Attack of the Babiators

I got Karrick some sweet sunglasses for our Hawaii trip!  They are called Babiators…aviators for babies…

He's definitely going to be the best dressed in the family on our upcoming vacation…

Amazing Snowflakes

It's snowing...and it has been for a couple of days.  It feels like we live in a snow globe.  Tonight I was at the grocery store, and when I got back out to the car I actually SAW a snowflake--like the kind my mom makes out of paper!  I couldn't believe it!  And I was able to capture it with my iPhone camera...even more unbelievable!

And I love the fact that the snow has stuck to ever part of the trees.  It really makes my heart happy to see this outside...

Right now we are in love with winter!**

**we reserve the right to change our minds around mid-April

Pumpkin Carving Fun

This year we carved pumpkins with our neighbors (the Watz's).  I think they turned out great!!  And as a bonus no one was injured while carving, and their dog (who consumed huge amounts of pumpkin guts) didn't even get sick!  A Halloween miracle!

And here they are--all lit up and ready to go:

Mine is the creepy one on the left, then Luke's Alaska state flag pumpkin, then James/Adrienne's pumpkins, and then Erik's Denver Bronco.

I think we all did an amazing job!

Menu Chalkboard and Delicious Salmon Burgers

I asked Luke to make me a chalkboard, and it's pretty sweet!  (Thank you crafty husband!)

I had him hang it on our pantry door, and I use it to write our menu for the week.

On the menu tonight are salmon burgers with cilantro mayonnaise.

I found the recipe on a blog called Alaska From Scratch.   It's also the place where I got our recipe for Halibut tacos.  I haven't made anything else from there...yet...there are some other pretty delicious things that I saw on there that I think we need to try soon.

Tasty, tasty, tasty!

Amazingness. Squared.

I've been seeing this image around the wonderful world wide web (aka Facebook and Pinterest)...

Stolen from here.

...and I've heard the talk that the quote came from was phenomenal...  It was a church CES broadcast entitled "Israel, Israel, God is Calling".

We decided to listen to it tonight.  And it was powerful.  Amazing.  Phenomenal. Awesome.  Direct.

See/hear for yourself!  Click here.

Hiking South Fork

Today I went hiking.  It was such a beautiful sunny day, and I knew I needed to seize the moment and get outside!  (Especially since who knows when the last nice fall day will be...it could be any day!)

This is what the sky looked like today.

I chose to go up to South Fork to the bridge and back--which is about 4 miles round trip.  (I have yet to make it beyond the bridge up to Eagle and Symphony Lakes...someday...)

Anyway, while I was hiking I looked behind me and noticed an impressive mountain range in the distance.  I thought to myself "aren't the Todrillo mountains to the West?  Not the North."  I turned back around and continued hiking, still pondering on which mountain range it could be.  (The Todrillo mountains are visible to the West on really clear days, and I am surprised by them every time.  And it wasn't until recently that I found out their official name..)

Lightbulb.

Alaska mountain range is to the north!  I wondered if I would be able to see Denali.

Yep.  Sure enough.  By that time, when I turned around it was in sight.  And it looked massive.  From hundreds of miles away, it still looks massive!

Of course I didn't have my camera.  But I did have my phone.  So instead of no pictures, I have some fairly lame pictures to share.  (But let's face it, I have yet to take a picture of Denali, with any device that I own, and be satisfied that it captured it's immensity.)

This picture is from the bend in the trail before the bridge looking northwest-ish.

Looking the other direction was also beautiful.  This is looking southeast-ish at the bridge.  These are our neighborhood Chugach Mountains.

And then driving home on Hiland, I pulled over to attempt to capture another impressive view of the Alaska Range.  I couldn't believe it!  It was the clearest day of all time!  (At least that I've experienced since we've lived here...)

Here's a view of Foraker, Hunter, and Denali from Hiland Road.

What a beautiful day!

Now if only next monday will be just as beautiful...that's when Luke and I will be at Denali National Park for our road lottery adventure...the fun never ends!

Reindeer and Bison and Moose and Elk...Oh my!

Our friend Lauren (from Colorado) came to visit us!  Hooray!  She got in late last night, so the fun didn't officially start until today.

Our first stop was the Reindeer Farm in Palmer.

We got to feed the younger reindeer some pellets of some kind...hay pellets?  I know it wasn't grain.  Anyway, whatever it was, they loved it!

Begging for food

Luke and Lauren feeding the reindeer

It was hard not to drop the cups of food!

"see...I don't have anymore food..." 

And then we got to feed a bison.  It's a woods bison.  (meaning it's not as big as a plains bison...it's still pretty big tho!)  I think her name is Dolly...but I can't remember for sure.

And then we got to meet Denali the moose.  He loves willows and kisses and long walks along the beach.

Luke opted for the petting the nose...instead of the kisses.

He looked hard core with his velvet shedding like that!

They also have elk at the farm.

 We took our chances and fed them some grass.

They loved it!  And we didn't get bitten!

Home again, home again

The cell phone waiting lot at the Anchorage airport is right by Lake Hood and Lake Spenard...which is nice because I really like to watch the float planes come and go.  (And around here, if there's a lake...there's at least one float plane somewhere nearby!)

And after this trip picking up Luke at the airport, we ate at Moose's Tooth--home of the very best pizza of all time.  (Yes.  It is.)

Yay for today!

New bread pans!

When I first learned to make bread, my neighbor let me borrow her le creuset loaf pans.  She had just gotten them to replace her old metal loaf pans (which she ended up giving to me).  Anyway, I loved them!  

I finally broke down and got me my very own fancy bread pans!  When they came in the mail, one--the blue one--was broken.  So I marched it right back to the post office and sent it away to be replaced.

I got the replacement in the mail yesterday, so of course I had to make bread today!

Who would've thought I would have to move all the way to Alaska before I actually learned to make bread.  You would think that I would've learned by now...especially since my mom used to make bread EVERY saturday when I was growing up...  Oh well!  Better late than never!

Denali Road Lottery

When we were moving up here, we met a very nice lady on the plane.  (Chances are--if you've ever flown to Alaska--you sat by someone on the plane who was nice and talked the whole way...)

Anyway, we asked her a lot of questions about things to see and do while we are living here.  She said that one of the things we should do is enter the Denali Park Road Lottery.

We had never heard of such a thing.  And you probably haven't either...so let me explain.  (And by explain I mean cut and paste the explanation from the Denali Park Website...)

What is the Road Lottery?

Each September the park hosts a four-day event called "Road Lottery." During these four days, winners of a lottery drawing are given a chance to purchase a single, day-long permit, allowing them to drive as much of the Denali Park Road as weather allows. In years with early snow, the Park Road might open no farther than Savage River (mile 15); in milder years, lottery winners are able to enjoy a trip out to Wonder Lake (mile 85).

The lottery dates each year are the second Friday-Monday weekend after Labor Day.


How does the road travel permit work?
If you are drawn in the lottery, you'll be charged $25 for a one-day road travel permit. The day will be assigned to you in the drawing - that is why you should specify the dates in your order of preference when applying (see the application guidelines above).

On the day for which you were drawn, the road travel permit will let you drive the entire park road, weather permitting, between 6:00 am and midnight. The road between the entrance and Savage River has no hour restriction - you simply must be east of Savage River by midnight. If staying at Tek Campground, you may begin driving west, into the park, at 7:00 am and must be in your campground by 11:00 pm. 


Well folks...guess what?

Lucky!

You Otter Know

One thing I forgot to say in the Tangle Lakes post is that I saw a new animal while we were there!

(Well it's really not really a new animal...just an animal that I had never seen before.)

When we first got to our fishing spot, we looked across the river and saw 4 (or 5) river otters!  It happened so fast that there wasn't time to take a picture before they swam away...

But I found a cute little picture on the wonderful world wide web to share with you :)

Image via

I had never seen them before.  At first I thought they were wolverines...then I realized that wolverines wouldn't be in a group like that nor would they be jumping into the water...

10 P.M.

It's hard to go to sleep (or even get ready to go to sleep) when it looks like this outside at 10 p.m.

John Wayne's voice pops in my head and says "we're burnin' daylight!"

So thank goodness for things like this:

My new favorite thing...Image via

And the best part is that the mask doesn't squish my eyelashes.  Hooray!

Talkeetna with a side of McKinley

There's a mountain around here that you may have heard of before.  It goes by the name of Mt. McKinley.  It can be seen from miles and miles away (like from Anchorage and other locations on the Kenai Peninsula) if it is not covered in clouds.  (And since it's so tall it creates it's own weather...so it's in the clouds a lot!  Maybe it's just shy...?)

Today Luke and I decided to drive up to Talkeetna.  It's about 100 miles north of where we live.  It's the base for the majority of the mountaineering expeditions to the Alaska Mountain Range/Denali National Park.

As we were driving, just outside of Willow, we saw a massive mountain in the distance.  We couldn't believe how big it was.  We decided it MUST be Mt. McKinley.

Then we went around a corner and saw an even more massive mountain and we realized THAT was it!

Pictures don't even do it justice.  But here are our attempts to capture it.

From Willow:

It's only a mere 20,328ft tall.  (Oh my!)

From driving outside of Willow:

From an overlook outside of Talkeetna:

What an amazing mountain!  We felt so blessed to see such a magnificent sight!

Talkeetna is an awesome little town.  We loved it!  Everyone was really friendly.  And the mayor of the town is a yellow tabby cat named Stubbs (we tried to meet the mayor, but we couldn't find him...)

There are a lot of flight seeing companies around the town.  We thought this was funny:

I choose flying!  One day we would like to go on a flight seeing trip around the huge mountains.

Here are some more pictures from around the town:

We went to the Chocolate corner (bottom right) and bought delicious European chocolates and the best ginger candies ever, and we had pizza by the slice at Mountain High Pizza Pie (bottom left).

The chocolate store had this funny sign:

The brewery in town had a good quote written on their board:

On our way out of town we stopped at an awesome bakery:

And if you are ever traveling anywhere in Alaska you need this:

We took ours with us today and it was very very very helpful/insightful!!!!

And as we drove back through Wasilla we stopped by some of my dad's property and did some exploring.

Day-trippin in Seward AK

We woke up bright and early (literally...since its bright early) to go to the train station this morning.

We picked up our boarding passes and we waited for the "all aboard" call. (They really do say that!)

And then we were off! We lucked out on our assigned train car. The car in front of us had a whole girl scout troop and the car behind us had a bunch of high school kids on some sort of school trip. But ours was nice and quiet and we had a dome section in the middle where you could sit and see more things at once.

We passed by one of the first framed structures in Anchorage (since at its beginning it was a city of tents and swamp).

And there's a neighborhood along the train route with a plane runway in their backyards..

We saw a fox, moose, dall sheep, and leftover avalanche remnants.

2 Moose on the hillside

A group of very blurry Dall Sheep...they are the white dots...

Lots of avalanches along the Turnagain arm.

We continued south along the Turnagain arm and had a short stop in Girdwood to pick up 3 people.

The Girdwood train stop

We napped a little and saw some eagles sitting in dead petrified trees from the earthquake in '64.

South of Girdwood, around where the town of Portage used to be (another victim of the earthquake in '64 i think) the train parted ways with the Seward highway and went on a different southern route.

We saw an eagle's nest.  (The eagle is even in the nest!)

We went by Spencer glacier and the Placar river, through the snowy valleys of Grandview. (And for you folks going on the train later this summer, our guess is that there will be snow all year on this train route! There's still over 6 feet of snow and it was even snowing today! It looks like February not like May. And that rhymed. I'm cool like that..)

Spencer Glacier

Going through the s-curves.  Look at all that snow!!!

Placar (pronounced Plassar) River

We saw more moose and went through the small community of Moose Pass. It was named by a mail carrier who, being sick of moose confrontations, named it Moose Pass hoping that it would attract hunters and then his troubles would be lessened. (I don't think that worked out the way he had hoped. There are still a lot of moose here!)

They are running from the train.

Then we made it to Seward. A town named after William H. Seward, the man who orchestrated the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. The whole territory of Alaska was purchased for only a few cents an acre! (Alaska began as a yard sale no wonder they are so big here. Ha!)

Nice "billboard" along the train route

Seward airport, and a view of Resurrection Bay

We walked down to the beach...the very rocky beach.  (At least it's not huge mudflats like we have in Anchorage!)

Resurrection Bay was named by Russian Alexandr Baranov, on Easter Sunday in 1792.

Besides walking around/exploring the town, we chose to go to the Alaska SeaLife Center.  I had another 2-for-1 coupon for admission and a behind the scenes tour.  (Gotta love the Northern Lights Coupon Book.  It made this whole Seward trip possible!)

It's an aquarium, a research facility, and a rehabilitation center.  And we thought it was very very very cool!

Jellyfish

There is a touch tank at the aquarium.  And it's awesome!

The water in the touch tank is FREEZING!  (Just fyi...)

Leather Starfish.  I can't remember if that's the real name of it...but it felt like wet leather

Chinese Rockfish

Horned Puffin

A harlequin duck trying (unsuccessfully) to impress his lady friend.  (She's the one flying away in terror...)

This is Woody the Stellar Sea Lion

Lulu the octopus

We got to wear badges for our behind the scenes tour.  We felt super cool!  And we were the only 2 people on the tour...Lucky us!

We got to see the research part. 

And the rehabilitation part.

Their current "patient" is Olympia.  We only saw her on video surveillance..  She was in quarantine.

We saw behind the scenes of this:

And it looks like this:

The fish kept swimming up to the top of the tank to see us.  They wanted food!

We even saw the kitchen where the food is prepped (a.k.a the fish are thawed and cut up), and the basement where the heat and water filtration systems are.  It was all very very cool!  (Luke especially loved the heating system.  They use ocean water to heat their facility.)

Anyway, we eventually left the sea life center and found a place in town to eat.  The sign said they had the best hamburgers in town, so we just had to try it out! (And they were actually very good burgers!)

As we walked around, we talked about a possible retirement home in Seward...but only if it looks like this:

Or this:

There were a lot of interesting homes and things to see while we were walking around the town.

When there earthquake in '64 hit, there was a tsunami in Seward.  But all the people saw the water go out of the bay, and everyone made it to higher ground before it hit.  The mountains are pretty close, so they didn't have to go far!

The mountain in the background of that picture is called Mt. Marathon.  One one the oldest footraces (the result of a bet) happens in Seward every fourth of July.  The race starts in town and goes up to the top of that mountain and back down.  At the end of the race there are paramedics to help bandage up all the race participants' cuts and bruises.  (Sounds not very awesome....I must be getting old!)

There are a lot of places to camp around town.  We really want to go back and camp...maybe sometime in the off season.  It's easy to see how the town can fill up with people in the summer.  It's not very big to begin with!

Eventually (after we stopped to get ice cream cones) it was time to get back on the train.  

And it started to rain again.

The start of the s-curves...going the other direction this time.

Placer river gorge...I think.

Sunset over the mudflats.

Backyard planes again...because they are cool.

Yay for fun adventure!