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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.