fun and mayhem on the kenai peninsula, may

two little girls, thousands of humongous mountains. there's something about being two little foreign girls traveling alone across great distances in no mans land that make people want to help. never were we alone and never, ever, ever were we afraid. i find that pretty amazing. The man taking this photo drove us all the way from denali to anchorage and told us about life and about dropping out of school and feeling accomplished just the same, about love, and about hitch hiking in alaska in the seventies, standing for three days at the same spot.

the view of mt denali followed us all the way. it is a rare sight and we felt very fortunate.

we made it to anchorage in good time and called up jason, this guy that i had contacted through hospitality club. he picked us up and showed us this wonderful beach before he drove us home to his place and showed us where we could sleep.
the great thing about anchorage is the amazing access to the outdoors compared to the size of the city. the city itself is nothing special. just another big city and not what i came to alaska for.

this mountain is called "the sleeping lady". if you try hard, you can see her laying there in the sunset. from the left her hair is stretched out, then her head, her breast, stomach, and her legs going out into the water on the right.

the tides in alaska are insane. these great mudflats are bare half of the time, exposing miles of treacherous mud. jason told us that people have died because they got stuck in the mud and couldn't get up before the powerful and freezing cold waters came rushing back in.

in anchorage we met up with lovely miss megan.
jason offered to take us down to hope on the kenai peninsula, where his dad has a gold mine. we gladly accepted and spend the following night by the roaring river on golden grounds.
here is the four of us, jumping of joy!

jason's dad is a real gold digger. no doubt about that.
as we stepped out of the car, he looked up and said: what, y'all stewardesses or somthin'? we nodded.

the next day we went to homer. a stretch we were expecting to hitch hike, but the kind jason offered to take us down there as well.
we camped on "the spit", which is a beautiful little piece of land going out into the water. here we pitched up our new home: megan had brought an unbelievably amazing tent, orange (the color of all outdoor gear), by the name of marmot. love of our lives. to the right of us on this photo were a row of houses and behind those houses on the beach was an actual five-dollar-a-night camping ground. we decided to take our chances and put up the tent on this gorgeous spot. no one ever made us leave.

the sunsets were amazing down by the beach and we spend several evenings sitting by our little fire staring out at the sea and the sea otters playing around in the waves.

another sunset, this time over the harbor with all of the fishing boats. homer used to be a fish processing town. since the processing plant burned down it hasn't ever been the same. however, there are still tons of fishermen. at the "salty dawg saloon" out on the spit i saw a sticker saying: a quaint little drinking town with a fishing problem. very accurate. as it turned out, almost all of the small towns we visited after homer, claimed to fit that description as well.

on the spit also, we found a boat graveyard where this little guy was hanging out. despite the "keep out" signs we went exploring.

more mudflats. when it's low tide you can find the most amazing things on the beach. a wonderful woman be the name of allison told us about this beach and gave us a map of all the animals we could find in the mud. this woman took us out kayaking and later on invited us to come stay with her and her family up on the ridge. we accepted, of course.

her husband was danish and the founder of homer brewing company and her daughter was an amazing little actor-tree climber-handcrafts girl. we drove with allison from the spit, up the mountain, onto a dirt road, parked the car, and hiked the remained mile to their house. they build it themselves, of course, and only with trees that had fallen down on their own.

we had a view of the mountain range on the other side of the bay. the little arch on this photo is where allison and lasse got married. it's a holy ground.

they had sled dogs and this little dog welcomed us every time we came back home.

allison let us help her with her kayaks. we would sail close to shore, nanna and i would jump out (and get water in our boots), run for the kayaks laying on the beach, drag them down to the shore and push them out into the water towards the boat where megan and allison were waiting to pull them up. great team work and a great day. nanna and i had to sit and let our socks, long-johns, and boots dry out in the sun and wind.

after some time in homer we went on, hitch hiking to seward, a wonderful little town north of homer. we were struck by some bad weather and waited it out in our tent for some days before we went on another hike.

this hike went through both forest and beach, so we had to time it right with the tide. we got a somewhat late start, and in the end of the hike we were walking pretty fast in order to make it to our destination before the waves reached us. exciting! a man we had met that same day, george walker, who had let us leave some things at his place, had given us his phone number in case we got trapped by the tide.

as some point we had to cross a river, because, as you can see, the bridge had seen better days. so we took of our hiking boots and socks, rolled up our long-johns and put on our running shoes - brought along for that very reason, and stepped into the rapid waters.

it was freezing cold!

the beach was absolutely beautiful and every corner we turned made us think we had gone to a different country.

when we finally made it to the beach, after half-running the last way, we were so tired that we more or less passed out.
later on we pitched up our tent and started cooking. nanna, in charge of cooking that day, turned her back to the food for five minutes and found that a bird had eaten our enormous block of cheese in the meantime. we decided that it probably was revenge from the day before where i had laughed a little to hard by the fact that a dog had eaten our sausage during the night. what goes around comes around i guess.

we stayed two nights on the beach and walked back into town. when we met up with mr walker to get our stuff, he offered to host us for a couple of days in his yurt. we were wet and tired and absolutely in need of real beds, so we were ecstatic. we were amazed with our luck and spend the next two days with satisfied smiles on our faces. the yurt had not only beds, but a kitchen and a bathroom and a ghetto blaster!

so we of course started a dance party! it got so hot in the yurt that we had to shed some layers. of course, our excitement made us jump.