Alaskan Odyssey

Oh my heck, we had such a good time on this vacation and took so many pictures and saw so many cool things!  Let's get right to it...

Day 1
We left early for Portland.  Didn't have time to stop in Eugene for bubble tea.  Got to our park and fly place just outside the airport which is totally the only way to go!  It's way cheaper than airport parking, your card is under 24-hour guard and they pick you up at your car and drop you off at the ticket counter a scant five minutes later!  Emma, and the rest of us too, all got through security with ease.  We had lunch at a gourmet sausage shop at the airport and Emma did some coloring in her coloring book in between being fascinated with the airplanes.  The flight was pretty decent, actually; nonstop to Anchorage and Emma slept for about half of it.  James showed up 15 minutes after us from Spokane, we got our bags and rent-a-car (don't ever buy a Dodge Avenger - absolute crap!) and started our drive to Girdwood.  We stopped several times along Turnagain Arm and took some beautiful pictures of the snow-capped mountains.  Everyone from Delta Junction showed up at the Alyeska Resort 15 minutes after we arrived and after dropping our gear in our rooms, we went to dinner (delicious pizza!)  After dinner we went into town and got ice cream, drove around looking for Ted Stevens' house and then went for a walk along the base of Mount Alyeska.  It was so neat to be back in Alaska where it doesn't ever get dark at night in the summer!

Day 2
We had breakfast in town with Caleb and Melody and then took off for Soldotna.  We stopped at 20 Mile River, Turnagain Pass and several places along Granite Creek and the Kenai River.  The traffic was really heavy which wasn't too much fun, but we did get a bit of hiking in at Turnagain Pass where there were tons of wildflowers in bloom at the edge of last winter's avalanches.  We got to Soldotna a few hours before the rehersal and checked into our clean, but old hotel.  Since I was the videographer for the event, I filmed the rehersals from several different vantage points.  We also got to meet LaDonna who such a great person!  And we saw several other relatives who we hadn't seen in several years.  That night we did dinner on our own at an amazing restaurant - the steak and king crab legs were to die for!  After dinner Jame and I went with the guys to the bachelor party in Kenai.  It was very tame, but still a lot of fun since we didn't have any other time to spend with Isaac before he got married.  We shot pool and threw some darts until about midnight before heading back to the hotel.

Day 3
We slept in and subsequently had to rush to get to the photo shoot, but we made it just in time.  The wedding was a perfect, happy affair followed by a quaint reception, bubbles instead of rice and then a car chase on gravel roads through Soldotna.  Good times!  Since everyone was leaving the next day, but nobody had really gotten a good chance to socialize, I reserved a place at the restaurant that we had eaten at the night before for the entire family.  We had a late lunch with mom and Erica and then later in the evening we went to the "reunion" which was entirely too much fun.  Excellent food and great company!  After dinner about half of us went to Cold Stone for ice cream and further chit chat.

Day 4
Everyone else left, but we slept in and then drove to Kenai to check the town out since we hadn't been there before.  It was kind of lame.  We went to the beach which may have been nice on a clear, sunny, warm day, but it was cold windy and cloudy and we couldn't see Mount Redoubt like we had wanted to.  So we drove back to Soldotna, had lunch and then drove south to Homer.  The drive was boring, but Homer is such a cool town.  We'd all been there before, but never as "tourists" so it was fun to get a different perspective.  We checked into the hotel (I upgraded us to a hot tub suite) and then went to the Homer Spit and spent the afternoon shopping.  Among the highlights was seeing Captain Jonathan Hillstrand of the "Time Bandit" from the TV show "Deadliest Catch"!  Back to the hotel for a break and then back to the Spit for dinner (amazing fish and chips).  The sun came out in full force which was brilliant, but the wind was so strong it became really cold, really quickly.  Nonetheless, I got some amazing pictures of the sun high in the sky on Solstice at about 10pm!  Emma went to sleep when we got back to the hotel and the rest of us hot tubbed until about 3am!

Day 5
It was pouring down rain, so we ate a quick breakfast and left for Seward.  The drive was just as boring, but was made worse by our horrible little car which was uncomfortable and had wipers that just make a smeary mess on the windshield and made it tough to see other cars (which all seem to drive slowly in Alaska)!  Anyway, we got to Seward and went directly to the Alaska SeaLife Center.  Once again, we'd been there before, but really wanted to show Emma and James.  We were glad we did, because it really is a neat place.  We checked into our hotel and napped (can't believe we did that!) for a couple hours before dinner.  We went to supposedly the best pizza place in town, which wasn't that impressive and had horrible service.  After dinner the rain stopped and I really wanted to go show everyone Exit Glacier which only I had been to before.  So we drove into Kenai Fjords National Park.  With the sun coming out, the place was amazing!  We hiked right up to the toe of the glacier which was only accessible by wading across three glacier-fed streams (literally with chunks of ice drifting past).  I had my Teva's on, so I rolled up my pants and carried everyone across the streams barefoot!  It was totally worth it, to get right onto the glacier and snap some amazing pictures!  It was almost funny to be hiking across a glacier at 10pm in full daylight!  Emma was fascinated by three things 1) glacier ice she could pick up, 2) bear poop and 3) moose poop that she could pick up (Dohnele got mad at me for encouraging her).

Day 6
We got up a bit early, had breakfast, checked out, did a quick tour of downtown Seward, took some neat pictures of the mountains which got a fresh blanket of snow at the upper elevations and then took off for Whittier.  As soon as we left Seward the rain started again and stuck with us all the way to Whittier.  We got to Bear Valley and the entrance to the Whittier Tunnel.  None of us had ever been through the tunnel to Whittier before and we had to check it out.  It's a two-and-a-half mile tunnel which is only one lane wide and doubles as a rail tunnel.  It's amazing!  Every few hundred feet there are emergency pull outs and "safe houses" for evacuation.  We popped out of the tunnel and into Whittier.  It was like entering Siberia in the 1960s.  Snow, avalanche remnanats and glaciers go all the way down to the ocean.  Gravel roads.  Freight yards and concrete buildings everywhere.  And of course it was pouring.  We drove around town, took a couple pictures and then got back in line to head back through the tunnel.  It was pretty amazing to see the old Buckner Building, however.  Built in the late 1950s it was a "city under one roof."  Literally the entire town was housed in this one building which has now been condemmed and replaced with a newer, yet similar building.  Anyway, back on the other side of the tunnel we stopped at Portage Lake and took pictures of icebergs and Portage Glacier.  It was windy, rainy and really cold so we didn't stay long.  We drove towards Anchorage and the sun gradually came out.  We went to lunch at the Moose's Tooth which both of us remembered as being an awesome pizza place (it still is).  Then we went shopping at the Fifth Avenue Mall because we both remembered it being awesome (it's actually really lame now).  Then we went to a movie - "The Proposal."  I left with Emma half way through, because she was bored and started giving commentary much to the chagrin of our fellow movie-goers.  We finally went to the airport around 11:30pm (still light out), checked in for our flights and then flew out.

Day 7
Our plane left Anchorage at 1am and got into Portland at 5:30am.  We had wanted to make a day of it and go shopping, but we were tired and felt dirty so we drove directly home where we slept for most of the afternoon.

Whew!