Homer, Alaska. The End of the Road

To all you fans of Tom Bodett's hilarious book about small town living, "The End of the Road," we are here in Homer, the inspiration for his book. Since the town he wrote about existed 35 or 40 years ago, Homer is little like it was. It is big (relatively, about 5000 permanent residents) and busy and rather touristy, but the area is beautiful and the drive down was beautiful. This is the land of towering, glacier-sheathed mountains dropping abruptly down into the sea. The trees are a lot bigger and the scruffy black spruce is giving way to sitka spruce, the symmetrical Christmas tree kind of tree. It has been sunny but too hazy for good pictures, so I didn't take any today.

We drove out on the Spit south of Homer past numerous places where you could book a charter for fish for flounder, buy souveniers (this looks like it's misspelled), camp along the water, or find a seafood restaurant. We got excellent flounder fish and chips at The Boardwalk Restaurant, then got some fudge, and later drove out to the Fritz Creek Gardens where there were several different types of gardens showcasing the flowering plants that are adapted to this part of Alaska. Linda had talked to a woman on the bus with us at Denali who recommended the gardens, which were owned by her grandmother. She said to say hello to her grandmother if we stopped there. We tried, but the grandmother wasn't there, so we just left a message.

Tomorrow back to Anchorage, then we will be heading home: back to Tok and Whitehorse, then down to Scagway where we will board the ferry for Bellingham.

P.S. In a previous post I referred to the Dalton Highway, or Haul Road, as the Dawson Highway. Oops!