Today started just like many other days. Peak out your fog and covered window to see if your mother-in-law’s cabin was lit up signaling that she’s awake. Run to the half-door outhouse while hoping to not get eaten by a bear or trampled by a moose. Eat orange-cinnamon bread from the "Moose is Loose" bakery. Eat reheated fried halibut. Just like many other days.
We did a lot today. None of it revolved around thinking hard, which is good considering that I think hard in my job (though others may beg to differ). I’ve recently been promoted to “Director of Research” which is just a big fancy way of saying “Thinker Man”. It’s nice to slip away into deciding which of these to do first. Should it be a) eat pizza, b) go down to the spit to try and capture some eagle photos, c) go sledding or d) go down and see the animals on the farm. One of Amanda’s life-long friends lives about 75 miles north of Homer and we caught up with her and her little girl today. They made the trek down to play and catch up. I think Amanda had fun.
First we met with Amanda’s friend Denise and her daughter Blaire and ate pizza at “Starvin’ Marvin’s”. There’s “New York Style” pizza, “Chicago Deep Dish” pizza, “California” pizza, and I argue that there’s a distinctly Alaskan style of pizza. It’s one with big doughy crusts, laden with toppings. We don’t cut our pizza in squares, we can’t hear a crunch when we bite down into our pizza, and we have to have our pizza sauce below the toppings (sorry Chicago). It’s hard to explain so here’s a picture!
Perhaps this picture will inspire you to travel to Alaska! While waiting for the pizza Blaire and I did a little coloring. I even managed to draw something that the people recognized, I’m so proud! Here it is in all it’s glory! Next stop : MOMA!
Next we went down to the beach for some eagle pictures. Amanda wanted to try out her sleek new camera. Bald eagles are common here and make for some good photo opportunities. Both Amanda and I took eagles for granted growing up but they are few and far between in the Twin Cities. I hope we got some good shots. We launched our endeavor at an “Eagle Feeding Area” where we found an eagle teenager (i.e. old enough to drive but hasn’t had their hair turn white, just like people!)
Also just like people the teenager was posing for the camera and fighting with the smaller birds. We took 462 pictures today which makes 690 so far this trip. At this rate I’ll need a new external hard drive before the end of this trip.
We then headed over to the elementary school for some reckless sledding. We cut loose! Not a lot of detail to this section other than I kept running up the hill in order to have more runs, but here are some pictures.
A family from Dutch Harbor, and Homer before that, now owns and runs a bakery in Soldotna named the “Moose is Loose Bakery”. Both my family and Amanda’s family know the owners. We’ve stopped there a few times in the past without knowing who ran it. Now that we know we made a special trip there. The family I know wasn’t there but we did pick up some orange cinnamon bread and some sugar cookies shaped like snowmen. I don’t know why but all of the sudden Amanda is making me eat their heads. She’ll eat the rest of the body so long as I eat the head. She’s a strange strange one. I love her! Alas, we’re all out of snowman heads. We are heading back to the bakery on Tuesday on our drive back to Anchorage. Maybe I’ll eat more heads?
We closed shop at Amanda’s mom’s cabin around 4:30 and headed back to town (about 10 minutes away). Not quite ready for dinner we wandered the streets of Homer for a few minutes and happened upon the Homer Library. Not wanting to give up the opportunity to catch up on e-mail we hopped in, checked Facebook, checked e-mail, and finding out that we didn’t miss anything vitally important logged back out. The Homer Library is actually pretty nice, you should check it out sometime.
We knew coming into this adventure that Homer is somewhat dead in the winter. Alaska isn’t exactly a hotspot of tourist affairs from the months of October through April. So we were somewhat prepared for little to no offerings. We went out in search of dinner and happen upon a Thai restaurant adventurously named “Try My Thai”. Amanda’s mom had never had Thai food (if you remember, we aim to get people a little out of their culinary comfort zone) and Amanda commented prior to going in that “the second best Thai restaurant better not be in Alaska”. We’re Thai snobs; we’ve eaten enough of it, and cooked enough of it, to have a fairly distinguished palette. We know when they’re using the correct ingredients and when they’re skimping. The best Thai place we’ve been to, in all of our travels, is the “Thai House” in Fairbanks. We have a tie for the second best between “Thai House Café” in New York City and “Thai Noodle Café” in Libertyville (right outside of Chicago). We now have to add “Try My Thai” for the second place tie. We got there around 5:45 and saw the owner shutting off the “open” sign. He commented that they close at 6:00 but there’s still food left and we’re happy to grab some to go. We obliged and filled up. Having Thai food in a little cabin overlooking the mountains and the harbor of a small town in Alaska may seem strange. I admit, it was strange, but it was tasty, a touch salty but tasty still. It’s a good way to end the day. Stay tuned for exciting day #3
No comments:
Post a Comment