This gallery is a quick and dirty view of when we were able to cut the leash of Anchorage, turn off the cell phones and go enjoy the Alaskan summer. We’ll add more photos to this gallery as time allows and we find them on random memory cards, cell phones and the like.

Biking (almost) to the Eklutna Glacier

Because of the late spring this year in Alaska we missed out on some of the multi-day trips we planned up in the mountains because of snow/avalanche conditions. We started getting cabin fever the last weekend of April and talked Mike Halberg into coming out with us and doing a two day, 30mi bike trip around the back side of Eklutna Lake and up to the Glacier. As our first time out since winter and using our Craigslist bikes we ran into some difficulty… The first occurred when Lindsay’s second-hand, likely stolen, bike had a rubbing front brake which she pushed against for the first five miles until we realized what was going on. The second incident happened on day two when we covered over 20 miles on our bikes and walking on a warm spring day. Hunter came pretty close to tipping over and passing out from the heat but he hates water so much he still wouldn’t go under, we had to practically force him to go into the streams to cool off!

Clamming in Ninilchik with Dustin Gray and Mike Halberg

It should be noted that Clay is not a fisherman. In fact he would be the hungriest Indian in the village. He sucks at catching salmon whether they are red, silver or pink (except with a dip net…) and as we learned in Ninilchik he is bad luck when it comes to digging clams. Even though the conditions were perfect the clam counts were a little less than stellar, meaning most people left with something in the teens not the limit of 25/person. What did we leave with? Two “dumpster clams” that we found discarded on the beach by someone that cracked the shell when digging them. We didn’t get a single clam.

Clay and Dustin decided that while they would fail miserably at being Indians they would do exceedingly well at being Vikings. They might suck at catching clams but if the time came to pillage and plunder and take someone elses  clams, they were the men for the job.

Two side notes, this was also Mike’s first night with his new tent so rather than help him set up, Clay, Lindsay and Dustin sat back, drank and ridiculed his attempts to figure out his tent at the campsite. Secondly Dustin is far too big of an animal to sleep in a 2 person tent with Mike so he decided to sleep in the back of Mike’s station wagon. I stepped out of my tent to an already high sun in the sky, cool breeze blowing off the calm water up the the beach and Dustin Gray sprawled across the back of a Saturn station wagon in nothing but his underwear eating a bag of Doritos off of his belly. Line up ladies, he’s single.

Summer Solstice in Homer, AK

Since it was going to be our last summer in Alaska we decided to spend the summer solstice in Homer with Mike and Sierra Halberg. Our favorite town (don’t let Talkeetna know) with two of our favorite people. The first two nights we spent camping on the Homer Spit, probably one of the coolest experiences one could have. The second two nights we caught a water taxi across to Humpy Creek in Kachemak Bay State Park and hung out in a yurt. There are some pictures of a 12 mile hike to get to Grewingk Glacier involving some serious off trail hiking including scrambling up a rock face and walking up a glacial river just to find a trail intersection. We earned our right to walk on a glacier that the average tourist couldn’t get to. In a word: surreal.