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

The Big Move

I've always hated moving. Mainly because it always seems to occur during the heat of Texas summers and unfortunately I'm a mini hoarder.. You never know when you might need those Mardi Gras beads, or that crumbled concert ticket from an amazing Matt and Kim show, or of course all my Green Bay Packers gear, I'll never part with my cheesehead and my Brett Favre bobble-head! I'm super sentimental about objects, even if its just a handwritten note so its really hard for me to part with things. I have to emotionally say goodbye before I toss it (confession of a hoarder for real). However, I did take 3 trips to goodwill my last week in Houston and got rid of a bunch! So you can see why I hate moving, lots of stuff plus 100 degree temperatures = frustrated Stephanie. Anyways, all my moves have been exciting despite the physical labor of moving, and this one is no exception. So long Jackson Hill apartments, so many good memories from the 3 years I lived here!

I had 160 boxes... this is just the beginning!

Goodbye Jackson Hill Apartments!

Big news... I bought a house in Anchorage! Just adds to the stress of a new state, a new job, and now my first home purchase! The rental market in Anchorage is not very impressive. The price was 2-3 times what I pay in Houston for a major downgrade. So my realtor basically said buying is the way to go, but the market is so hot right now that new places sell within 5-7 days of being listed, sometimes before buyers even look at the property! So I had to make the biggest financial decision of my life after 2 days of looking at properties after work, yikes. But I'm super excited, its a cute little condo that is the perfect size for me. And I'll have a guest room for all the visitors I'm expecting :) Picture of the condo is below, its still under construction but will be ready to move in July 15, so more pictures to come!

My soon to be new abode! You can kind of see the mountains in the background

I was warned there are not a lot of furniture options in Anchorage, so it was best to buy some of the big things in Houston before I moved up. Good idea in theory.. however, fitting furniture for a 3 bedroom townhouse into my 1 bedroom apartment in Houston was a bit of a mess. I got a new bedroom set that I'm obsessed with, its amazing reclaimed wood! However I didn't get a mattress because my shipment of goods will take 4-6 weeks to arrive to Anchorage from Houston, so I'll get a mattress for my new bed in Anchorage so that I have a place to sleep for a few weeks while waiting for my stuff to arrive. Anyways, this means that for my last 2 weeks in Houston, I was sleeping on my mattress in my living room wedged between my TV and couches as you can see below. Also, I have got an amazing new dining room table that can fit more than 2 so I can have my new friends over for some fun dinner parties! This caused some serious furniture overload in my apartment and you could barely maneuver around before the movers came.

Living room / where I slept for 2 weeks pre-movers.. tight squeeze!

Living Room all packed up

Empty living room :(

I also got a new car! Meet Sue, my new Suburu Forester :) Hopefully she will keep my safe in the winter driving conditions up North. She is currently on a barge up to Anchorage and will hopefully arrive in about a week! This means I had to sell my first car, the good old Nissan Altima. However, its staying in the family, my brother RC bought it from me!

My new hot rod!

I've also gotten to go on a few hikes during my business trips to Alaska, one being Flattop which gives an awesome view of the city, coastline, and surrounding mountains! I felt like I was in Lord of the Rings aka amazing. It took about an hour and a half to get to the top. There were three sections of "stairs" which was essentially burning like a stairmaster, I need to do this hike a couple times a month to get some buns of steel haha. The last set of stairs I just looked down at my feet telling them to keep moving, the view will be worth it. One of my co-workers cheered, "No pain, no gain" and proceeded to mention that her 5 year old son can do it. So obvi I couldn't stop if a 5 year old can do it! Ha. The last part of the hike was basically a straight uphill of big rocks that you had to manuever around to get to the flat top. It was scary when a rock came loose and I started slipping, and the fact that you could lose your balance and essentially fall down the cliff was slightly scary (my mom will probably freak reading this), but once I got to the top it was absolutely worth it! Such a beautiful place and still bright as day at 9pm. Summers are incredible here. I captured the sunset at 12:30am and then the sunrise in the airport at 3:30am! I love how long the days are, there is so much time to cram in fun activities and make the most of the beautiful summer days! 

Breaktaking views on Flattop

So pretty with patches of snow yet beautiful greenery

Climbing up the rocks in the lower right to get to the top of Flattop

Taking in my new turf

Sunrise at 3:30am

I'm so lucky to have such amazing people supporting me during this huge transition. Even strangers that I've talked to about moving have been so sweet and encouraging. I went to the Cole Haan shoe store (after my friends were raving about them, thanks Aubrey and Lindsey) to get a good pair of work shoes since I finally discarded about 10 pairs before I moved that were completely destroyed. I got to talking to sales lady helping me out and told her I didn't want any open toe shoes cause I was moving somwehere cold in a few days. We chatted about my move and when she checked me out she gave me a lifesaver mint and told me I was her lifesaver for inspiring her to live out her dreams and ambitions! It was super sweet. 

I had a grand goodbye with all my friends and family in Texas. I got to spend a week in Florida with my family and got a great tan that will have to last me through the winter :) I got to enjoy some fabulous concerts at Free Press Summer Fest in Houston! And then I spent my last few nights in Houston saying goodbye to my amazingly sweet friends and ended on a bang by party rocking to Ke$ha and Pitbull, can't beat that!

Hanging out on the sunny beach in Florida with my fam

Sweating our butts off at FPSF for a little Matt & Kim!

More Free Press Summer Fest jams

Ke$ha! These outfits are only appropriate in this situation haha

Tic-Toc...

On the Clock...

But the party...

Don't stop!

Amazing Texas and Alaska themed cupcakes made by the sweet Ann Luu!

Total Texan... Got the Shiner, flag cookie, and Texas necklace
from my co-worker Kimberly so I can totally rock Texas even in Alaska

It's been such a whirlwind since I found out I was moving a little over a month ago that I don't think I've really had a chance to process. But it all kind of hit me the last 2 days before I moved and it was actually really hard and emotional to say goodbye to everyone. I cried a few times starting with when I turned in the keys to my apartment and then had to start saying goodbye to the people who have been such a huge part of my life lately. Temporarily good-bye of course! Its just strange to think I'm so far away from home when I've never lived more than 4 hours away from the house I was born in. But my sweet best friend Becca gave me a necklace with a small compass so I can always find my way home :)

Well, I've nearly survived the big move and am thrilled to finally be starting this adventure and look forward to getting settled over the next month. The 7 hour flight is not too much fun multiple times in such a short period of time. A few more pictures below of my trip up here on Monday! Including the cockpit of my plane, the pilot totally let me fly the plane.. while on the gate of course :)  The view from the plane window of the beautiful state of Alaska and the lovely polar bears that greeted me in the airport! More exciting updates and pictures to come as I finally move into my new place in the next few weeks and check out more activities in Alaska this summer!

Off I go, with 3 suitcases to last me 4-6 weeks until my things arrive in Anchorage!

Mom helped me scramble and pack up the day I left

Two of my brothers came to the airport to drop me off

Piloting the plane

Welcome to Alaska!

Why hello there scary bear

My new daily view from work

My precious parents sent me flowers at work when I arrived up here!
Thanks Mom and Dad :) ya'll are the best