So this has been quite a month! There was a huge wildfire in southern Alaskan during the later half of May. I think in total 200,000 acres burned and when the wind was right, the smoke blew right into Anchorage. The smoke was so awful one day that the radio was advising not to go outside due to the hazardous air quality - my eyes and throat were incredibly itchy. Despite this rampant wildfire, the three day holiday weekend for Memorial Day was right around the corner and I wasn't going to let it damper any plans. So I drove down to Homer with a few friends for a camping trip, and luckily the smoke cleared up about an hour before we arrived. It was fun to hit up the brewery and winery down there and it's always nice to walk along the beach and enjoy the crashing waves. But I'd say the best part of the trip was my new found love for eagles! Anyone who knows me, knows I'm not an animal person... at all. So the fact that eagles are in my top 3 cool animals (along with elephants and giraffes cause they fascinate me) is a pretty big deal. So I temporarily adopted an eagle while I was in Homer. He hung around on the top of a condo right by our tent basically all the time! Since eagles are in such abundance down there, I decided to count my eagle sightings on the way home to Anchorage and got all the way up to 28 :)
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| Smokey drive to Homer |
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| Along the beach of Homer |
There are two neat chainsaw wood carving shops on the drive back to Anchorage that I have always wanted to check out. I was inspired by two beautiful large wood carvings at my bosses house so I was excited to finally stop and see the shops. I was hoping to find something a little smaller and luckily there was a ton of variety at the first stop. Unfortunately, I'm super indecisive before I make any purchase so I had all my favorites lined up to compare side by side. As I was evaluating each one, the owners were in the midst of moving all their larger pieces to the center of the lot in preparation for evacuation since the wildfire was only about a mile away from their property! I was oblivious to their rush and finally picked out a super cute little welcome bear and some neat tree wall hangings. The artist even cleaned and dusted off all of the ash that had gathered on them before I took them home. I named my bear Blueberry since he is so cute and friendly and only eats blueberries instead of people :) Blue for short.
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| Welcome Blueberry |
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| Wooden tree carvings |
After getting back from Homer, I used the rest of the holiday weekend for some home improvement projects to prepare for my upcoming visitors. First step was to paint some accent walls cause I'm bored of the beige walls I have throughout the entire house. I debated for several hours on various shades of green and finally decided on a one called guacamole! I was probably influenced by my love of guacamole and also hungry for some Tex Mex, but the color turned out great. I also learned a lot about paint because apparently I'm a complete novice when it comes to anything home improvement wise. Once I decided on my shade, I was walking the rows of Lowe's looking for the paint color until I finally asked for help and learned that they mix the color right there for you in their machine. Yes, I'm sure I'm the only homeowner that doesn't know that haha, but now I do! I also picked up a drop cloth, tape, and all my painting gear to tackle my project.
I painted one wall in my kichen / dining space. I think it really helps separate that space from my living room since the downstairs is so open. Since I had so much leftover paint, I also decided to paint an accent wall in the front entry way. It looks great with my sealed floors and the newest addition of Blueberry the welcome bear.
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| Taping up the wall |
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| Waiting for the first coat to dry |
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| Finished product! |
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| Entryway bonus accent wall |
I also hung some artwork along my staircase walls. I was inspired by all my friends houses with awesome artwork and photos on their stairs - Erin, Emily, and Jodie! Emily travels to Juneau somewhat frequently for work, which is home to the Alaskan Brewing Company. They have neat painted wooden signs with very Alaskan images on them that she graciously brought back for me - A float plane, a moose amongst the birch trees, and a giant pumpkin at the state fair. I also tediously mapped out a photo wall to display some of my travel photos! Thanks to pinterest I learned a tip of cutting out paper the size of the frames and taping them up to the wall until landing on a configuration that works best. This trick also allows you to mark where the nail holes need to go, which is extremely helpful to avoid several extra holes in the wall! Lastly, I hung some art in the living room and new curtains in my upstairs nook area. My house is finally ready for visitors :)
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| AK Brewing Company wooden signs |
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| Living Room artwork |
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| Finding the perfect configuration |
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| Vision coming to life |
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| Ta-da my travel photo wall |
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| New curtains |
Right before my first summer visitors arrived, I ran in the Twilight 12k run with Emily. I was very nervous because I had not trained as much as I hoped and 7.6 miles would be the furthest I've ever run in my life. It was on a Friday at 7pm, so I tried to stay hydrated all day and had no idea what to eat leading up to the race or when to stop eating haha. I ended up with a peanut butter sandwich about 2 hours before the race. Overall, I think it went well and I managed to run the entire race without stopping (my first goal) and under 1:30 (my second goal). I got to enjoy pizza and beer at the end which was a great treat. I feel like I can likely run the distances further than that (aka a half marathon), but I just need to work on the speed. Emily is trying to convince me to do a half with her in August, so stay tuned if I can actually get enough training in to pursue that race.
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| Pre-race selfie |
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| Crossing the finish line with a smile |
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| Emily's finish was a bit more exciting |
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| We did it! |
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| Cheers to 7.6 miles |
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| Really pretty flowers along the park strip finish line |
So enough about home improvements and exercise, the main point of this entry is about my best friend coming to visit Anchorage!! I was so happy and excited to share my new life to one of my dearest friends from Texas and show off this great state. She arrived with her husband Justin around 7:30 on Thurday night and we started off strong with dinner at Moose's Tooth, one of the best restaurants in Anchorage, and the best pizza place in the world in my opinion. I'm sure they were a little loopy with the 3 hour time difference, but we stayed out until 11 enjoying pizza and beer, and it was still sunny when we left!
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| Welcome to Anchorage! Drinks at Moose's Tooth |
On Friday, they took a nice bike ride along the coastal trail while I unfortunately had to work. Then we checked out a couple Alaskan shops like the Ulu Factory before getting ready for the Capital Cities concert that night! It is exciting to have some big name bands coming to Anchorage this summer for cool outdoor concerts. Up next in July is Grouplove if I can convince my next visitors Katie and her brother Patrick to partake :) After the fun concert, we drove to the coast to watch the sunset at Point Woronzof beach at midnight!
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| Capital Cities |
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| Crazy kid climbing on the overhang |
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| Safe and sound! |
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| Beautiful sunset |
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| Great first day in Alaska! |
On Saturday morning we drove north about 2.5 hours to Talkeetna for a flight seeing tour of Mt McKinley, known as Denali here. It was an incredible drive with views of Denali poking out quite often!
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| Beautiful drive with Denali views, even when getting stuck behind RVs |
We arrived at K2 Aviation and were quickly weighed and escorted to our little 8 seater plane. This tour is definitely one of my Alaskan bucket lists adventures, so I was thrilled to finally find some takers to join. We flew over the foothills of Denali for half an hour and landed on a glacier! We got to walk around a bit and soak in the surroundings, and even take a bite of glacier ice. Surprisingly it was actually almost warm on the glacier with no need for gloves or a jacket. There was a little cabin built up on the top of a rock before this area became a National Park. It can be rented out for a remote weekend of skiing or camping, but the waiting list is apparently over a year long.
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| K2 Aviation |
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| Some of the sightseeing planes |
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| Ready for takeoff, our pilot spoke through the headsets |
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| Pilot |
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| Approaching Denali National Park |
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| Bottom of Ruth Glacier |
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| More and more snow and glacial blue ice |
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| Glacier landing |
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| What an experience! |
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| Let's eat some glacier ice |
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| Exploring the glacier |
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| Cabin for rent - only access via plane |
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| Our plane |
After hopping back into the plane, we weaved between the peaks as they started getting taller. I felt like we were flying so close to the mountains, but I think their scale was deceiving. The pilot pointed out the Denali base camp where the climbers start their ascent. There was a plane barely visible down below and several small specks of tents. From base camp to summit, Mt McKinley is the 2nd tallest in the world! The pilot said there was roughly 500 climbers on the mountain that day. They stop every 1000 miles of vertical ascent to acclimate to the diminishing oxygen levels so it takes approximately 3 weeks to climb. We saw several specks of people and the trail far far below us. Then all the sudden the clouds parted and the south face of Denali was right in front of us! It was pretty incredible. It seemed massive and so close but the pilot said we were still flying 3 miles away.
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| Getting closer to Denali |
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| Beautiful snow covered peaks |
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| Denali Base camp and transport plane |
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| Another camp and trail to summit |
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| Getting close... |
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| There it is! Denali :) |
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| Heading back to Talkeetna |
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| Climbers airing out their tents and gear post climb |
We explored the small town of Talkeeta for the rest of the afternoon. There are several quirky shops where I got a watercolor painting of Denali and Becca found a couple souvenirs including a handcrafted birch basket. When we were shopped out, we stopped for some beer tasting at the Denali Brewing Company, another one of the many Alaskan microbreweries. Becca and I both fell in love with the Louisville Sour beer and I was going to get a growler to go, but since it's their most popular they won't sell growlers to try to make it last all summer. One year they sold growlers and they ran out in just over a week!
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| Yummy food truck lunch |
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| Delish black bean and rice dish with a fresh limeade |
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| Fun moose statue |
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| Denali Brewing Company Beer Garden |
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| Sampling beers in the beer garden |
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| Denali watercolor print |
We then made the beautiful drive to Hatcher's Pass, one of my favorite places, especially since it is so easily accessible from Anchorage. I stayed in a cabin there in the winter when the place was covered in snow! So this would be a completely different view. We stopped a couple times for some photo opps along the way among the mountains and streams. I was hoping the fireweed would be in bloom, but I think it's too early in the season. Surprisingly, June has been a chilly month in the 50s! We stopped at the lodge for some salmon chowder and then headed back to the cabin for some wine, cheese, and Rummy 500, my favorite card game!
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| Scenic drive up to Hatcher's Pass |
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| Cabins in the springtime |
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| Cool panoramic of Hatcher's Pass - thanks Justin |
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| Playing cards |
On Sunday we woke up early with the sunlight and Justin found an adventurous hike nearby with two glacial lakes at the top. We had to drive on a very pothole filled road at about 5mph which was a little treacherous. Then we hiked on a relatively flat trail for about a mile along a stream and saw lots of beaver dams. We then trekked upward along some big boulders which was a little scary. Justin's hiking boots broke during this part of the excursion making them pretty unsafe to continue on in. This combined with the unmelted snow made reaching the glacial lakes not in our cards that day. It was a pretty hike, although I can't believe there is still so much snow on the ground in June.
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| Beginning of hike |
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| Crossing the stream on lots of cool bridges |
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| Tall beaver lake built up from the ground! |
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| More beaver dams |
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| Pretty scenery, even on an overcast day |
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| Waterfalls |
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| Lots of Marmots running around |
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| Beginning the ascent |
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| Climbing up the rocks |
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| The boulders started getting a bit tough to climb |
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| View from a top the boulder - I was scared to fall in the cold water |
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| Justin's hiking boot disaster fail |
We ended our adventurous Alaskan weekend with a trip to Glacier Brewhouse for some fresh seafood. I have an obsession with king crab legs so I will make all my visitors try them at least once. We also had some fresh salmon, rockfish, and halibut amongst the three of us. It was all super tasty, but the craziest thing happened... I found a screw in my mashed potatoes!! Yes a screw.. like a mechanical component. Surprisingly, I wasn't as grossed out as I should have been since it wasn't anything from the human body like a hair or a fingernail or a bandaid.. so we spent the rest of dinner laughing and contemplating how a screw could have ended up in the potatoes! The best we could figure is from a mixer.
Since I couldn't take off work for the week, Becca and Justin took the scenic Alaskan train down to Seward. They did some kayaking, ice climbing, canoeing, and hit up the breweries and restaurants down there for some more seafood. They also took a fishing charter one day and came back with lots of yummy halibut and rockfish.
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| They left me a rockfish fillet to cook :) |
I took a halfway off work on Friday so that we could go white water rafting, hands down one of the most exhilarating activities I've done in Alaska, so I was really excited to share it with them! It's right on the line between super thrilling and too terrifying for me. It was kind of a drizzly day, but it worked out great cause the the river was so scenic and a little drizzle didn't hurt since we were getting splashed anyway. After completing the swim test, our hands were frozen, but we were still dry in our drysuits and loaded up into a raft. Just to test out the rescue skills of my boat mates, I did a practice run of falling out of the boat before we got to the rapids. Luckily they aced my test and got me back into the raft quickly (it really wasn't practice, I legit fell out before we even reached the rapids haha). But after that I managed to stay in the rest of the trip until Becca and I voluntarily floated in the calm water at the end. A beaver swam up next to us about 10 ft away which was pretty cool, yet terrifying when we found out after the fact that beavers can attack people! After getting home from the exciting rafting trip, we had a lazy night chilling in front of the fire place and vegging out to some tv.
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| Rapid time, I'm in the front left and Becca and Justin are on the right |
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| So fun! |
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| Getting rocked by the rapids |
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| Staying in the boat |
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| Floating down the river at the end |
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| We are a little crazy floating in super cold water |
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| But it was so fun :) |
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| We survived |
Saturday was their last day in town :( but we ended with some pretty Alaskan activities, including a trip to the Alaska Fur Exchange. They have every type of animal fur you can imagine here, some of it creepy, but some of it awesome. My mom gave me an amazing fox fur hat for Christmas last year so now that I'm a fur connoisseur haha, I wanted to show off all the cool types of fur to Becca. She ended up finding a super cute sea otter headband (I'm envious) and I found a rabbit fur scarf that is so so soft and will match my cute Russian fur hat. I also found a smaller version of the birch basket Becca got in Talkeetna :)
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| Rocking our new furs |
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| Birch basket |
We also paid a visit to the Alaskan Wildlife Conservatory, which is essentially a zoo for exotic animals and gives them much more area to roam. We saw moose, eagles, caribou, elk, lynx, muskox, and bears up close! We were there right on time for a bear feeding so we got to see the brown bears munching on salmon. At one point an eagle swooped in and tried to get some of the salmon from the bears, but they had none of that. We ended the trip with a stop at one of those wood carving shops where they found a really cool halibut carving! It was a struggle to fit in the luggage, but they made it work haha.
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| One winged rescue eagle |
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| Elk |
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| More elk |
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| Posing brown bear, look at those claws! |
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| Becca and the bear |
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| Scary picturing this little guy standing up and growling at you in the wild |
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| It came so close to us |
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| Eagle swooping in for some salmon |
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| Baby elk |
It was so wonderful having some visitors from back in Texas come all the way up to Alaska! It makes me feel not so far away when my best friends back home understand my new life up here. I was really sad to drop them off at the airport, but looking forward to having my parents and brother come tonight for round 2 of visitors!!
