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...

Memorial Day Weekend

This post should be titled Alaska-the trip that almost was. Saturday morning we were all packed and ready to go, so we loaded into the car and headed over to the airport to begin our Alaskan adventure. We had talked about going on a family vacation to Alaska when the kids were a little older and would remember more and have a fun time, but when Jake's parents were called to serve a mission in Anchorage, we figured it was the perfect excuse to go now. We can still go again when the kids are older. But alas, it was not to be. Yet. After checking our luggage, we got to the gate to see a looooooooooong line of people. The 7am flight was delayed. But that was okay because we were on the 8am flight. Oh, wait, we were on US Airways, so naturally it was not okay. I think part of their policy is to delay as many flights as possible. At least every time I've flown with them that's how it's worked out. So our flight wouldn't be leaving Tucson until after our next flight was supposed to be leaving from Phoenix. It being Memorial Day weekend, every flight was full, so getting another flight from Phoenix was not a guarantee. (Though with the delay policy, we could be fairly certain that half of the people on any given flight probably couldn't make their connections, so there would probably be seats that would open up.) Anyway, after scoring seats on a flight from Phoenix, we would still have one more leg to contend with. As much fun as all that waiting and fighting for seats sounded like, we decided that with two kids along it would not be worth the headache and trouble, so we cancelled the trip for now. Boo. The good news is we got a full refund on our tickets and were able to get new tickets in a couple of weeks that were cheaper and at better times (though flying from Phoenix rather than Tucson). The bad news is I have to pack all over again. :/

So, all of a sudden on Saturday we had the whole weekend ahead of us to fill. We decided to head up the mountain a little ways to one of our regular picnic spots, just past where the pine trees begin and the weather is a bit cooler than the valley.

It was a lovely day. And at a neighboring picnic table there were 2 little girls Rachel's age who invited her to come play.

They had lots of fun finding pine cones, kicking leaves around, and playing hide and seek behind trees. And they brought cool toys, like balloons and bubbles. Rachel had a blast.

Monday we decided to go out and enjoy the wonderful weather. This has been the mildest May I can remember ever. It maybe got close to 100 twice. And it was in the 70s and 80s for most of the month. Monday may have been the last mild day, as today it got pretty close to 100 and the immediate future looks like that'll hold for a while. Anyway, we went up to Sabino Canyon on a short hike and really enjoyed the beautiful day. We found some shade on one of the bridges that sometimes has water flowing under it, but as it has been an incredibly dry year (I don't remember it raining at all yet this year, though rainlog.org tells me there's been about an inch) there was no water to be seen this time.

We brought Annie along in a backpack carrier, which she was loving for a while, cooing and talking. Until naptime hit. Then she was out:

Rachel claimed to be tired and I carried her on my shoulders up a decent hill, getting a good workout. At the top I put her down and she and Grandma Knight apparently got their second wind and ran almost all the rest of the way back.

Except when Rachel found out that Annie had fallen asleep she announced that she was all of a sudden tired and was going to start sleep walking. She held our hands and proceeded to snore the rest of the way back to the cars.
Jake and I squeezed in Kung Fu Panda 2 while the girls played with Grandma and Grandpa Knight, before heading back home. Overall it was a nice weekend and we enjoyed being outdoors and spending time together. But it still didn't quite make up for all the fun we're missing out on this week in Alaska. Luckily, in a couple of weeks all that fun will be waiting for us. :)