4th of July and Crows Pass Hike

Unfortunately, I've been sick the past 2 weeks with either terrible allergies or just a bad cold, but I've finally been feeling better the past couple days to enjoy the weather here. Everyone keeps saying this summer has been incredibly rare and warm. In the morning its around 60 and warms up to the mid-upper 70s in the afternoon, which is amazing. There are some pesky mosquitos some places, so I try to make sure to spray OFF when I go outside which kind of stinks. But usually if I'm moving around its not a huge problem.

I had one noteworthy relocation milestone since my last update.. My car arrived to Anchorage ahead of schedule! I was so happy to finally have something that wasn't temporary about my current living situation. I've been enjoying driving it around and getting used to it, especially since I only had it for a few days in Houston before I had to turn it over to be shipped. I absolutely LOVE the sunroof, its by far my favorite feature! I open it up while I'm driving every time, unless its raining. Oh the little things :)

Let's see, the 4th of July was a little anti-climatic here. It's still so bright outside most of the time that fireworks aren't really a big deal. I was so sad about this because I absolutely LOVE fireworks, they are definitely one of my favorite things (just like my new car sunroof haha). But my mom sent me a link to some other firework shows in Alaska to make up for the fact that 4th of July doesn't really have them. So I have the Alaska State Fair to look forward to in September and the Iditarod dog race in March that both are supposed to have great firework shows!

In order to feel "American" on the 4th, Jason, Erin, and I ate some fabulous homemade Chik-fil-a nuggets and hash browns and made some delicious red, white, and blue sangria. And since Independence Day was not playing on TV here, we decided to have a Harry Potter marathon and lounge around since it was rainy and gross outside and I still was pretty sickly. Pretty good way to spend the day in my opinion.

Happy 4th of July - red, white, and blue sangria

I finally started feeling better a couple days ago thanks to the allergy meds I've been taking, so maybe there is something in this clean mountain air I'm allergic too! How nuts after living in the polluted and pollenated air of Houston haha. Or maybe I'm feeling better because I discovered the most amazing thing at work... a deep freeze in the breakroom that is constantly stocked with ice cream!! They have the ice cream snickers bars, M&M cookie ice cream sandwiches, klondikes, and lots of other fruit bars and treats. This could get me in trouble for sure, but for now it's just pretty wonderful! Its right next to a fridge full of all types of drinks. So when I go for an ice cream I try to grab a V8 fruit juice as well to balance out and be healthy :)

I went on some of my first Alaskan jogs this past week along the tons of trails throughout the city and along the coast. It was so scenic that I felt I could keep running for so long! That's a big deal coming from me as I am not a runner. And I was being a total tourist that kept stopping to snap some photos cause it was so beautiful. The photos below don't even portray the lovely mountains and coastal views along the trails, but I still took a ton. I can't wait for my bike to get here to ride even further along the trails!

Westchester Lagoon - Freezes in the winter and becomes an ice skating rink

More Westchester Lagoon views

Chester Creek Trail

Beautiful mountains reflected in the Lagoon

Views of downtown Anchorage

Ocean view

Everything is so green and lush right now

Such a lovely day for a run

More mountains along the run

There was a big group of folks that planned a hike this weekend along the Crow's Pass Trail and since I was finally feeling better I decided to join in. I got a new pair of hiking pants so I was all ready to go! However, it was a little scary when we pulled up and there was a sign saying that the trail was closed 15 miles in because a brown bear was feeding on a moose carcass. I'm still super terrified of bears, but we had a pretty large group and everyone says that the more people you have the safer it is cause bears will generally stay away from the noise. And we were only planning to go about 3-4 miles and turn around, so no bear encounters likely. I did have my bear spray clipped to my camelbak ready to go just in case!

The hike was essentially uphill the whole way for the first 3 miles with a little relief for a bit before we decided to turn around. I'm still not used to hiking uphill and am easily winded, especially since I've been so congested and sick. So I needed occasional pit stops, but thats ok cause I used my pit stops for photo snapping! Everything is so massive and scenic that I'm in awe pretty much always. It was overcast on Sunday when we did the hike, so we couldn't see the full mountain tops. However, the lower 3/4 that we could see was still so beautiful. We also got to see a family of mountain goats that were running all around the steep rocks, it was pretty crazy!

At the trailhead about to get started

Just the beginning of the uphill burn

A little overcast, but still beautiful

Very lush on the lower part below the treeline

About 1/4 of the way up

And up

And steeply up

Snack and photo break

Climbing up the rocky upper trail zig zag

Pretty waterfall, to give a sense of scale, check out my friend
in the background really close to the waterfall.. He looks mini

Getting close to the clouds

Still trekking up the rocks

Near the top, check out all the trail we have already done!

Our mountain goat friends

One last photo break before the top

Almost there, burning legs

What took me 10 minutes to climb took the goats 10 seconds

At the top, to find a glacial blue lake

Starting to head back down

Crossing waterfalls

What a lovely view, despite the clouds

Crossing the rocky part of the path

Rocks all the way up!

Back into the trees on the lower portion of the mountain

Panoramic video shot from the trail!

Well that's it for now. I was supposed to move into my new place this week, however the contractors and labor in Alaska is so in demand that everything is taking 5 times longer than it should. Now there is about a 10% chance it will be this week, but will likely slip until next week. Fingers crossed that my next update will be about moving in soon!

Blackstone Bay Kayaking

First week as an official Alaskan - check!

I experienced my first earthquake at 3:40am last Tuesday. It was relatively small at 4.4 but definitely woke me up cause it was pretty lengthy. Unfortunately, I don't really remember it cause I was a little groggy but I recall shaking a bit and at first thinking it was the garage door opening below me.

Another Tuesday adventure was "Pub Run" here in Anchorage. It is a weekly 5k run that changes routes around downtown but always ends at McGinleys Pub. It was a lot of fun and of course some pretty amazing scenery through the trails and streets of Anchorage. It also seems like a good way to meet people, and where I met some of my first "non-work" friends! We went to eat and grab a drink after our run and they got to talking about an awesome trip they had planned for the weekend with kayaking through icebergs to see some amazing glaciers. My ears perked up and they asked if I wanted to join. I decided I should jump on every opportunity I have here and try to never say no... and I'm so glad I jumped on board for this adventure!

Until my house is ready to move in July 15, I'm staying with a friend from work, Erin and her husband Jason. They are so amazing for letting me crash in their guest room rather than forking over $300 / night for a hotel (peak tourist season yikes!). Don't worry folks thats why I will have a spare room for you when you visit :) Anyway, I don't have any of my things from Houston yet, its all still floating up on the barge. But really I just don't have a lot of outdoor equipment in general. So I borrowed some things from Erin and Jason, who are amazing and actually have their own kayaks! They let me use a sleeping bag, raincoat, rubber boots, a big backpack to carry all my gear in, and most importantly a cooler for my box wine. Can't go camping without some drinks! And then my new friends who organized the trip let me borrow their tent and stove to heat up my freeze dry meals yum yum (actually they were pretty tasty ha). When I went to REI to get my meals, I also stumbled across this gem below... a plastic camping wine glass that unscrews and compacts for easy storage!

Compact cup

Turns into a perfect camping wine glass

So we headed out early Saturday morning around 7:00am to Whittier, which is about an hour away from Anchorage. The tricky thing about Whittier is you have to go through a tunnel that is about 2 miles long and only has one lane. So every half hour it switches directions so traffic from the other side can come through. It is a bit claustrophobic underneath and I was praying that no car broke down cause there really isn't anyway to get more than one vehicle width through at a time. Whittier is a pretty small town surrounded by mountains with easy access to the ocean, which is why a lot of cruise ships dock here and tourists take the train into Anchorage (see map below).

Once we got to Whittier, we rented our kayaks and took a water taxi that dropped us off right at the campsite and set up. This was pretty much my first adventure "in the wild" and I came equipped with bear spray. Snakes, scorpions, and spiders are the threats down in the Texas country, however up here it's bears. I took a bear safety class at work and they said bears are rarely predators to people, with the exception of polar bears which are quite terrifying and want to rip anything to shreds. But the brown and black bears common in Anchorage and Southern Alaska are usually more on the defensive and want to protect their space and their cubs. So if you are calm, talk to the bear, and back away slowly you should be fine. Otherwise use bear spray. There is apparently 1 bear for every 4 humans in Alaska so since we had 8 people in our crew, the odds were that we might stumble upon a bear. Eeeeek. Bear spray is a very very very concentrated pepper spray that is about the size of a spray paint bottle. You have to wait till the bear is close enough to you for the spray to reach it and essentially blind it and then they will back off. I took it with me everywhere, including when I went to the bathroom and even in the kayak! Ha, I was not going to come face to face with a bear without deterrent.. The only other deterrent is a gun, but I do not feel comfortable carrying around one of those.

So we set up our campsite on Blackstone Bay in Prince William Sound, ate some lunch, and started our kayaking adventure down to the big Blackstone Glacier. We got to see 4 glaciers in total, and even kayaked to shore and climbed on one of them! Lots of photos below.

Blackstone Bay is on the West side of Prince William Sound, near Whittier

Breathtaking Mountains reflected in the water

Absolutely incredible

Campsite

View from the "bathroom" haha

The center / biggest glacier in the photo below is the Blackstone Glacier, our destination in the kayaks. So being from Texas, I pretty much had no idea what a glacier was. I thought it was another word for iceberg... oops! According to the trusty internet, glaciers are made up of fallen snow that, over centuries, compress into large thickened ice masses. Glaciers form when snow remains in one location long enough to transform into ice. What makes glaciers unique is their ability to move. Some glaciers are as small as football fields, while others grow to be over a hundred kilometers long.

Another fun fact is that glaciers store about 75% of the world's freshwater. And glacial ice has a distinct blue color compared to regular ice because the dense ice of the glacier absorbs every other color of the spectrum except blue--so blue is what we see! So all the blue patches in the photos are glaciers. We saw 4 total on our journey of kayaking about 6 hours.

Blackstone Glacier

Preparing for our trek

It took about 3 hours of paddling to reach the glacier

Had to navigate through the icebergs of fallen glacier chunks,
90% of the icebergs are underwater so its much bigger than what you see

We took a pit stop about halfway to the Blackstone Glacier to hike up one of the smaller glaciers below. It was so beautiful with the melting ice that created a river and lots of crevices and caves to explore. And the blue tint was so pretty!

Paddling to shore to hike up the glacier

Climbing up the glacier

Cute rock formation

Approaching the cave

Taking a break on the rocks

About to go inside the glacier!

Bright blue ice melting into the freshwater river

The melting glacier carved out a cave

View from inside the glacier cave

Such a perfect day. View from the glacier back to Blackstone Bay

Bright blue glacier behind me

Leaving the glacier we explored..

Onwards to the Blackstone Glacier. I took so many photos because I kept thinking we were so close, but the size of it is so deceiving. Every 15-30 minutes, I would spot some small dots at the base of the glacier (thinking they were bears haha), and they were actually kayakers returning back. So I knew we still had a long way to go. The man we rented the kayaks from warned us not to get too close to this glacier because it was melting and chunks would fall off and create big waves that wiped out kayaks. It sounds like thunder when the chunks fall off, and if you weren't watching closely it was too late to see it by the time you heard it. I did get to see a couple of chunks break off, and you can see in the lower right side of the photos below a pile of small pieces that broke off. I got fairly close, but still kept my distance since I am not an experienced kayaker and definitely didn't want to tip over in frigid water. It got much cooler as we got close since the wind was blowing off the glacier, but it was so neat. On the 3 hour trek back to camp,  there were several sea otters and sea lions that popped their heads up around our kayaks. It freaked me out a little bit because again, I did not want to tip over, but they stayed far away and minded their own business.

Onwards to the Blackstone Glacier so close yet so far

Waterfalls everywhere of melting snow and glacier ice

Made it as close as I want to get to the glacier!

When we got back to camp we set up our campfire and brought out the food and drinks. The tide is pretty crazy here so we had to make sure to set up camp far away from the water since it changed drastically from when we had left 6 hours before. The tide rose about 3 vertical feet where we were, but since it was so flat, the water came up at least 30 feet horizontally. So we improvised and made a little rock cooler that was soon filled with cold water at high tide to keep our drinks cold. We also fetched a small iceberg to put in the cooler haha. Luckily there were no bear encounters this trip and overall it was outstanding! I'm so thankful for the friends I've made so far and love that everyone is so welcoming and friendly to new folks.

Our improvised cooler

Fetching ice for our cooler

Last, but not least.. I crossed something off my bucket list this week! My roomie Erin used to be a bartender in her previous life and made me my first ever Cosmo :) Others I've crossed off this year are climb to the top of a mountain, visit the Grand Canyon, ride in a hot air balloon, and own a house! 29 out of 69 items complete and hopefully I'll get to cross off at least one more during my time in Alaska - see the Northern Lights!

The most beautiful (and delicious) cosmo

Cheers