Anchorage to Girdwood-Monday

Monday morning, we had breakfast (which are always awesome at Embassy Suites...made to order and FREE!), packed up, and headed south to Seward.  This post only covers the first half of the drive down to Seward.

The Embassy Suites had a couple of cool animals on display in the lobby.  The kids loved the bear.

Onto the drive...

It was another rainy day (notice a trend starting that lasted two weeks), and the mountains had a lot of cloud coverage.  Still, it was a beautiful drive.  You can see the road down at the bottom of the mountain.  We were overall impressed with the roads in Alaska. They were by far, better than the Southern California roads we drove for three years while in Arizona.  Most of the drive down was a two-lane highway, with four lanes at times.

Here, we are driving south on the Seward Hwy toward Seward.  That's the ocean there.  You follow the ocean down to Girdwood, and then you move inland some until Seward, when the ocean is on the other side of the peninsula.

The railroad tracks run right next to the ocean.  The Alaska Railroad is big business here.  MANY people travel by rail.

Yes, that is snow on the mountains.  We loved that.  In Girdwood, we stopped for the snow (post to come).

It was COLD that day and very windy.  The high was around 50, if that.

We pulled off to view this pretty waterfall.

All of the rivers were very full.  There was a lot of extra snow this year across the state, so the snow melting made for some overflowing rivers.

 I'm standing in the parking lot.  This is the view of the waterfall.

 Our ride for our two week adventure.  We were given a Chrysler Town and Country at the rental counter, and it was a sweet ride for a rental! It had leather seats and a dvd player.  We made sure Alex didn't get his hands on dvds to stuff into the dvd player as he has done with our minivan's player.

Dall sheep-We were very excited to spot these.  They are rare to see in public like this, even though there are apparently a ton of dall sheep.

 SO pretty and hard to capture in a picture

 This is near Beluga Point, but we didn't see any beluga whales.  We also witnessed the crazy tidal change on our drive back north here.  A half hour after low tide comes a massive wave-like of water, filling the area up again. 

This is at the turnoff for Girdwood, which is a small town down the Seward Hwy. The last bathrooms are here before Seward (which is still a couple of hours south).  We learned very quickly to stop at the gas stations when we saw them, as rest stops are like in Arizona...NONE!  In Girdwood, we ventured up to the ski resort, which was closed for the season, but we had a great lunch and snowball fight...pictures up next.

Day 1 and 2-Travel and Anchorage

We flew out of Fayetteville on Saturday, June 23.  Since we had an early flight at 7:30, we didn't have much time for breakfast.  I took donuts to the airport for the kids to enjoy.

Madison, who wasn't feeling great, definitely enjoyed her donut.

 Madison and Flash at San Francisco's airport

 Flash made sure to make his appearance

 San Francisco was our second stop. We flew from Fayetteville to Charlotte, Charlotte to San Francisco, and then San Francisco to Anchorage.  The kids loved seeing the Golden Gate Bridge again.  Madison remembered it from three years ago.  We arrived in Anchorage at 7:45 local time, which was 11:45 P.M. Eastern.  After waiting a very long time to get our rental car, we arrived at the Embassy Suites around 9:45 P.M.  The kids were exhausted, but they did a wonderful job flying.  Madison was in a lot of pain, as she couldn't get her ears to clear.  Edward, who brought all of his medical instruments with him, said her ears were beet red, bulging, but unfortunately, it would take a few days for them to clear.  She was in agony.  She's never had that problem, and the cold she picked up the day before seemed to be the culprit.

 First day in Anchorage...we woke up to rainy skies and temps around 50.  It felt great!  We drove just down near the waterfront.

 We found a local Ulul shop.  Ulul's are local knives Alaskas use, and they are great for so many things.  They had this sled dog sled outside.

 Flash in Anchorage

We were very excited to be there on a weekend, when Anchorage had their Farmer's Market.  We talked to a lot of locals, looked at their products, and we found some great food.  As you can see, Luke loved this nice and warm, hat and glove set.

We paid $7.99 for this seafood chowder at the Farmer's Market.  Now, I was a little skeptical of "how much" chowder we would get for $7.99.  I knew prices were higher and all, but...we got this HUGE 20 ounce cup full of chowder.  The guy put the chowder in, about 2/3 full, and then he poured all of the seafood, fresh salmon and halibut, on top.  It was absolutely delicious.  We purchased this, an order of fish and chips, and an order of corn fritters for lunch to all share, and we had plenty to eat.  It was perfect, and of all our meals on our trip, our Farmer's Market luncheon was one of the very favorite.  The corn fritters tasted like hush puppies, and they had a sweet butter for them too.  We LOVED this meal. 

 Pictures of the bay from Anchorage.  While it is on the ocean, there is no real "beach" area as most of us know.

 So cloudy you can't see the massive mountains in the distance (covered in snow, no less)

Tugboat

We ended our first day in Anchorage with a stop at the Army Post Commissary.  Yes, we found the military bases, and we shopped at the commissary because they are always the cheapest places around.  Prices were high, but better than anywhere else.  The kids enjoyed swimming in the pool at the hotel that night too.

Home

After 8,000 miles of air travel and 1,700 miles we put on our rental car, we are home. 

Pictures to follow, as I have to go through over 700 photos. 

We had a great trip to Alaska and loved seeing Edward's sister, Jennifer, and our brother-in-law, Andrew. 

The kids are AWESOME travelers and did better than expected with a four-hour time zone difference.

We had hoped to make it to church this morning, as we hate to miss, but as of 11:00, we still had two sleeping...due to red-eye flight.

Praise the Lord for safe travels, good times, and all seven check bags (including two carseat bags) arriving at locations undamaged.