Surf's up on the North Shore!

We’re taking an early winter break to visit Devany’s sister on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, and to celebrate my birthday. We happened to be here while the Haleiwa Challenger surf competition was on. I love shooting surf competitions, so we spent a couple of days watching that.

Devany’s sister works for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, so we had the chance to go out with her and check on Albatross nesting sites on lands that she’s been responsible for eradicating invasive species of plants and restoring the land back to its natural state to increase nesting areas. Managed to see a couple of endangered Hawaiian Monk seals as well.

Plus it’s about 80º warmer than back in Alaska, so that’s not a terrible thing either.

Seward Harbor in early winter.

I spent the past week in Seward working on our boat. Tourist season is definitely over and the town is quiet. We had our first snow of the year that turned into 3” of slushy mess and then Thursday night—right after these sunset pictures were taken—the wind storm hit. We had 60mph gusts and whitecaps in the harbor. Didn’t get a lot of sleep with and the creaking and moaning of the boat.

This city is so pretty, but I think it’s even better in the winter with the surrounding mountains pressing up against Resurrection Bay.

Oh, what a night! Finally, some big aurora for Anchorage.

It’s been years since I’ve seen this strong of an auroral display here in Anchorage. I shot these between 2am and 4am. At times the aurora was covering the sky from horizon to horizon. It’s rare for it to spread that far south here. Really fun to shoot again, and then to top it off I had just climbed back into bed when we had a 3.1 earthquake centered directly behind the house about 10 miles! Luckily it wasn’t a terribly strong one, because the house shook for a good long time. Evidently I went backt to bed too early and missed even more strong aurora between 4:30am and 5:30am. Way too many pictures as usual from me, but enjoy!