I will tell you a story--

I can’t really explain how fantastic my vacation to Alaska was.
Marvelous.
Fabulous.
Incredible.
Wonderful.
Nope, those words don’t really encapsulate it.

It was so great. Even though it was only four full days, I don’t think we could have packed more fun in if it had been a week.

On Thursday we left for Homer , a quaint little town on the Kenai Peninsula. The drive down was beautiful. I swear, at every turn I would gasp. The pictures really don’t do it justice.

We stopped here and there for pictures and sightseeing, and had lunch at Gwin’s, which I guess is a pretty famous stop! There were tourists everywhere, taking advantage of the prime fishing and weather.

Look how green the water is. It’s really eerie in person—the color comes from the glacial silt in the water. The silt never settles so the color remains the vibrant green. Very cool.

We got to Homer, and it was adorable. Homer is famous for fishing, boating, and of course, The Spit.

Down The Spit is where the fun starts—cute little shops, great food, great people, lots of cute fisherman doing their thang. This is where the Salty Dawg Saloon is, which is a pretty famous bar. We hit up some ice cream and some fish and chips, which were TO DIE. It was amazing to me how readily available fresh halibut was.

I love halibut, but it’s pretty spendy in Oregon. I was sure to get my fill on vacation.

We left Homer around 6 or so, and headed back north to Kenai to stay with my friend’s grandmother. She let us stay for the night so we could take the quick drive over to Seward for our glacier cruise on Friday! She is such a funny lady. She’s fabulously sarcastic and I was laughing all night. But on our way there, I spotted a MOOSE!

I also made a tally of how many bald eagles I spotted: 15! It was crazy. Before that, I had seen maybe 2 in my life.

Early Friday morning, we headed down to Seward. The drive was a little cloudy, but it wasn’t too bad. Seward is an adorable little town. Here we got on the boat for our six-hour cruise. It was so excellent. I can’t even begin. We saw humpback whales—

Harbor seals—

Puffins, dolphins, seagulls, sea otters, magpies, and many others.

Then we started coming up on the Holgate Glacier:

And it kept getting bigger:

And more incredible:

There were no words.

It might be the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen…and I’ve seen some amazing things in my life and travels. It was so breathtaking that all 100 people on the boat just stood in silence. Just standing there you could hear it cracking and crunching against itself and the surrounding rocks. At one point, a huge piece of it broke off and fell into the water, making a deafening sound. Its sheer size was probably the most incredible thing. Explaining it, or even showing pictures really doesn’t capture it. We were freezing standing there on the boat with the wind coming off the glacier, but we really couldn’t look away.

It was beautiful.

We left Seward around six, and headed back to Anchorage. We met up with my friend’s boyfriend and goofed around and watched a movie. We left his house at about 1:00am—and it was still light out! Bizarre!

Saturday was spent toodling around Anchorage. We went to Moose’s Tooth for lunch and met up with an old friend of mine from high school who moved up to Alaska with her husband. She, like the friend I was visiting, is moving back to Portland. It served as a reminder that no matter how breathtaking it all is, the winter weather forces people out.

We then went to the Saturday Market in “downtown” Anchorage which was fun, but definitely can’t compare to Portland’s downtown or its Saturday Market. But I got some good touristy stuff and we had some great funnel cake, so you can’t beat that!

We had dinner at Bear Tooth (it was a toothy day I guess), and then headed out on the town at 10:30pm—still light out. We headed to Humpy’s, a bar with the strangest assortment of patrons I’ve ever seen. There were young people, hipsters, geeks, old guys, old ladies, rowdy folks, quiet folks…you name it, they were there.

We had a great time BS-ing and whatnot and closed the bar at 2:45. Then we started hassling this one guy to do a crabwalk around the block. Yes, folks, this is what the kids in Anchorage do. So we got him to race this girl, and whoever could make it all the way around the block first would win $250. We made this bet knowing there was no way they’d make it—it had started raining and they were both drunk.

It was very entertaining, to say the least.

We didn’t get home until 4am. I don’t even remember the last time I stayed out that late. Seriously, I was probably 21. I’m too old for that now, man.

Sunday was my last day, so we went and got some breakfast…I say breakfast loosely since it was noon. Then we drove around Anchorage a bit to see the city. Then we decided to take a drive to the Portage Glacier just outside of town.

On the way, we sall Dall Sheep on the rocks!!

The hoards of tourists gave it away.

On to Portage. This was kind of sad, actually—

The Portage Glacier is on the right. It was magnificent in its time, but global warming has made it recede so much that you can’t even see it from the official visitor’s center anymore. It was pretty funny because we watched a film about the “Voices from the Ice” and when it was over, the screen lifted in the most dramatic fashion to a big picture window where you SHOULD see the glacier, but because it’s receded around the corner, all you see is the lake. Tragic.

I know this was a long story, and who knows if anyone will really read this whole long thing, but I had a great trip. I’m still trying to catch up on the sleep I didn’t get, but it was all worth it in the end.