WEAVER FAMILY: Seeing Some More of Beautiful Alaska

July 8 – 12 (Anchorage, Seward, The Kenai Peninsula and Seldovia)

Time is flying by and this blog has definitely taken a back seat. This past week on Monday we took a day trip and drove to Seward, AK and then took a six hour cruise out through Resurrection Bay to the Alaiak Glacier and back. The boat held 150 people, but there weren’t that many on that day. You could, of course, sit inside, and a lot of the saner people did, but we got seats outside where we could see better. It was COLD, but we were prepared with lots of layers, hats, gloves, etc. It turned out to be a beautiful day and toward the end the sun was shining. It is so often cloudy, but the sun does break through sometimes. Anyway, we saw several humpback whales cavorting around, sea otters, sea lions and seals, and lots & lots of birds so that was pretty cool. There were several glaciers on the way out, but the really impressive one was Alaiak, which was HUGE, and was really cool because it was calving pretty regularly. That is when pieces of the glacier break off into the water. You weren’t always looking at the right place when it broke off, but you soon heard it, but by the time you heard it you were too late to see it falling off, although you could see the waves it created. We were about a third of a mile away from it and the sound took a second or two to reach us. We felt pretty small in comparison to the hugeness of it. It was over 300 foot high, and one could also hear the glacier moving and cracking – the sounds were as fascinating as the sights.

They fed us lunch on the boat, all the tea and coffee you wanted, and at the end they brought out homemade chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven. All in all, it was a fun day. Alana has done this trip every year since she moved here four years ago, and wanted to get that in before they leave. We were glad she did! We ate supper at a restaurant along the waterfront before heading home.

Since then we’ve been running errands, packing up and starting to clean. We mostly let Travis & Alana do the packing and I especially have started cleaning – oven, kitchen cupboards, etc. Tuesday evening we were invited to Gary & Kim Martin and their two boys, Simon & Avery’s house for supper – friends of Travis & Alana from church. Wednesday the carpet got cleaned so we had to have both bedrooms empty (that’s where the carpeting is) and couldn’t sleep in them last night. We would have all had to sleep in the living room on air mattresses, which would have worked, but Roger & I took off in the airplane late that afternoon and headed down the Kenai Peninsula to Homer, where Roger wanted to go anyway. He did touch & goes at several airports on the way down. We landed in Homer (winds gusting 35 to 40 knots!) It was very rough. We walked a half mile or so where we ate supper. It was chilly and windy and there was a bit of rain in the air. We kept going and ended up in Seldovia which was across the water and over a low mountain range. It was very rough and we had 45 knot winds blowing out of a mountain valley, but 3 miles away over the next ridge where we landed the air was calm, and we spent the night there. Quite an adventure that was! We landed about 9:30, not sure where we were going to sleep for the night but we had our camping stuff along. One of the buildings was unlocked so we went in, and there was a couch and floor space where we thought maybe we could pitch up, but then decided maybe someone would fly in yet and find us there, so we ended up setting the tent up on a small porch where we’d mostly be out of the rain and slept right there. There was even a porta-potty there, so we were all set! J Except no running water. L

Thursday morning we walked into town and had breakfast before heading back to Anchorage. The town was interesting – mostly a resort place with houses built right along the river, and on stilts. In the restaurant it looked like the locals were eating before they headed out on their fishing boats or something. We got back to Anchorage soon after lunch, and got right back to work with cleaning & running errands. Travis & Alana had stayed up till 2 am that morning packing, and it still wasn’t done, so another day of organizing and deciding what goes and what stays. The night before Travis had taken Emily (Alana’s sister), Bethany (friend & roommate of Emily) and Alana on a flight which was apparently very bumpy. Bethany & Emily have lived up here for the past year and are leaving in September to go back to the lower 48. Bethany had never been up in a small plane and wanted that experience before she left. JOLENE