Alaska
From Chicken I headed down the Taylor Highway to Tok, then on to Anchorage for a night in a hotel.
All photos link to large versions
This is a glacier about an hour's drive east of Anchorage.
This benign form of graffiti is all over the place in Alaska and the Yukon.
The next morning, about an hour south of Anchorage, the alternator in my truck failed. A pretty place to spend an hour waiting for AAA.
While I waited a double semi blew the back window off my canopy. The alternator was fixed after a short tow, but I had to return to Anchorage for the night to get the window replaced.
Back on the road the next afternoon on the Seward Highway, heading for Homer.
The Kenai Peninsula sticks into the Pacific southwest of Anchorage. On the southern coast is Seward, and near the western tip is Homer. These last two photos are from between Anchorage and the Homer turnoff before Seward.
After making the turn for Homer you run out of big snowy moutains into more intimate scenery. There are rivers here with hundreds of flyfisherman per mile.
Homer, and its famous 'spit' - about a two mile gravel spit into the sound.
The marina on the spit. This is the end of the road, but you can see that there is more of the peninsula beyond.
Homer's tourist trap on the spit. There are lots of shops and fish and chips joints, and a row of pricey condos.
I visited a friend from Todos Santos, Asia Freeman, who runs this Community Arts Center and Gallery in Homer. I had a mid-afternoon lunch at the bar next door, then drove back to Seward for the night.
On the way I stopped at the most westerly point one can drive to in North America.
Seward is not much of a place - a few blocks of tourist shops and a dock for the cruise liners. Both Homer and Seward survive on the cruises. The shops opened early the Friday I was there because two ships were scheduled to arrive. Seward is named for William Seward, Andrew Jackson's Secretary of State, who arranged the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867.