Seward Bound

Alright! So after our full first day north of Anchorage we had a busy second day planned south of Anchorage. We took the recommendations of my dad and decided to drive south. He described it as, "every sight I saw was just like, 'wow, this is the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. Wow, This is the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. WOW, THIS is the most beautiful sight I have ever seen..." and so on... and we have to say... we agree!

It was a little foggier and cloudier at the beginning of our day.

We didn't see any belugas even though we sang the song :(

We got stuck in traffic for road work at one point... this was our view

Exit Glacier

You can see the run off from the glacier

Our rental car. Just like my dad's car but orange, we forgot to take a picture with it but at least we got a picture of it!

On our hike to Exit Glacier

Getting closer!

Wow! Look at the blue!

Mike had the camera so there are actually some pictures of me!

The glacier is retreating. We could hear the water running down in this part.

You can see the glacier to the left

Mike collecting some glacier water for dad. Sorry to ruin the surprise! I hope it's not illegal...

The marina where we took our "dinner boat cruise" from

Alaska King Crab :)

Our tour boat

Skipping stones

Dahl Porpoises

We saw a whale breech (jump)! We didn't get a picture of it jumping but this is the splash it made!

Humpback whales, we saw a few of them

yes!

Yes!

YES!

This was taken about 10 minutes after the whale jumped, you can see how the water was still different than the rest.

Sea Lions : )

Bald Eagle

 Can you tell that the above is two pictures and not one? I thought it looked better this way though than separate so I'm leaving it that way!

Cute little puffin!

Just swimming along :)

Headed back to the marina

Haha this one just makes me laugh at me so I put it up here. I hope you enjoy it too!

Now that we know what a glacier looks like we can spot them all over!

That water looked so nice and different. The picture doesn't do it justice. I don't know if it was "glacier water" or it was just my mind

One of the "main streets." There are some apartment/hotels and a lot of RV's here. I guess they had some erosion on the coast so they have a lot of RV's because they are easier to move. I think it is more of a little tourist town now.

Racing the clock to get our car back to the car rental place before midnight! You can see how bright it is out at what time... and it stayed light a lot later too!

Wasilla!

We spent a couple days in and around Anchorage on our way back up to Shishmaref this year. We only had two days to travel around but we filled them up and have a list of things we still want to do for next time. Our first day we slept in a little bit, rented our first rental car, and ventured up to Wasilla where we visited some friends. We first stopped at Lori and John's house. Lori was our mentor as first year teachers. She came to Shishmaref, helped in our classrooms, observed us teaching, and always brought us fresh food : ) She became our friend and invited us to visit if we were ever staying in Anchorage. So we did! We didn't have long with them but they took us hiking up to Hatcher Pass (their dog is named Hatcher after it).

One view from our hiking adventure, you can see a road that winds through. We drove on one like this to get where we were going.

Mike and John got along very well. They talked almost the whole time!

John, Lori, and Mike

Summit Lake. We collected some water for my dad here. We touched the water. It wasn't as cold as we thought it would be!

"The hills are alive! Ah..ah..ah..ah.. with the sound of music!"

Hiking along

Summit lake again. It looks a little larger from this angle. You can see some children playing around it.

Lisa and Lori

Took this through the car window on the way back. Every sight was more beautiful than the last.

We had a very nice visit with them and are sad to find out that Lori won't be our mentor again this year but we have been keeping in touch. Every where we turned the sights just kept getting prettier and prettier. We learned about red algae (ask Mike), saw some beautiful sights, and enjoyed the cool air. It was nice to be outside without sweating! "It smells like... trees and dirt," Mike announced at one point and I think this pretty much summed up our trip north of Anchorage.

We also visited some friends we had made in Shishmaref who then moved to Wasilla (live about 15 minutes from Lori) I wish we had taken some pictures there but we just didn't think of it! One of their daughters was in my class last year so it was fun to see her just a little bit older. We got to see their fancy new house, visit into the wee hours, and have some savory steak and potato salad! However, they did promise we would see moose when we were driving back to our hotel and we didn't! Seeing moose is still on my list!