Came across this WAY cute video of Sequoia as a puppy. I just love the story this video tells; it really depicts her personality well. I can't believe she's already 1.5 years old. We are truly blessed to have Sequoia and Belle in our lives!

We're back from Alaska!

We are back in action from our 3 weeks of vacations. Our trip to Alaska was amazing! It truly is a remarkably beautiful state and it's expansiveness is indescribable. Every mile we touched was breathtaking... and we traveled 1000's of miles! The cruise was a really nice way of seeing a much larger chunk of Alaska than we would've had time for any other way. We took over 4000 pictures and I plan to scrapbook them soon, but you can enjoy our trip journal by scrolling down and reading about each day as it happened.

To see more of our pictures, follow the Pictures link below-- enjoy!

Pictures

Denali - The High One

The train to Denali was very long and while it was beautiful, the 9 hour ride (delayed slightly due to broken tracks) found Dave and I taking lots of naps. Once we arrived in Denali, we settled into our McKinley Chalet lodge before we went out exploring the area. We went to Glitter Gulch and purchased some very over priced groceries as we knew they would have no food in the park for us as we hiked the next day.The following morning we took the 2nd bus into the park (think alarm clock at 5 am!) all the way to the Eielson visitor center-- 60-some miles into the park. We stopped many times to snap photos of nearby caribou, moose, and grizzlies. We were lucky to have so many grizzlies near the road; we even got to enjoy a sow and her cub for awhile!


When we reached Eielson, we were disappointed to see that Denali (McKinley) was not "out." Hidden in clouds, we were told not to be upset because only about 15% of people get to see the mountain on any given visit. We ate our picnic up here and headed back down on another bus.

We decided to get off near Polychrome Pass to do some hiking. Since there really are no trails anywhere in the park, most people just hike wherever. We attempted to follow a hiking guide but quickly released we weren't great with these directions. After pretty much scaling a huge cliff, we made it to this ridgeline that offered a gorgeous panoramic view of the area. We made it to what we felt was the summit and couldn't really figure out any way to make it much further, so we hiked back down. We didn't encounter any wildlife, but did see some bear scat-- so I guess we consider ourselves lucky?

We went back to the road to wait for a bus down, but as we sat there waiting, we decided why not take one more trip back up to Eielson. The weather had seemed to get better out, and we had more than 10 hours before the sun would set. Boy am I glad we did this! Apparently the 2nd time is a charm as we got to see Denali emerge from the clouds when we hit Stony Dome. It was so impressive! Being from Colorado, we are fairly used to seeing 14,000 ft peaks, but we are also accustomed to seeing them from over a mile high. At the VC, we were only a couple thousand feet above sea level looking at a mountain more than 20,000 ft tall! Truly amazing.

We took the last bus out of the park and spotted many more grizzlies on the way out for a grand total of 16 throughout the day! At one of our reststops, we got to watch a wolve devour an artic ground squirrel.


Towards the entrance to the park (and the nearby campgrounds), we came across our first angry bear. The grizzly was frustrated with the bus following him on the road so he began to snarl at us. Frustrated, he decided to charge the bus. After he realized the bus wasn't going anywhere, he angrily ran off. Dave and I commented on how we were lucky that the only mean bear we encountered was when we were on a bus. Scary to think that this bear was near the campgrounds. By the time we got off the bus, it was well past 10 pm and we were starving. We enjoyed some good pizza at a local joint and went straight to bed. Still can't believe that the sun was no where near setting by this point...

Our last day of vacation took us back into Denali National Park to check out the dog kennels, some visitor center area hikes, and to enjoy some delicious ice cream before we boarded the motorcoach for our evening ride back to Anchorage. Dave and I tried to spend most of the bus ride sleeping because we knew we wouldn't get much sleep during our red-eye flight. There was only 4 other people on the entire bus, so it was nice to have space to spread out. We made a stop in Talkeetna to enjoy the views of the south face of Denali. We had four hours to kill at the airport prior to our red-eye, so we tried to occupy the time shopping, eating and sleeping, but there really wasn't much to the ANC airport! By this point in the trip, we were exhausted and ready to head home to see our girls. I really think the trip was just the right lengh-- any shorter and we would've disappointed it ended so soon and any longer we would've been tired and anxious to be home.

Kenai Fjords NP

Our last morning on the ship was spent eating breakfast and waiting in the Rendevous lounge for our turn to disembark. It was sad that the cruise was ending, but I'm glad we had the land portion of our trip to look forward to. At this point, we just weren't ready to go home!
We started the morning in Seward off by hiking to Mile Zero-- the true start of the Iditarod. While they do a "fake" (for show) start in Anchorage, the real starting point is on the coast in Seward. As husky owners, we felt obligated to see the starting line!

We spent the day on a catamaran tour out of Seward into the Kenai Fjords National Park where we saw a pod of Orcas, lots of Dall's porpoises, and some humpback whales. It was neat how close they were to our boat! I was thinking a 6 hour tour would be a bit long, but every minute of it was spent enjoying the scenery or snapping photographs of all the wildlife.

We even got to see the Colgate glacier calve 100's of feet of ice into the ocean. It was as loud as thunder and enough current was generated to really rock our boat!

Following the catamaran tour, we boarded the Alaska Railroad for our journey to Anchorage. This has to be one of the most scenic train routes in the world! We got to enjoy it from the 2nd story glass-domed cart. Simply beautiful!

Upon arrival for our quick night in Anchorage, we were happy to find that we had been upgraded to the penthouse suite at the downtown Hilton. We had a wonderful view of McKinley at sunset (even though this was almost at midnight!). We had to be up early the next morning for our train to Denali, so we only had a chance to spend a little bit wondering around downtown Anchorage.

Glacier Bay

The following day was a crusing day through Glacier Bay and up to the Hubbard Glacier. We had to wake up very early and dress extremely warm, but it was worth it to see these massive amounts of ice calve into the ocean.

The blue color of some of the icebergs is truly incredible. Each piece of ice was like an intricate sculpture of crystal.

We spent most of the rest of the day sleeping, eating, and packing. Unfortunately, the cruise was about to end... but not before we got to enjoy one last (and my favorite) dinner of Filet Mignon.

ISP, and not the specific impulse ISP

Our last port in Alaska was Icy Strait Point. It was different than all the other ports in that it was small, quant, and only had one store-- we even had to tender in! We enjoyed hiking along the beach and through the rainforest as well as hiking up to the little fishing town of Hoonah. We saw so many bald eagles in this area!

There wasn't much in the way of excursions in ISP, so we decided to take kayaks out for some scenic sea kayaking. It was Dave and I's first kayak adventure and we really enjoyed ourselves. We saw 3 bald eagles devour a huge salmon and managed to successfully not fall out of the kayak into 40 deg water.

Since this port was a shorter day, we had our final formal evening onboard. We got dressed up to enjoy lobster and filet mignon and an evening show. The seas were rather rough and it was mind-boggling to see the water levels rise and fall in the dining room windows.

Skagway, hehe

The next day landed us in Skagway (insert childish Dave giggle here) where we decided to rent a car and drive into the Yukon territory of Canada. We decided on the car because we could go at our own place and go much further. The railroad/bus combo would've cost us $460 and would not have taken us all the way to Emerald Lake. We hit Canadian customs about 1/3 of the way into our trip and that's also when we began to see some wildlife!

We spotted our first two bears down on the railroad tracks where we were able to photograph them from a safe distance (and with a cliff separating us) until they got spooked by a maintainence cart. We lost them at this point and decided that Dave should hike around the bend to see where they went. I proceeded to walk the other direction on the shoulder of the road. For whatever reason, I picked my head up momentarily taking my eyes of the railroad tracks and to my surprise, the two bears had made their way onto the road-- not at all far from where I was! My first instinct was to scream "Bears!" to Dave and my second was to RUN back to the car. Now I know that is exactly what you are NOT supposed to do but I could not stop myself from running. Luckily I didn't have a far distance to the car and that the bears didn't seem hungry nor interested in me. We got back in the car and took pictures of the two from the safety of our vehicle. From this point to nearly Carcross, we spotted 7 black bears. I think we were extremely lucky to see this many, but had we seen none, this drive still would've topped my list for most scenic drives! It was 90-some miles of gorgeous reflective mountains and lakes. We had not a cloud in the sky and got to enjoy the serene scenery all to ourselves. I'm so glad we got away from the crowds and took this nice long drive into the Yukon territory!

We stopped in Carcross to get some Tollhouse ice cream sandwiches (a vacation tradition) and then followed the "Get Your Buns In Here" sign to a local cinnamon roll shop. Boy were they delicious! With full tummies, we made it to Emerald Lake and took a moment to take in the beauty that is this area! Since it took us some 4 hours to make it this far, we knew we had to make better time on the way back in order to not miss our boat.

Emerald Lake

"Juneau" Alaska is pretty?

The next port was Juneau where we took a morning helicopter ride thru the Juneau icefields and landed on a glacier where we met a team of 80 Alaskan huskies. Because our group was only us and 1 other couple, each couple got to have our own team of dogs. It was truly an awesome experience to be pulled through the mountains with a team of dogs. While it was nearly 80 up on the glacier, they had just gotten nearly 2 feet of fresh snow and the dogs looked tired pulling us!

It was by far Dave and I's favorite excursion of the trip! After grabbing lunch at the famous Red Dog Saloon, we took a bus to the Mendenhall glacier where we did a few hikes and got to touch our first pieces of glacier ice. After the long day in port, we deserved the wonderful 4-course meal that awaited for us back on ship.