Got a couple good things to tell ya about today. First up is a couple of photos from the past couple days that Neil finally got off his phone for me…so I can now post them for ya.

You’ll recall I talked the other day about the young lady in the lime green mini skirt, flip-flops and carrying the almost newborn that fell into the water down at the base of Thunderbird falls…I figured I would post a couple photos for ya showing you exactly how young, foolish and dumb people can be.

Here’s a shot from about 205 yards downstream of the falls. Looking just right of center see the flat topped rock jutting out from the right bank…this rock was about 4 feet tall and not climbable so you had to walk around the rock to the left (river side).

Standing in the water…well, actually perched on the rocks in the water looking past the rock about 6 more feet…Neil’s hiking poles are leaned up against the wall where he got the best shots of the falls. The water is 2-3 inches deep on that little piece of gravel bed.

Looking directly to the left from the position of the hiking poles in the above shows you this very nice view of the lower portion of Thunderbird Falls…it’s about 15 yards over to the base and the pool is 6 or 8 feet deep I’m guessing, it was too deep to be sure.

Standing by Neil’s hiking poles looking back to the rock you had to walk around and the second shot showing the remaining stepping stones put into the water to provide the walking area around the rock as the water there is over a foot deep, flowing pretty fast, and the rocks are wet and slimy with algae.

Having seen that…would any sane person go around on those rocks both in flip-flops and carrying an almost newborn baby? Crazy I’ma tellin’ ya.

On to the shot from last night…as i said we stopped by the Salty Dawg down on the Homer Spit…of which there are more photos coming later from today’s excursions. Nice little place to have a brew and that mighty tasty Duck Fart shot.

Off to the trolley ride…more later.

OK, today we got up and since we weren’t scheduled for the trolley ride until 1400 decided to hear up the road a bit that’s on the north side of Kachemak Bay to see what we could see. There are a couple of nice glaciers over on the south side of the bay (so they’re on the north side of the mountains on the south side of the bay…which means they’re in the shadow of the mountains most of the time and this helps them stay glaciers…most but not all glaciers are on the north side of the slopes). We were hoping the sun would come out and sure enough it did. We were up on the top of what is known locally as Homer Hill…it’s actually the ridge that parallels the north side of the bay…and ranged from 1,800 to 1,200 feet above the level in the bay…so we got some very nice views.

First stop was the ridge immediately above town…where we were able to get some nice glacier pictures as well as watch planes take off. Neil also got a nice pano of the whole city including the Homer Spit which sticks out into the bay and has all of the fishing dock facilities as well as most of the pubs, restaurants and some very expensive RV parks. 

Glaciers on the south side of the bay.

The Homer Spit where most of the night life is located as well as the fishing infrastructure.

A closer view of the spit itself…you can just see a couple of Sandhill Cranes just above the pond in the middle of the spit…lousy photos of them but we’ve now seen this species in both southern FL and here in AK.

Next up after some lunch was our Homer Trolley tour…the first stop on this was a visit to the Norman Lowell Gallery…he’s a famous Alaska artist and has a large gallery of expensive paintings for view…a few of which you can actually buy. We spotted an original oil painting about 12 by 15 inches and it was priced at $25,000…the largest painting in the gallery was probably 10 feet high and 15 feet wide…who knows now much it would go for but most definitely in the millions. We got a few shots of some of the paintings in the gallery along with some very nice sculptures that were also on display. We very briefly considered getting a print as there were several we liked…but at $750 for an unframed but signed/numbered print it was way too much for something we would just have to put in our storage unit anyway.

Along the way on our tour we learned about a new sport…combat fishing. Here’s a photo of some of the participants lined up trying to catch salmon…apparently the combat is partly with your fellow anglers who are lined up shoulder to shoulder and possibly partly with the potential bears that have been known to come down to the streams and steal the catch from the anglers.

After the tour we came home and had the 30 day into the caravan appetizer potluck here in the park. Neil then walked down to the beach and got some pictures of the eagles that are nesting a hundred yards from the RV park…but was too tired to process the photos tonight so I’ll do them in tomorrow’s post instead. Sorry about that…he’s gotta get up early to head off on a bear viewing trip down to Katmai National Park where they’re looking for coastal brown bears looking for salmon. I’ve also got some more news on those Kilcher people from the Last Frontier reality show…turns out they’re not nearly as far out in the sticks as one might think and we got pictures to prove it.

Cyas.