Homer Photos

Last weekend, I went with several colleagues to attend the Alaska Food Policy Council's annual conference on food security and food policy. My colleagues and I were there to talk about our project MicroFEWS, which was awarded under a National Science Foundation program called "Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy and Water Systems". The Premise behind the "Food-Energy-Water Nexus" is that food, energy, and water infrastructures all impact each other, and that they could be better optimized if thought of as three components to an interconnected system, instead of as three separate systems. In Alaska, the FEW nexus looks quite different since we don't have much agriculture, and our water and energy systems are distributed and not connected. Anyway, we went to this meeting to present our ideas about how energy security can help food security, and to get feedback from actual farmers on whether our ideas were even realistic.

I had never been to Homer, so DL came along, and I took a few extra days, and we made it into a vacation. I still had some work to do, and Homer, like much of coastal Alaska, has pretty lousy weather ("It's shittier in Whittier!"), but we got the most beautiful view from our tiny room:


So I sat there and typed, and whenever an otter came splashing by, I jumped up, stepped out to the balcony to ogle him, shouted at DL, "OTTER! FUZZYWUZZY! AWWWWW lookatHIIIIIIIM!!", and then came back inside and went back to typing.

We also saw eagles coming and going, and sometimes just hanging out:


We stayed at the conference hotel, Land's End, at the end of Homer Spit:


In between conference happenings, we walked up and down the spit. Oh buoy!


This is the Seafarer's Memorial:


It has a memorial stone for each local person lost at sea, and it's still growing, of course:


They go back as far as the 1930's. To stand there and consider it for just a few moments, you realize that there is a reason that seafood is so expensive...


The spit is a very happy place for dogs!


A Coast Guard boat was in the harbor!


Look how clear the water is!


Drizzly ol' Homer!


I was surprised to see all of these new condos being built, but then again, we weren't there during the tourist season, when the town is evidently crawling with people!


There were so many tourist shops, but none of them were open:


DL:


The undersides of the piers reminded me of California. I expected to see sea lions hanging out, but they are much rarer in Alaska, where otters are the adorable marine mammal of choice to delight tourists.


I idly picked up a small whip of dead kelp, and the way it clung to the rock captured my attention. I swung it round and round, and the rock never came loose!


Apparently, they are called a "holdfast". A very excellent name!


Here is a photo from our talk:


There were also some cooking and food prep demos, including "how to make sausage" and "Moroccan cooking using Alaskan ingredients". This family, while traveling in Morocco, had met this young chef there and brought him back to Homer for a few months to exchange cooking ideas. Look at these beautiful spices and tagines!


OK the next day the sun came out and was too beautiful, and I took too many photos and I'm too lazy to sort them right now. But here are photos of the ladies at the kennel:

Cricket and Kenai!


Roo and a friend!


RRRrrrooo!


They have lots of Friends!


Taking their walkie with a friend!


What fun!