;)
This is what it was like in my yard before I left. It looks to me like Kalib is playing, "harpoon the whale." Hmmm... and there's Muzzy, pretending to be a whale.
;)
It was really hard to leave him.
;)
I had seat 9A, no one sat in 9B and Steve Scarpitta occupied 9C - the aisle. Steve is the assistant principal at Alak School in Wainwright and arrived for the first time in December, when the sun was down for 24 hours a day. He was enthralled by the mysterious beauty.
Now the sun is up most of the day and very soon will be for 24 hours. Steve also has a home in Homer, where he and his wife run Halycon Heights Bed and Breakfast, where you can get your own hot tub and sit there and soak while viewing a magnificent glacier. He recommends August, on the day of the full moon, as a prime time to visit.
Before moving to Alaska, Steve taught inner city kids from Los Angeles who were on the verge of dropping out or not making it. And now he is in Wainwright, Alaska, seeing a world and society unlike any that he had ever before been in. It is not always easy for him, especially with his wife running the business down in Homer, but he says he loves Wainwright.
He loves Alaska, every bit of it, and if you visit him at his inn in Homer, where he will spend his summer, he will pass on that love.
He had been up all night working and so he needed to get some sleep on the airplane.
;)
Back in Barrow - the view from the second floor of the Top of the World Hotel.
;)
A girl looks out the very same second story window where I took the previous picture.
;)
The Arctic Ocean's Chukchi Sea. That dark area in the clouds is called "watersky." It is the reflection in the clouds of a lead open water in the sea ice below. People like to see watersky this time of year - because open water means bowhead whales.
All the umiaks are ready.