Our group consisted of Stephanie (me), Chad, and Erin Fleming, my friend from work. Erin knows a lady who lives in Homer and Halibut Cove Alaska in the Summer. She owns two homes and has plenty of room in there, and she let us come up and stay.
We flew out of Utah on Sunday the 13th, and we were supposed to arrive early Monday morning and pick up our rental car. Well, the plane was delayed 3 hours, and the rental place closed at 2:30 am and opened back up at 5:30 am. Our plane arrived at 3:30. So we slept in the car rental terminal until 5:30. We then rented our car and started our 5 hour drive to Homer.
We started out by visiting the Anchorage Temple. Being from Utah, I had never seen a temple so small. Chad said that they only have one endowment room. It is a beautiful temple.
Along the way we picked up some Geocaches. Chad spent 2 years in Alaska on his mission and spent 8 months of that time in Homer. He knows the area very well. One of the reasons we wanted to go Geocaching was to find some places we wouldn't have otherwise found.
A stream that was flowing into a small lake.
Chad going through some trees to get to the geocache
Chad finding a Geocache.
There is a big glacier near by. You can't tell be the photo, but the water is very light blue. There are icebergs in this water. If you look at the top left corner, you can make out a glacier in the background.
Stephy and Erin.
A lake near the ocean.When we finally made it down to Homer, we were amazed by the house. We didn't take any pictures of the house, but the view of the ocean was breath taking:
It was so weird to see the mountains and the ocean together like that.
Once the lady that we were staying in came, we got packed up to go to Halibut Cover, which is about a 15 minute boat ride from the docks. When she came we found out that she had some of her friends visiting as well, a couple who had 8 kids. This is when we started to get worried. We kept saying that we would stay at the Homer house so that there would be enough room for everyone. They told us not to worry about the space, that there was plenty. Besides that the water hadn't been delivered to the Homer home yet, so we had to go to the Halibut Cove house.
We started our journy towards Halibut Cove, still a little unsure of how we were all going to fit in there.
On our boat ride to Halibut Cove. We didn't see the sun until the Saturday that we left.
Stephanie with one of the many children.
Chad is so cute.
Coming into Halibut Cove
This is what I was expecting to see.
But, what was around the corner was amazing:
Yep, this is where the jealousy comes in on your part.
As it turns out, there was plenty of room. Their "house" consisted of the big house and 4 cabins. Chad and I had our own cabin. There were two more girls that came later who took that last cabin. They were pretty full at that point.While at Halibut Cove there was much to do. We went Sea Kayaking, Water Biking, shell collecting, star fish hunting, and hiking, where we found a little beach
Chad didn't catch these, we didn't actually get to do any fishing. But he's still cute.
Here is the little beach we found while out hiking
. Unfortunately, it rained for a day and a half out of the 3 days we were there. They had some fun indoor toys as well. We played Pool and Ping Pong while the kids played on the Wii. In our cabin there was also a 32" flat screen TV that came out of the foot of the bed that we watched movies on while we were hoping the rain would stop.
After the 3 days of staying there, we went back into Homer and stayed in the Homer house. We went out on the Homer Spit to do a little Geocaching, again.
Out on the side of the Spit, by the beach.
We were able to see some good friends from Chad's mission, the Pendeltons. They were really fun to get to know. They run a little B&B in Homer and are the Ward Mission Leaders, so all the missionaries love them.
We did some suvenier shopping and went to many a seafood resteraunts. I never got any seafood, but I always tried Chad's... it wasn't horrible.
On Saturday, the 19th Chad and I spent our 5th wedding anniversary by driving back up the Anchorage to the airport. It was a beautiful drive and we did some more geocaching on the way up. We saw the most breathtaking views, some wildlife, and yes, even some bears.
It was a great trip, and we were so glad and grateful to be able to come out to Alaska.
