spit. Homer is the end of the Kenai Peninsula and is surrounded by mountains (and active volcanoes) on three sides - I wish I had pictures to share but unfortunately the rain/cloud cover had fallen to the point where the mountain tops were not visible and the bottoms were barely visible. The Homer Spit is this little "spit" of land with shops, restaurants, charter companies, and LOTS of boats!! Dinner at Patty's (a suggestion from the hotel manager) was great. After dinner the rain had died off a bit so we headed out onto the beach to do some beach treasurer hunting... I left with a couple of the smooth beach stones, a crab shell and conch shell to put in a shadow box!! We headed back to the hotel and made our way down to the beach there but as we started walking the rain picked up (heavy mist) so we hiked back up the hill and called it a night!

We woke up Friday morning and pulled ourselves together for a day of Halibut fishing! We both ended the day with two Halibut each (the legal daily limit) and had 15+ pounds of that YUMMY fish shipped home!!

 The captain's dog Max

 A cute little crab that joined us on board (not long after this picture was taken he was squished by one of the deck hands)

 Jason's 2nd Halibut

 Our catches getting ready to be fileted

 All of our yummy goodness in the bag ready to go to the processor

We managed to make pretty good time and get back into dock before we were expected and quickly punched into the GPS the address of a local Meadery (a "Winery" that makes Honey Wine) - they closed at six but we made it in the door around 5:50pm. :)  Their tasting selections were all delicious but I picked three to bring home - FINALLY some Alaska grown/made wine!! :D 

Saturday consisted of the drive home to Anchorage - no pictures to share for a couple reasons... 1) it was still rainy and the clouds were hanging really low, 2) we made no special stops because we were trying to make it back in time for the Downtown Anchorage Market to do some shopping!

We made it and enjoyed the drizzly afternoon walking around the market and then driving around town scouting out home and property for sale!! ;)  After two more moose sightings we finished the night with dinner at the Snow Goose just like last year - reindeer stuffed mushrooms for an appetizer, blueberry/rubarb salmon for both of us and a blueberry cream brulee for dessert - the perfect meal to close out a perfect week!!

Sorry to not as many pictures - I am tired and I'm tired of waiting on the wi-fi to load them!! We are enjoying our final complimentary board room drinks and then we will be headed down to our gate and we will be saying goodbye to this beautiful state once again with an estimated return date of May or October 2014!!

By the time that most of you read this we will already be in the lower 48 and we expected back in VA around 6pm Sunday night!!

Goodnight all - thanks for your prayers - we'll see you soon!!