Homer on the Spit (Roxanne & Mike Parish)

It is a beautiful morning; blue skies, wispy clouds and we can see the mountaintops. They rise straight up from the U shaped valley, with dark green trees, and lighter greens of grasses and shrubs. There are fingers of ice all over them.

We are headed for Homer, the end of the world. Mike has wanted to visit this place since he read Tom Baudette's books 20 years ago. We are finally going to make it.

The Lower Trail Lake is crystal clear this morning, a perfect lake for water skiing or catching fish, though I am sure it is really cold. The average summer temps here are in the mid 50's to mid 60's, but winter is usually never below O.

I have been trying to describe the wonders of this state and I feel totally inadequate. It is beautiful. The colors are all so vibrant. It is like you were looking at things in the lower 48 through a film and once you get up here the film or haze is gone.

On one of the interpretative signs there was the statement that if you want to see Alaska and are currently old, go now, but if you are young, wait and see the rest of the world first, because seeing Alaska will spoil you for everything else.

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This is of one of the glacier peaks in the Mt. Mckinley range and was taken from a flight-seeing airplane operated by K-2 Aviation out of Talkeenta, Alaska. I used a 17-85 mm image stabilized lens at a fast shutter speed (1/400) to keep the airplane vibration from producing shake blur. This image was made at a focal length of 30 mm.

Just a note on post processing - I found that the "Auto Levels" in Photoshop removed the heavy overcast of blue that occurs in photographs made from the sky. I used "Auto Levels" to get the vivid, deep blue sky color and make the white snow white instead of a light blue.

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