Alaska 2008

Jonathan has been working in Anchorage, Alaska for the last 2 weeks, so instead of flying him home for the weekend, they flew me up. It is such a beautiful, pristine place. I got there Thursday afternoon and we had dinner that didn't sit well with me. I had a restless night until I finally threw up, twice. It's been more than 5 years since I have puked, since before I was married, so I forgot how fun it is. (Side note: Don't know how you sick pregnant ladies do it!) I spent the next morning in bed trying to plan what we should do and where we should go.

FYI: For any of you future Alaska vacationers, most tours close around September 15th. We were hoping to drive up to Denali National Park and go on the bus tour, but it stopped on the 15th. I called up there to see if it was worth coming and the ranger said that the road was closed 3 miles into the park because it was snowing, so we decided to bag that idea and move onto plan B: Kenai National Park. This was the last weekend for the Kenai Fjords Boat Tour, so we decided to go for it.

The morning started off cold and rainy. We were a little nervous that we were going to spend the next 6 hours on this boat not seeing anything because of the clouds and rain. Boy, were we wrong!!

As the day progressed, the clouds cleared and the sun came out. It was gorgeous. We saw lots of wildlife: mountain goat, black bear, bald eagle, sea otters, seals, dolphins, and the highlight...whales! Guess who spotted them and got the captain to turn the boat around and head straight for them?? Jonathan! He even got a free candy bar from the staff for having such great eyes. (Thank you Lasix) This is a picture of the scenery while we were looking for whales.

There was a pod of about 10 shamus. They would come so close to the boat, it was awesome. You can see one under the water in the picture above if you look closely.

I'm so used to seeing sea life at Sea World. It was such a different experience seeing them in the wild. The captain turned off the boat. It was silent around us and we just watched these whales swim around, blow out their spouts, jump, etc. It was worth every dime.

Here's my cute man. In the background is the Aialik Glacier.

Aialik Glacier, getting closer.

Aialik Glacier, really close, but it still looks really small. It was so huge! We watched some huge chunks of ice break off and fall into the water. I felt like we were on the Discovery Channel.

Here are a bunch of seals hanging out on the rock. I really tried to get good pics of the other wildlife, however, my camera couldn't quite focus well enough. We do have great video if you're interested. :-) (Can you tell we don't get out much?)
So here I am with my new BFF Molly that I met on our boat tour. I was commenting to Jonathan on the ride down to the harbor that I was surprised there wasn't more Palin-mania in Alaska. Not a lot of signs, bumper stickers, etc. So when I saw Molly's kids who were decked out in McCain-Palin sweatshirts, pins, etc. I asked the obvious, "So, you guys Palin fans?" Come to find out, Molly is Sarah Palin's sister! We chatted for a while. Her ex-husband is the highway patrol trooper that Palin is being investigated for trying to fire. She told me the whole story and said how the media doesn't even have half of it correct. (shocking!) She told me some stories about Bristol (the pregnant one) and a cute story about Piper, the little 5-year-old. She said that before the VP debate, Sarah asked her daughter Piper to pray for her. "Why?" Piper asked. Sarah said it was so that God could speak through her. Piper's response, "Isn't that cheating?"

Jonathan was embarrassed when I asked to take a picture with her, but I did it anyway.

This was the beautiful town/harbor of Seward where our tour returned.

Sunday morning we watched conference in our hotel room on my computer. I love technology. We decided to go find the Anchorage Temple. It took us a little while. (FYI: Don't use maps.google.com for directions in Alaska--everything was SO WRONG!) We finally turned into this big stake center and the temple was just tucked away in the corner of the parking lot. It was definitely the smallest of the small temples that we have seen.

I put the camera on timer and told Jonathan to make a funny face. Hmm.

We went into Costco in Anchorage to pay homage for my Dad, the Costco King. When we walked in this man and his wife were sitting at the food court table with their cart full of M&Ms. Jonathan and I both made comments, we thought were under our breath, but when I passed by him, he grabbed my coat and said, "If you were wondering about all these M&Ms..." He went on to tell me that every trick-or-treater that comes to his house, which is the last house on a dead end lane, gets a huge 3lb. Costco-size bag of M&Ms!! You better believe I asked for his address! He said they spend $400 and they've been doing it for years. He had great stories about kids' reactions to receiving the huge bag of candy. Can you imagine? I, of course, asked to take his picture. He handed me his card, on bright yellow cardstock that said:

Paul Bierman

A Regular Guy

Serious about having fun.

We need more people like this in the world.

We finished out our trip at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center where they take in hurt or injured wildlife and nurse them back to health. Here's my buddy Bullwinkle.

This is a wood bison. It didn't move. I thought maybe it just a cardboard cut-out or something. Until the stampede of bison came charging up to the fence (luckily) to get some hay.

All in all we had a great time. It was definitely cold. We definitely want to go back. Jonathan LOVES this kind of stuff and wants to see Denali bad. Thank you to our parents who tag-teamed Addy so we could have a nice time, just the two of us.