Alaska

Our good friends the Carters moved out to Alaska this Summer.  We were sad to see them go and decided that while Mark still worked at the airport we were going to make it out there to visit them.  There was a professional development day a week ago and we decided to use that time to make the trek out there.  Alaska is so far away from here.  It is crazy, I mean Alaska has its own timezone!

Jared, Lydia and I flew out of Charlottesville early Wednesday afternoon.   We flew to Atlanta, then to Minneapolis then to Anchorage.  We tired to make an earlier flight to Anchorage but didn't make it.  Luckily there was a later flight with plenty of seats.  Mark left later from Richmond.  He was delayed out of Richmond and had less than 20 minutes to make it on our Minneapolis flight.  I got all 4 of us checked in and fortunately we had a really nice desk agent.  I told her about his flight being delayed and after she looked it up she asked, "Can he run?" I said, "yes, he is tall and can and will run as fast as he can."  He was waiting for his bag that was gate checked and while doing that he was talking to other people waiting.  There were 2 people also trying to make the flight to Anchorage.  Mark told them that his wife was holding the plane for them.  One of them had a cart waiting for her.  She got her bag first and after Mark got his he started to run, came up to them and she told her driver to stop and gave him a ride.  We were already seated and waiting for him and then he was on the plane! It was great.

The Carter's are living on post so once we arrived and got our rental car they had to come meet us at the gate.  We felt bad making them come out so late.  It was around 11:30 when we arrived at post so for us it was like 3:30 in the morning!  Jared smartly slept for over 3 hours on the flight to Anchorage and Lydia finally slept for the last 40 minutes.  They both fell asleep in the car and then fell right to sleep at their house.

We spent the morning playing outside and visiting.  Then we headed over to Thunderbird Falls to go on a hike.  We really lucked out as Alaska was right in the middle of its Fall.  The trees were beautiful yellows.  On our hike we stopped by the stream and saw huge salmon right in the middle of it.  It was so cool.  The Falls were pretty and it was a perfect hike.  After our hike we stopped by Eklunta lake and it was so gorgeous.  Alaska is really a beautiful place! That night Mark and I went to the temple.  It was so generous of the Carters to watch Jared and Lydia while we went.

They were such a pretty color and so easy to see. 

The Lake was such a pretty color.  Very similar to Lake Louise. 

The next day our family drove over to Seward, Alaska. Its a cute little town on the water.  On our way we stopped to see some glaciers and visit the wildlife conservation center.  We had planned to take a 3.5 hour boat cruise out of Seward but when we go there we found out they were sold out.  It was disappointing but at the same time I don't really care for boats so it was okay with me.  We ended up going to the aquarium which had animals and hands on tanks and was a lovely way to spend some time.  It was rainy most of the time we were in there so it worked out well.  We walked around downtown and stopped to eat some clam chowder and halibut fishing chips.  They were both delicious.  After eating we found our way to the harbor to see if we could see some seals or otters since we missed the boat ride.  We did end up seeing 2 seals and called it good.  It was such a beautiful drive.

Glaciers:

Conservation Center: we saw bears, wolves, porcupines, elk, deer, reindeer, bison and moose.

Moose

Seward: 

We really wanted to see whales but had no luck. Good thing we took a picture here

Aquarium

These guys were huge!

Puffins! 

The next day Mark Jared and Josh went to the shooting range.  Josh is quite the gun collector.  Apparently he doesn't enjoy shooting that much but loves collecting.  Jared ha shot a BB gun before but that was it.  He thought it was great.  Kim and her girls and Lydia and I went to Beluga point to see if we could see any whales.  We didn't have any luck.  It was so cold and I think we were a little late in the season.  We gave it our best shot though.  We stopped bu a bird viewing area on the way home which was beautiful.

Man it was cold! 

Yet so pretty! 

We met up back at the house where the Carters made a delicious lunch for us.  Since Josh and Mark both served in Brazil they made black beans and rice with sausage.  This sausage was special because it had a little bit of reindeer meat in it.  When in Alaska... We sadly had to leave shortly after that.  We had planned to fly out later in the evening but all the flights looked bad so we left earlier.  We got out of Anchorage fine but then got stuck in Seattle.  We tried to make the 9:00-10:00 flights going to either Detroit, Minneapolis, or Atlanta and couldn't get on any of them.  The next flights were 12:00-1:00 same airports and we couldn't get seats on any of them either.  We looked at NY but it was bad too.  So we found the play place and tried to get a few hours of sleep.  It just didn't make sense to get a hotel for a few hours then be back for security and the 5:30 - 6:30 flights.  We all managed to sleep a little bit and then got on the 6:00 am flight to Detroit.  From there we made our way to Richmond landing in Virginia around 5:00 pm.  It was crazy how much time we gained coming out here from Alaska.  We were exhausted yet we do not regret going.  It was totally worth it.  The Carters are so fun and generous and Alaska was beautiful.  Mark talked to his supervisor about putting in his 2 weeks notice.  He Jared and Lydia are flying out to Utah for Conference this weekend and then I think he will put it in.  I was supposed to go as well but months ago I agreed to watch our neighbors pets and didn't feel I could back out on them.  I am disappointed but it will be fine.  I even had tickets to the Women's broadcast.  Oh well. Mark and Jared will go to a session of conference which I think will be cool for them.  We feel like we have had so many great adventures the past 6 months.  Its been awesome but Mark is ready to be done.  I don't blame him.  Lucky for us we have plenty of cool places we can visit within driving distance should we feel the need to go on an adventure again soon. Maybe Christmas?