Alaska - Wednesday

Wednesday was another rainy day in Anchorage. Lucky for us we'd planned to go to the Natural History Museum for the morning. It turned out to be a bit less exciting than the Anchorage Museum and Imaginarium we'd gone to on Monday. Rachel got excited about posing as an Eskimo:

and holding a dead fox:

but besides that she wasn't all that interested in the rest of the museum, besides the little kid play area at the back that had boxes full of rubber pieces, kind of like sand boxes, with shovels and dinosaur toys and such.

Here's the Eskimo Dad:

Annie, true to form, got excited any time she saw anything furry with eyes. She starts kicking her feet and breathing fast, and occasionally growls. It's pretty entertaining.

Jake and Rachel did manage to squeeze in a ride on a mammoth:

We headed back to Grandma and Grandpa's apartment for lunch, and when it was still mostly raining, we scrapped our plans for the afternoon, which was going to be either that bike ride we couldn't go on Monday because of the weather or a hike. When the rain let up for a little while we decided to go on a walk. Rachel, of course got to work on her favorite Alaskan pastime: dandelion picking.

We saw some pretty flowers, mostly blue bells and dandelions.

I did see lots of fireweed that was not yet in bloom and it reminded me of last time I was up in Alaska working near Denali in 2001 and all the beautiful pink fireweed flowers. It made me wish we were there a month from now when the fireweed will be pink and the blueberries will be ripe. 

It started sprinkling again, but luckily we were already on our way back to the apartment, where we spent the rest of the afternoon playing:

Alaska - Tuesday - hike and animals

After the hour long cruise we drove about a half mile back down the road to the trail head to Byron Glacier. We were all happy to be out enjoying nature where it wasn't raining (especially when we learned later that it had been raining all day in Anchorage).

 Annie was rather content in her backpack carrier.

 We hiked far enough to find water, then turned around because Rachel was getting tired of walking and Annie was getting tired for another nap.

 But before heading back Rachel and Jake threw some sticks and watched the water carry them away.

 Our failed attempts at a family self portrait:

 After getting back in the car Annie promptly fell asleep and we headed across the highway to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. They take in injured or orphaned animals and nurse them back to health.
We saw elk:

 musk oxen:

 moose, eagles, owls, caribou, wood bison, and bears:

 As we drove up to the bear enclosure three bears were running along the fence line right towards us. It was pretty cool.

One of Rachel's favorite parts of the whole place was the gift shop. Oh, so exciting.

 After a full day, we headed back up to Anchorage. Apparently we had tired out the kiddos:

A bit of a contrast from the ride down when Annie and Rachel were enjoying a movie together:

Alaska - Tuesday - Portage Glacier

So, we really took a lot of pictures, and since our blog becomes our picture album at the end of each year we have to cram all the pictures in. Which means Tuesday gets split into two posts because there are just too many pictures.

Tuesday was another rainy day in Anchorage. Lucky for us, an hour drive away at the Portage Glacier it was overcast, but not rainy. It worked out great.

The views on the drive down were beautiful. The highway goes right along the coast of the Turnagain Arm, and with tall green mountains all around it's a huge contrast to our wonderful home in Tucson.

Pictures can't really capture the beauty, but we tried anyway.

When we got to Portage Lake Rachel and I went to explore the visitor's center and the shore of the lake while Jake and Annie napped in the car. The wind pushes the icebergs up to the shore by the visitor's center, and there happened to be this big iceberg sitting out there, not too far off the shore. They said that you can only see 10% of the iceberg above the waterline, which just amazes me. There's 9 times more of that ice below the water. That lake gets deep FAST. Apparently the lake itself is 650 feet deep.

Rachel looks a little like Princess Leia to me there--she had piggytail buns, and the cold wind necessitated the hood to cover them and her chilly ears.

After exploring around the visitor's center we drove up a little further to the dock where we'd be getting on our short cruise to see the glacier. We had a lovely picnic lunch and the sun even graced us with it's rays for a while.

The boat was a comfy heated boat, with a viewing deck on top. It took us around the lake to catch some of the surrounding beauty.

I took Rachel up on top to the viewing deck, but the noise and the wind and the height were a little daunting. 3 or 4 minutes were plenty for her, then we returned to the safety and warmth of the cabin below. Behind us you can see the glacier.

We returned to find Annie as happy as can be, enjoying her first cruise:

And the happy family:

I read that though you can see some of the bedrock under the glacier, most of the glacier actually extends 100 feet below the level of the lake. That boggles my mind.

I love how the ice looks blue. So pretty.

Alaska - Monday

Monday morning we went to the Anchorage Museum and Imaginarium. The Imaginarium is basically a really cool kids science museum. They had some projection motion sensor things similar to (but not quite as cool as) the ones they had at UMC when my mom was in the hospital. They had one where you could push icebergs around, and build a volcano that would erupt, and then there was this one that was on the floor that was like a pond/river bed and when you touched somewhere it would cause ripples and grow plants in the riverbed. Annie rather enjoyed this one.

They had an area reserved for kids under 5 years old, which included a tree house with a slide, lots of exploration toys, a tunnel and mountain to climb around in, and a water-bed thing that was to simulate the sea, I guess. Rachel found a new British buddy while she was there and they had a real fun time running around playing together. It was hard to tear her away when it was time to go.

They had lots of cool things to see in the other areas that weren't just for under 5-year-olds. They had this swing to learn about pulleys and how they work.

There was this heat imaging station:

They also had a really big Rube Goldberg machine that you could launch balls through and they would do all sorts of things, a hot air balloon you could fill with hot air to make it rise, and they had a sea creature demonstration while we were there, showing star fish, hermit crabs, sea cucumbers, anemones, and such, and allowing us to touch some of them. 

We got Annie to fall asleep in her stroller, so Jake and I took turns going up to the quiet part of the museum with her, while Rachel stayed and played with her new friend. The other part was more like a regular museum and had some pretty cool displays about the history of Alaska.

I think that's supposed to be Salmon that the natives would catch in their boats. 

 And I had to get a picture with the moose:

After the museum we walked around downtown a bit and found a place to eat. They have big bears everywhere. Sometimes Rachel was afraid of them (especially if they were particularly real looking), but mostly she wanted to give them high fives or hugs or whatever. Annie LOVED them. She would squeal at them and get excited whenever she saw anything large and furry with eyes, real or not.

 Our original plan Monday afternoon was to go on a bike ride on a trail that goes along the coast, but it was raining off and on and pretty cold, so we decided to put that off. We tried to go down to the port to see the big cruise ships, but security stopped us, so we ended up at this grassy knoll. Annie loved crawling around on the grass and Rachel enjoyed looking around (at nothing in particular) with the binoculars.

 We ended up going down to the mission office to see where Grandma and Grandpa spend their days. When we all got back home we pulled out the croquet set that the apartment came equipped with and had a little game. It was a bit cold for us Arizona wimps, but we stuck it out for a little while.

Alaska Trip - Saturday and Sunday

Last week we went to Anchorage to visit Mom and Dad who are serving a mission up in the frozen white North. We took a lot of pictures. So we'll have to post them in groups.

Saturday
Saturday (June 12th) we finally went to visit my Mom and Dad in Anchorage Alaska. We drove to Phoenix early Saturday morning and then we flew (on Alaskan Air, not US Airways) from Phoenix to Seattle and from Seattle to Anchorage. The girls did really well for such a long time sitting in one place. We had a two or so hour layover in Seattle where we had lunch and walked around. We arrived late Saturday night and Mom and Dad met us at the airport while we rented a car. We followed them from the airport to their apartment and had dinner and went to bed.

Sunday
We went to church with Mom and Dad. Rachel was apprehensive about attending Primary in a strange new place, but she was able to calm down and had a good time as the only girl in a class full of boys.
After church, we decided to take some pictures with Mom and Dad while the girls were dressed up.

My parents' apartment is close to an elementary school, so we took the girls on a walk and went to play on the playground. Rachel made an important discovery on our walk: Anchorage is covered in dandelions! She was so excited to pick flower after flower. She gave them to Grandma and Grandpa when we got back from the playground and Grandma put them in a vase on the table.


The first thing we played on was the swings. Annie and Daddy had a good time and Rachel decided to stop collecting dandelions and join us.


The playground equipment included a tunnel and Annie was so excited to be inside of it!


Eventually, Rachel decided to join her. You can also see Daddy at the far end of the tunnel.

Grandma and Grandpa had stocked up on some fun surprises for the girls which they gave out during the week, the first one being this bib Annie was wearing with a polar bear on it which said, "Top of the food chain, Alaska."

After a few rounds on the slides, we went back to Mom and Dad's place for dinner and to give Grandma and Grandpa their flowers.

It was nice to have some time to hang out with Grandma and Grandpa before their duty called them back to work at the mission office during the week. While they worked we played. More to come on our fun adventures during the week...