Wildlife and scenery.

Alaska is big. I mean really big. Britian is about 80 thousand square miles, France 210 thousand sq miles. Alaska covers almost 700 thousand sq miles. We were told it is full of wild life, to watch for bears and moose on the highways. Did we see any? Did we heck! That's not entirely true. We did see Brown and Black bears as well as moose, musk ox (which is neither an ox or has musk glands) wolves and bison at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Centre. The highlight of the trip was the baton twirling Black bear, no picture unfortunately. 

Alaska doesn't disappoint on the scenery front though. We have seen calving glaciers and more mountains than you can shake a stick at.

The pictures don't do it justice. 

Homer, no Simpsons

One of the main reasons for coming to Alaska was to see bears. We had booked a very expensive day trip to do just that in Homer. Mother Nature had other ideas. The trip involved crossing the water to the national park but out of nowhere it got very windy. So the trip was cancelled just as we arrived in Homer. Homer is not a big place, however it makes up for that with stunning scenery and lots of charm. Highlights included, a marvellous  view,

good food

and rustic charm.

The local museum was small but packed with info on the natural environment, early European settlers and the Exon Valdez disaster where more than 10 million US gallons of oil was spilt into the Alaskans waters. The area covered was equivalent to the whole of the east coast of the US. While all looks OK now, look below the surface and the oil is still there. 

We filled our day and were better informed about oil disasters so all was not lost.

Anchored down in Anchorage

It has been a while since I last wrote a blog post. That doesn't mean we haven't been traveling. Just I got lazy. Hubby and I are now retired so hope to do as much traveling as possible. So where to start? Alaska was not somewhere that immediately came into my head but Brother in Law wanted to see bears to celebrate his 60th birthday.  COVID got in the way but here we are at last. 

We arrived in Anchorage after an 8 hour flight from New York, 3,000 miles and a 4 hour time difference and we are still in the U.S. (OK Canada did squeeze in between). Anchorage has a strange feel to it. It is very open and spread out. It does not feel as if you are in a town. So what did we do on our day there? We left the town and went to the Alaska Native Heritage Centre. Here we saw some amazing young men demonstrating the "games" played by native Alaskans to develop strength and balance needed to hunt. This involved various ways of jumping. From a standing jump, to a sort of triple jump and vertical  jumps while aiming to hit a ball suspended from a frame. 

There was also a dance demonstration with women of all ages dancing while the men drummed and sang. 

There are reproductions of houses from the various tribes. Most seemed to be underground or covered with earth, which makes sense when you think how cold it gets here. The guide was a native woman who spoke about her philosophy and how the native people were treated by the government  (yes, as bad as you imagine).

The bones are the jaw bones of a Bowhead whale. 

Lunch was in a brewhouse which was very lively and the food was good. 

The others did a trolly bus tour which took in a park showing the effects of the 1964 earthquake. Unfortunately, I started to feel a bit unwell so missed this.