fireweed photo

Note: scroll through those images. And if you want to let me know if you like going through pictures like that, or just scrolling up and down. Anyway…..

At 7 am our alarm sounded, with some not quite delightful little music to get us out of bed, and we got ready to hit the road (Jack). Chris went for a walk with Edel, I packed some snacks, we fetched our clothes, and got on the snowy ro-ad. It was quite nice and snowy from Homer to Ninilchik, then the roads were nice and dry after that. On our drive north we didn’t listen to much musics, just a little Hobo Jim here and there. We’ve really been liking his Woodsmoke album.

When we arrived in Anchorage we headed to the doctor, and Chris got an MRI to check up on his MS. It’s been five years or so since he’s had an MRI, so it was time he get one again. Thankfully it was free with the MS society since we gots no health insurance. Other than his first episode two months ago, there’s fortunately been no issues, and we pray it stays that way.

After the doctor (where I got free hot cocoa and watched food network) and a bit of shopping, we met up with Chris’s delta pilot friend Paul, and we ate pizza at our favorite Moose’s Tooth! Yum, Moose’s Tooth is delish. Stopping there is almost as important as stopping at costco.

We spent the night in Wasilla at our dear friends Ronnie and Sharon’s. My dad and Ronnie met back in 1989, when I was born! And so it’s so fun going to their house and talking with them. They are soooo very wonderful and make us feel great and take such good care of us. It’s so happy talking with them, and we talked about aliens in New Mexico too, which was super cool. When we woke up, it was -10 degrees and there were little bunny tracks all over the snowy yard. Presh. When I walked out the door in the morning, my snot froze to my nose hairs. Cool. I haven’t been that cold in a while!

We unfortunately didn’t go to the temple this time while in Anchorage. We usually do, but didn’t this time. I made a deal with myself that I’d do some family history work instead, since the two services go hand in hand. We did go to costco though before heading home, and we spent the usual couple hundos just so we could save money on a few items… haha there’s always so many great deals at costco and we usually always come out with more than what was on our list, but we don’t do too bad. Oh! And we picked up a bunch of pictures from costco that I had printed. Photos look so good in your hand.

Our drive from Anchorage to Homer was one of the best yet. It was so very beautiful and we had a few spontaneous little stops that really made the trip.

When we passed Beluga Point, we saw a couple peeps with very nice cameras and lenses taking pictures of the mountain. This is a good indication of mountain goats/Dall sheep. So we turned around to check it out! Sure enough, two precious white furry creatures on the mountain side! Most fortunately Chris is working on getting in the habit of carrying our camera stuff around with us.

I got out the camera, put on the extender, and put on the 70-200 lens, so basically our pictures would turn out lovely and close up! I felt kind of amateur just wandering over there and clicking some pictures. The other people there seemed pretty professional, and this one guy we were talking with had on the hugest fur boots AND fur hat that I’ve ever seen. He was cool. He told us to watch the animals, learn from them, and they’d let us know what was happening. He also talked about patience and how good photos take work, and waiting for that shot. Cool dude.

And it was so fun watching the Dall sheep. I learned from my Pops, that they were sheep and not mountain goat that we saw. And from the furry photographer man I learned that those mama sheep have little horns, just not the big curly ones like the rams do.  

I want to learn and practice more photography, so I shall. It’s so nice we’ve got a lot of great equipment. Chris and I were talking about Kelby Training on the way home. It’s like $20 a month for a ton of training videos and info. Chris has done it before and I think I shall try it out.

Other eventful events on our journey home, was stopping to get water that came out of the mountain. So since I was little, I remember seeing big huge icy water fall things down the cliff fronts, like frozen water that is beautiful and cool. And on this trip I realized that water just kinda comes out of the rocks. It was super cool. I remember seeing someone ice climbing up one when I was really young, and I was so confused and wondered how that person got frozen into a waterfall.

We made another stop just by some random trail to Manitoba cabin or something. The trees and forest were so snowy and magical and untouched. It totally felt like that Olaf seen from the movie Frozen. Chris and I just walked and ran through on the trail, took pictures, ate snow… it was great.

Not long later and we found some amazing little rainbow chunks in the sky. The sky looked majestic and whimsical. And I don’t know how the rainbow-y-ness was in some of the clouds (not in this pic), but it was cool. So happy we took the time to take photos.

We decided we should get a better view of the sky and sunset, so we pulled of on Skilak lake road, and what did we find… We saw a truck being pulled by a big team of dog sleds!! Crazy! The dogs must’ve been iditarod training maybe. Who knows. But it was funny and cool.

And then we saw more solitary beauty of the sky and lake and trees and glorious winter. We barely made it home in time for both of us to go to mutual at 7 that night.

Mutual was funny. We ate pummels (YUM), made paper snowflakes, played musical instruments, and wrote some postcards. Good time had by all. :)

Also, our home teachers came over the other night and it was great. It’s always nice being edified by good words. It was inspiring and motivating and helped me be more grateful. And then…. I went on a snowy drive to safeway to get some ice cream. And then I ate it.

The world is a very nice place to be.