Cook Inlet Belugas

I know we have a small population of Beluga whales that live in Cook Inlet.  I drive down one side of the inlet when I'm driving between Anchorage & Homer.  Every once in a while I'll see a little ripple but I don't usually stop to take a good look.

Last Thursday I was driving up to Anchorage and slowed down because there were cars stopped all along the road.  It was a beautiful sunny day, so I decide to pull over and take a look.  There was a small pod of Belugas headed back up to the entrance.  I counted 9 a one point.  They were great to see, since they were actually very close to the road.

Unfortunately my camera doesn't have much telephoto power, so in these pics they just look like specs.  And shooting into the sun meant I couldn't see what  I was capturing with each picture.  But if you click on these to enlarge them, you should see a couple of whales.

Blinds, part 2

I finally got around to buying blinds for the 2nd guest room.  I really liked the ones I put in the first guest room, so I ordered a 2nd set.  Bali sent me the wrong blinds, they were too short and not wide enough, so I went through the whole exchange/re-order thing.  The 2nd set arrived while I was at work, so they've been setting in the house for 12 days.  I started to put them up before my guests arrived last Wed but ran into some problems.  Finally today I couldn't procrastinate any longer.  I needed to get them installed.  And it actually went OK.  Took a couple of hours, lots of trying to understand what the instructions actually meant.  And now that they're up, I think I should take them down and move them back on the extension brackets, about 1.5 inches.  BUT, I'll save that for a later date :-).


Valda & Sharon came up to help me hang them up because they're so long (128") and are hard to handle.  Though they're not particularly heavy.  I like that the cover the wall & door and can be opened/closed from either side.

Brackets finally secured to the wall.  I only broke through the sheet rock once :-)

Sharon & Valda

Finished!