Denali National Park and Preserve, Day 1 and 2

Hello all,

Here is a sneak preview of our pictures from our trip to Denali. I'll add the rest, as well as some more descriptions and details from our weekend in the park. Overall it was a great time and we were extremely lucky to have good weather, and no bear attacks. :)

Lovely empty campground on the Nenana River outside of the park

Nothing better than sitting on a river with a great old friend, drinking wine from a box.

Except perhaps when you add some free river beer into the picture!

Roasting corn over the fire at midnight, light as day..

This is as dark as it got

Nervously packing up the bear keg, getting ready to head into the park

Heading to Unit 26, Primrose Ridge and Mount Margaret

Preparing for the scary rain clouds in the distance. Turned out it wasn't necessary and we stayed dry. 

Getting ready for some Emily-height bush-wacking

These caribou had already snagged the best camp spot

Tundra

Searching for a spot to pitch our tent...didn't work out so well. 

Dall Sheep

Moose greeting back at the parking lot

Enjoying spring on the Turnagain Arm and in Whittier

Taking a walk at McHugh Creek on the Turnagain Arm

Portage Glacier viewpoint

The Portage Glacier used to come all the way to this point, now you can't even see it around the bend to the right...

One of the Alaska State Ferries loading up to head to Kodiak

Downtown Whittier... hoppin'

Beautiful beach day in Whittier

Birds...

That small bit in the center of the photo is all you can see of the Portage Glacier

Silty glacial river

Kite surfers on the Turnagain Arm

Brock and Joan visit AK, trip to Seward

It has been a while since I've been able to write to this blog! But certainly much has happened.

We are all moved in to our new apartment in Anchorage. It is not a bad spot. Pretty cheap and in many ways, we're getting for what we pay for, but we have made our space really nice and cozy. We signed a 6 month lease with the hope that we can find a house to move into in the fall. Apartment living isn't really what we had in mind when we decided to move to Alaska. But we're really happy to be farther away from Koots, and finally able to unpack all of our treasures. Pictures up of friends and family makes it that much more enjoyable.

I got a job working at a cool breakfast/lunch restaurant called Snow City Cafe. Its going pretty well there and I'm working a lot.

Cole is working hard trying to figure out how to start a business. It sounds like he will be calling it 'Coleman's Tile and Finish.' There is a lot of encouragement here for him to get licensed and start working for himself. There have been quite a few people who have shown interest in hiring him for tile and finish work as a subcontractor or otherwise. It's a lot to understand and figure out, but he's staying busy working for this nice young guy named Ryan who is a painter, and now another guy with a contracting business who will hopefully be providing Cole with a lot of work including tiling.

So things are starting to settle in. It's a strange place to be in our lives, and always a lot of decisions to be made, but we're really happy to be here and going through these things together!

The highlight from the last few weeks has been a visit from Cole's mom and brother, Joan and Brock!! Joan has some work clients up here so she had planned a business trip with a weekend extension to hang out with us. But little did we know that Brock was going to be joining her for an awesome long weekend with both of them. They did a great job being sneaky and we were really surprised and soooo excited.

We drove down to Seward and spent a couple of days down there, staying in the Oceanview Inn (which was actually a spare bedroom in someone's house). It was beautiful and right on the beach so we did a lot of beach walking, despite the constant downpour. When we first got to Seward we went right to the docks and hopped on a wildlife boat tour that was SO COOL! Over the course of a few hours we saw sea otters, seals, dahl porposes, sea lions, eagles and more. It was a lot of fun, especially the dahl porposes.

On our way back to Anchorage, we also stopped at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center where they have a bunch of animals who have been injured or orphaned in the wild. That was a lot of fun too. We got to see a bunch of bears, a mom and two baby grizzlies, a young black bear, and two orphaned Kodiak brown bears.

The whole visit was so much fun. Lots of exploring, moose hunting, good eating and laughing. We missed them immediately but are so excited for Joan, Kevin and Lexi to be up here in June!

I posted my pictures to Google's Picasa so if you want to see photos from our time with Brock and Joan then follow this link: Picasa photos

Sunsets on Cook Inlet

*WARNING* The amazing sunsets this past week have caused me to be incredibly click-happy. Trust me, I narrowed these down a lot, but I couldn't help sharing some of these photos. It's so interesting and beautiful with these great mountains in the background, the frozen beaches and floating ice chunks.

The best sunset view-point is right at the landing strip for the airport.

Glowing downtown Anchorage.

And moose on the road for a delightful after sunset surprise!