Alaska

Last year Kathy and I took a summer vacation to the Boundary Waters. This year we took a trip to Alaska and needless to say, it was a wonderful time. We had a lot of fun, got to see a lot of great sights and had some incredible food. It is hard to top moose, dall sheep, salmon and halibut all in one meal. A true Alaskan feast!

We left very early on Saturday June 6th from La Crosse and drove to Minneapolis. We flew Sun Country up to Anchorage and had a great flight. We landed at around noon Alaskan time and started doing touristy stuff almost right away. We stopped by Kathy’s aunt and uncle’s house to drop off our stuff and take some short naps. Soon after though we headed up to the Flattop Mountain area and got to see all of Anchorage from a good perspective. There are some excellent hiking trails that lead up to the top of Flattop but unfortunately we didn’t make it up there. The view was amazing though!

Our view of Anchorage and Flattop Mountain

After visiting the mountain we headed down to the dock. We found a huge anchor to take our picture by.

On Sunday we drove about 130 miles south to Seward, Alaska and took a boat tour. This was probably the most spectacular part of our trip. We got to see some amazing wildlife and I saw my first glacier!

This glacier was HUGE! We even got to see a big chunk of ice break off and crash into the water. Unfortunately the name of the glacier escapes me.

Monday we took it pretty easy. We had been going non-stop since Saturday morning at 4:30am so it was nice to chill out. Kathy and I headed to downtown Anchorage to do some touristy shopping and walking around. We ate lunch at a great resturant called The Snow Goose. The food was really good and they have an excellent scottish ale. Monday night we ate dinner and watched Role Models with Kathy’s aunt and uncle.

We woke up on Tuesday mornng to a nice surprise though! A momma moose and her two babies decided to hang out in the neighbors backyard. They hung out there for a good 20 minutes before meandering back into the woods.

After the mornings moose excitment we all got packed up the cars and headed up north, past Wasilla, to spend a few days at Kathy’s aunt and uncle’s cabin. We spent two nights there and had a great time. The cabin can only be accessed via boat or plane in the summer and snowmobile in the winter.

I must admit, it was nice having the comforts of home but still being out in the wilderness.

The rest of the week passed fairly uneventfully, but was still great. We spent some time checking out a few other places around town and on Friday we went to the “Alaska Wild Berry Park”. Kathy loved their homemade chocolate and we probably spent about an hour walking around their gift shop trying to find things to bring back home for friends and family.

They even had this crazy chocolate fountain. That is 3400 lbs of chocolate you see there.

Friday night we spent the evening hanging out and Kathy’s aunt Cindy made a delicious spaghetti dinner. Saturday morning we woke up early and got ready to head to the airport. All in all it was a great trip and I can’t wait to go back someday. We were told many times that March is the month to visit Alaska in because the Iditarod goes down the river right in front of the cabin and everybody is out on the ice having a good time. I think that sounds like fun.

As for more pictures, I posted a whole slew of them on my Google Photo’s page. Check out the album. I also took a bunch of video and will be editing that all together soon and will post it when it is finished.