“Last one out, get the lights”

True story: we stopped at the Safeway in Homer for breakfast, and an elderly woman stopped by to vent.

“Those eagles, I hate them!”
“Oh?”
“They took my cat.”
“What?”
“They took my cat for lunch!”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“I’m going to shoot them.”
“Um…isn’t that illegal?”
“I don’t care. I’m going to get them!”

We skedaddled out of Homer back up to Anchorage onto the Glen Highway, pausing for pix at the Matanuska Glacier.

Rest stop at Mantanuska Glacier
Rest stop at Mantanuska Glacier

Rode late into the day onto the Tok Cutoff Highway, where we could see the broad landscape at the foot of the Wrangell Mountains, although it was too dark for pictures. Eagle Trail State Park was home for the night.

Eagle Trail State Park
Camp site at Eagle Trail

Here’s a short video clip of road highlights from Homer and just past Tok…

We were back on the ALCAN the next day, forging through 2 significant storm cells, one of which caused water to sneak into my previously impenetrable 5 year old Darien pants. Nothing like sitting with a wet butt, fortunately it dried in a couple of hours.

Mud guard shearing
My mud guard sheared off on the bumpy ALCAN.
Back in Canada
Back in Canada...time to start doing mileage math again

We hit Haines Junction in late afternoon, attended to food and fuel, and were mindful of the 8pm cutoff time when the border closes getting down to Haines. And lucky for us, the setting sun drenched a glowing light across the mountains and road most of the way down the Haines Highway.

Haines Highway outside of Haines Junction
Haines Highway just outside of Haines Junction
Sunset light along Haines Highway
Sunset light along Haines Highway
Haines Highway
Haines Highway...this is one of my favorite shots of the entire trip

Truly spectacular and quite majestic, it was a real treat. We rolled into Haines just as it was getting dark. It would be our first dark sky night since we started the trip.

2 comments

  1. Tom Dufner says:

    Hi,
    What camera were you using? I love your photos and the light and dark interplay. I’m wondering how close the photo is to what you actually saw… Your shots are so spectacular they look Photoshopped…
    Tom

  2. admin says:

    Hi Tom – thanks for dropping a note and the kind words. Most of the shots you see here were taken with a Canon 50D attached to the 17-40 Canon zoom with a polarizer. I shot everything in RAW format, which gave me maximum flexibility in post-processing, as I wanted to be sure to capture the scene as I saw it and not as the camera interpreted it. For some shots, I converted RAW captures to an HDR image to get the right balance of light and shadows as I really saw the scene. As timing would have it, one of the shots I converted above is an HDR, and here’s a link to the 3 exposures I took to get the final image…
    http://kerwien.smugmug.com/Vacation/Alaska-2011/17840482_tM8XTr#h=1442229403_9dD69gT-A-LB-P-12

    …I should also add that I’m just showing the good stuff here in the blog, I took a bunch of duds as well that I’ll let sit in the corner of my hard drive.

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