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Saturday - Anchorage to Ninilchik

We landed in Anchorage at midnight on Friday, and it was still light outside (in fact, it was lighter than when we left Seattle at 9pm). It never gets completely dark, just goes through several hours of dusk.

We stayed at Copper Whale Inn, right downtown by the water. In the morning, we walked through the downtown area for about an hour, during which David and Rahul managed to wolf down a second breakfast of street vendor reindeer hot dogs, for which they waited a full 20 minutes. We left Anchorage around noon, heading east along Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet, with the Chugach Mountains on our left and the Kenai Mountains across the water on our right. It was really beautiful despite very gray weather. We saw some mountain goats very high up on the cliffs above us. We then crossed the land bridge onto Kenai Peninsula and entered some lush green valleys of the Kenai Mountains . 4 hours after leaving Anchorage , we rejoined the shoreline (on the west side of the peninsula) and reached Alison's parents' house just north of Ninilchik.

Alison's parents' house: the upper level is all windows, overlooking a great deck, with acres and acres of greenery on top of a bluff that looks over Cook Inlet and the Alaska Range, including the 11,000-foot Mt. Illiamna and Mt. Redoubt volcanoes right across the water, and the smoking Mt. Augustine farther to the south. Enough said.

We drove into Ninilchik, the fishing village where Alison grew up. There is an old Russian part and a newer part. We also visited the harbor where Alison knows most of the boats and saw the Icicle factory which used to take fish their boat. It had gone out of business when fishing in the area declined.

Dinner: beer-battered halibut that Alison's dad caught a few days earlier.

Photos: Anchorage & Ninilchik

Sunday - Homer

We drove south to Homer, on Kachemak Bay . We stopped at a viewing point above the town, and then at a wildlife center where did a little walk to the beach, very pretty. Like with everything else we did this week, there were tall mountains rising right from the water on the other side. We drove onto Homer Spit, a fishing community with lots of campers and tents on the beach where people stay all summer and fish every day. There are also lots of touristy places to eat and buy anything from souvenirs to sightseeing tours. We had reindeer grill at Alison's favorite restaurant, the Sourdough Express. Homer is also an art community and we visited a few galleries.

Photos: Homer

Monday - Fishing

Monday was fishing day. Alison's dad arranged for a friend of his to take us fishing in Cook Inlet near Ninilchik. We tried trolling for king salmon at first, but had no luck so we moved spots and cast lines for halibut. Our 1-day permit allowed us to take 2 halibut each, so we ended up with 10 fish, which Alison's dad's friend filleted for us and another acquaintance bagged it and froze it for the rest on the week. 90 pounds of halibut steaks!

Dinner: King crab in the shell.

Photos: Fishing

Tuesday - Kenai Fjords

We took two cars around the Peninsula to Seward. We stopped along the way several times for pictures, and did a short hike to visit Exit Glacier. Alison and Rahul went to lunch and walked around in Seward, and then headed back home. We went on a 6-hour Kenai Fjords tour which took us out of Resurrection Bay, west along the coast, and into Aialik bay. The views of the coastline were spectacular. The fjords and the outer coast are lined with partially snowy peaks and glaciers coming down all the way to the water line. We also went past many rocky islands. We saw several whales, some with calves, porpoises and an otter in the water, seals on the rocks, and also puffins, mures and bald eagles. The most amazing part, however, was the Aialik Glacier at the inner most point of the Aialik Bay . As we pushed our way towards it through chunks of broken ice, we could see a clear line between the blue water of the bay and the gray water coming off the glacier. Even though we were a ¼ mile away, the bluish white wall towered pretty high. You could hear the cracking of the ice at the edges of the glacier, and occasionally see chunks of it tumble and splash into the sea. It was a truly impressive sight.

Photos: Exit Glacier, Kenai Fjords

Wednesday - Fuller Lakes Hike

David and I struck out on our own into the wilderness. We planned to do two, maybe three, hikes in the north of the Peninsula , but the first hike was way more than we bargained for and took most of our day and all of our energy. We started out doing the Fuller Lakes hike described in our guidebook. It's about an hour up through brush and forest to the lower lake, where we had our lunch, watched bald eagles and took a break from the mosquito swarms that had pestered us up till then. As soon as we moved on, the mosquitoes were back. Soaked in deet, we pushed through bushes and waded through muddy parts onto the upper lake. Both lakes were quite pretty, surrounded by more mountains. The guidebook description ended at the upper lake, but the map had a dotted trail line that seemed to indicate you can climb the mountain above the lake … which is what we did, unaware of the effort that this would require. The trail became more of a deer trail than a people trail, and often disappeared underneath thick bushes that seemed impossible to go through … until you emerged on the other side, scratched up and mosquito bitten, heading toward the next bush. It was quite unpleasant for a while. We eventually crossed the tree/bush line, which got us rid of the brush and the army of mosquitoes, but also got us into really steep tundra terrain. We saw lots of pretty alpine flowers and large bear tracks. In the end, some 3,000 feet above our starting point, we reached the peak (the “No Name” peak), and got awesome 360-degree view that included Cook Inlet, Mount Redoubt, Mount Illiamna and Skilak Lake. By the time we got back down, it was early evening, so we called it a day.

Photos: Fuller Lakes Hike

Thursday to Saturday - Flight & Grewingk Glacier Camping

We took a Cessna flight over Cook Inlet, Mt. Illiamna and Mt. Augustine , and then spent two beautiful days in the woods.

Thursday morning, we (Rahul, Alison, her mom and the two of us) spent 2.5 hours in a little Cessna plane, flying up the coast from Homer toward Ninilchik, then across Cook Inlet to Mt. Illimna , and south around Mt. Augustine . We were hoping to fly around Mt. Illiamna , but the winds were too strong, and ended up just doing the front part. The mountain is 11,000 feet high, and we flew past it at around 9,000 feet, with arresting views of cliffs and glaciers, with other mountains all around, Mt. Redoubt just to the north of us and Denali (which I, to the great amusement of everyone else, just now realized was the same thing as Mt. McKinley, over 20,000 feet high). We then continued south, over beautiful bays, rivers and mountains, and circled twice around the island volcano of Mt. Augustine . This is an active volcano, with a plume of smoke constantly coming from its top and lots of smaller steam vents along its sides. This was yet another highlight of our trip. After Augustine, we returned some ways north and landed on a gravel beach where we did a short walk to go watch brown bears grazing on grass across the river. There were some many of them it almost seemed like a cow pasture. Pretty amazing.

In the afternoon, we (and Rahul and Alison) took a water taxi from Homer across Kachemak Bay to Glacier Point – a deserted beach. We hiked a flat 2 miles through forest and a glacial plane (flat valley left by the retreating glacier) until we reached Glacier Lake and, directly behind it, Grewinck Glacier. We sat on the gravel beach for a while, watching icebergs float by in the lake. Alison and Rahul left in mid afternoon, and we took an hour long walk along the lake, which proved to be much large than we had thought. We only made it part ways around.

On our return, we saw a couple of kittywakes (bird similar to the seagull) posing for a photo on a nearby iceberg. So of course we had to take a photo. This apparently did not please the birds, and as we walked away from them, they took a whole 2 minutes to put together their military strategy and launch their aerial attack from behind. In those 2 minutes, David had picked up a branch to play with, which immediately became very handy as shelter from and weapon against this angry pair of little birds that one after the other dived from great height to about 2 feet of his head, squaking menacingly in the process. It was hilarious for me to watch … until I became a target myself (see bird diving into the camera).

We then set up our tent, watched the icebergs break apart and turn continuously, and spent about 30 minutes trying to hang up our bear bag high enough to be from bears' reach (not a small feat in a glacial planes with mostly bushes and just a few small trees).

The next day (Friday), we spent a very leisurely morning just reading on the beach and soaking up the tranquility around us. In the afternoon, we hiked up one of the ridges above the glacier to get a view from higher up. The first part of the hike sloped up gently through a forest and tall grass. We saw two spruce hens with little colorful chicks. They're apparently not very good at hiding or running away, so we got a close-up look. The rest of the hike was a steep climb, once again through undergrowth. It was not particularly pleasant and mosquitoes were persistent every time we stopped moving, but the view from the top was worth it: Grewinck Glacier, Glacier Lake and the glacial plane right below us, ending on the shore of Kachemak Bay. Across the bay we could see Homer and on the horizon above Homer, Mt. Redoubt and Mt. Illiamna and far to the right, Denali ( Mt. McKinley , over 20,000 feet). To the left of these, we saw Mt. Augustine and the smoke coming from its top, and much closer was Halibut Cove, a small fishing and arts community.

When we got back to our camp by Glacier Lake and went to our bear bag to get food for dinner, we saw the bushes underneath the bag all bent – clearly somebody had tried to reach the bag, but was too heavy to climb the bushes!

Saturday morning we packed up and hiked to the Saddle trailhead on the other side of a ridge from Glacier Point where had started out on Thursday. We had a water taxi scheduled to pick us up here, and after a very bumpy ride back across the bay we rejoined Alison and Rahul in Homer. Rahul, Alison and her parents went to pick up our frozen fish, while we showered and packed, and then we all went out to dinner on our last evening in Alaska .

Photos: Mt Augustine & Mt Iliamna from the Air, Grewingk Glacier

Sunday

We had some fun trying (successfully) to fit our luggage, two giant frozen fish boxes and 4 people into our rental car at 6am, and then drove to Anchorage . We had a bit of time to kill, so we visited the Museum of Natural History , which was very interesting (on the different Eskimo, Aleut and Indian tribes, Russian fur traders and American Alaska history).