Let me tell you a story...

This little blog is about me, Hailey and my pursuit of happiness. I've decided to move on from modeling and to a new chapter of my life, artisry. I paint, I take pictures and I enjoy junking for vintage goods. All of this is done with lots of day dreaming in between.

I have a shop on Etsy that I just opened up in Feb 2009 and I am excited to see where it goes from there.

Thank you for your love and support.

Hailey

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Tok to Homer Alaska

We woke around 7 a.m. that morning. There hadn't been much traffic in the night so we slept quite soundly. I let Kenai out and we went for a little walk into the trees. I found some more yummy berries and lots of mosquitos.

We pulled into the little town of Tok Alaska about 45 minutes later. From Tok you have three options. A) Go back the way you came B) Go to Fairbanks or C) Go to Anchorage. From Tok to Anchorage was 320 miles, six hours. It looked like we were going to pull into Anchorage with plenty of time to spare providing we didn't have any car trouble.

Along the way to Anchorage we drove
through the Matanuska Valley where you could great mightly glaciers along the way from the road. The mountains were huge, reaching, soaring into the sky. The mountains went from covered with trees to raw barren tundra and dirt at the top. It looked cold and windswept. It reminded me of some of the Bear Grills or Les Stroud shows Darren and I love to watch. Man vs Wild and Survivorman.

After many windy roads and fantastic views, we pulled into Anchorage at about 4 p.m. This gave us the
opportunity to go make a CARRS run. CARRS is the grocery store chain in Anchorage. It is part of Safeway or vice versa and you can find Safeway/CARRS throughout Alaska and all the way down the coastline into Vancouver Canada and maybe even further. We picked up some fresh made California Roll Sushi and the most amazing chewy brownie like walnut and caramel cookies and the best coconut macaroons ever. Anchorage even had a Popeye's Chicken, so Darren had to go get some of that goodness. My family wouldn't be in for about another six hours so we found a spot right next to the airport where we could park and look out over the Cook Inlet at the tall buildings of
downtown Anchorage. We let Kenai out for a walk and we people watched. There were lots of people coming and going from this
park like parking lot so we didn't get nearly as much sleep as we were hoping. We got maybe 2 hours in and it was time to pick up the fam. I knew that we would be making the drive down to Homer that night so it was important to get some sort of sleep in but it wasn't nearly enough.

We picked my family up on time, loaded up all the luggage into the crammed pickup bed. We all jammed into the cab and we headed for Homer. Homer is 223 miles south of
Anchorage and usually takes about 4 hours. I say "usually" because this wasn't the usual drive. The fog was
thick, the road wet, it was rainy and dark. I could sense the moose along the road and expected to see one any second. Visibility was horrible. In some places I think we had about 30 feet of visibility. Typically you can drive along at 50-60 mph but we were going about 30-40 mph. We rolled into Homer at about 6 a.m. The last couple hours of the trip I could not keep my eyes open. Everyone in the truck was sleeping, even Darren but I just couldn't keep going. So I woke Darren and asked him if he could drive. He said he could. I tried to stay up with him but I failed miserably. I fell
asleep and poor Darren was left to get us into Homer. He says he has no idea how he did it. Darren was like a walking Zombie.

It was a nice quiet morning in town. I don't think we saw one car as we drove through Homer. We sneaked past town and finally got to the "Beach House." Kenai was happy to get out of her crate and we were all happy to get out of the crammed truck. We hauled our bags up the creaky steps and into the house. We rolled open all the blinds to reveal the breath taking sunrise over the beautiful Kachemak Bay. Beautiful as always. A view I had
missed stretched before my eyes. All four of us sisters were out on the deck with our cameras taking pictures. It was beautiful. Darren was too zombie like to really say much. We didn't stay up long. We were all exhausted.

Kenai slept on the porch next to the door. She was very quiet for a few hours...until... our Mama Moose decided to come investigate all the activity. Kenai bristle head to toe, nose to tail. Kenai had never seen a Moose before and I'm sure it smelled very strange. We've always had a few moose around the beach house so it was no surprise to us. In fact, my father
and I had even been chased down our driveway by a mad mama moose once. I knew all to well how
protective these beautiful animals could be. I tried to wake Darren up to no avail, and snuck out onto the porch with the camera to comfort Kenai and to look at the Mama Moose with her two beautiful calves. She sniffed our truck. She starred at the dog, more like gave the dog and I a death glare as my sister would call it. The calves were curious and checked everything out as well. I tried to tell Kenai it was okay but she didn't believe me. She kept growling. Kenai wanted to go down the steps to investigate this strange animal but I told her it wouldn't be a good idea. After a bit, Mama Moose moved on into the tall brush and
everything was quiet again so I went back inside and back to
sleep for a couple more hours.

It felt good to be in Homer. Least we knew we wouldn't have to drive for days on end for a little while. All in all, it took roughly 64 hours (including our naps) to get from Salt Lake City to Homer Alaska.

I know I said that I'd write everyday, but I was crazy to think that was possible so please understand I'll be writing every day or two or three max. :) Thanks for reading.

Hailey Rose


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