"Well, that's not what I expected..."

...that was what we kept saying over and over this weekend. We took the long drive down to Anchorage on Wednesday evening after work, stopped only to sleep, and then continued into Homer for Thursday and Friday. The hostel that we stayed at in Anchorage was terrible. It was so dirty. That's not what was shown online...
The next morning, we went to Homer and looked around the "Homer Spit". It was nice and we stopped in a few little shops. I love seeing all the boats in the Harbor. It reminded me of Maine.

 

Later that evening, we went to get settled into the next place we were going to stay. It was a farm where the owner had turned her farm house and some other structures into little rooms for people to stay. When we arrived, there was no one there to meet us. Instead, there was a phone number with a courtesy phone for us to call her cell phone and let her know we arrived. She didn't answer the first few times we called, but the house was wide open so we walked through to see if we could find our room. There were bags everywhere. Finally, we were able to get this lady on the phone and she told us there had been a mix up and she had no room for us. What! This was not what we expected. It was the 4th of July. Everywhere else was booked up. We called all over Homer and eventually found one place that had availability. I thought for sure this would be a dump. When we got there we saw that this family was running a fish packing business along with the motel. In fact, the packaging area was directly under the rooms. Oh boy! However, once again, the unexpected happened, it was really nice! We were very pleasantly surprised.
On Friday, Milton went on a fishing charter for the day so Lissie and I decided to take a Ferry to Seldovia. After spending the day there Lissie and I decided that the best word to describe it would be "bizarre." The town is not accessible by road, and does not have all the amenities that a normal place would so I guess I should be a little lenient, but let me describe some of the odd things for you.
First, there was the grocery store/art gallery. Apparently, the art gallery used to be a pizza shop and they didn't remove anything they just put the art on top. Then, there was the central park which was decorated with Styrofoam plates. Then, on the map, there was a coffee shop/bookstore listed which we thought would be a good place to wait out the rain, but when we got there it turned out to be a old man's house with lots of books in his living room for sale. He did have the coffee pot on though. :) Since there was no where to sit we decided to go to the bakery that we had seen on the main street to dry off and warm up. Well, we walked in and it was like we were in someone's living room again except this time they actually had a counter and a cash register, but still no place to sit. Weird. I ordered a piece of pie and coffee. At least the food was good.

 

We were happy to get on the ferry again and begin the ride back to civilization.
Milton had a successful day on the water and caught 2 fish over 60lbs each! Now we both have freezers packed full of fish and Lissie is having to come up with every possible way to cook Halibut.
We drove over to Seward that evening, and on Saturday we visited Kenai National Park where we hiked to Exit glacier.

 

 That evening, we took a dinner cruise to see the glaciers and wildlife along the coast of Seward. Sounds nice, right? Yeah, it would have been if we could see anything above the shoreline...if it weren't raining... and if it was warmer then 40 degrees out. The fog had set in so thick that at one point on the cruise all you could see out of every window was white. When we did actually venture out to take a picture of something that we could see through the fog we were met with nearly freezing wind and rain. It was lovely. Just what I expected. NOT!  :)

Well, I will take it for what it is worth and chalk it up to a learning experience. At least I had good company and we laughed about it the whole way home. Hope this weekend is dryer and warmer.
Here are some other nice pics from the trip and lots of moose!