More Chocolate, Please

We visited the "Alaska Wild Berry and Chocolate Factory". It had a 20 ft. chocolate waterfall...Thomas is shown here diving into the water fall.









One of the awesome things about Alaska is all the crazy souvenirs possibilities. Alaska is kind of similar to Texas in that it's residents are fiercely proud of their state. So they market all sorts of weird, yet inticing, goods. Exibit A: Moose hats.

















Who doesn't want a moose hat? I do... and I got one! Now, I have all sorts of awesome Halloween possibilities. Moose and the hunter, Rocky and Bullwinkle, etc.

Cruising the Open Sea

Truston and I went on a day cruise out of Seward and around Resurrection Bay. It was supposed to be 8 hours, but because the weather was so sketchy, they shortened

it and we didn't head into the open waters of the Gulf of Alaska. We saw a lot of cool things: Killer Whales, Humpback Whales, Sea Lions, Puffins, etc. It was very cool and gave me a new respect for wildlife photographers. For example, I would show you the picture I took of the killer whales, but all you can see is a splash of water.

"A Very Merry Half Birthday to You"

This is Talmage's first 'half birthday' celebration. I think that half birthday's should be celebrated(why not?), Truston thinks they are unnecessary. Regardless, we celebrated Talmage's half birthday while we were in Alaska. You can't really tell, but he was totally nervous about having a burning match put in front of him. It was fun nontheless and hopefully he won't be scared the rest of his life.

p.s. yesterday was his 7 month old birthday

Alaskan Adventure, Day 4

This was an awesome day, however, I don't have the pictures to post what we did.
We went on a hike to a hand tram and took a cruise around a lake on an ice breaker. Yes, a boat that breaks ice, and they broke some ice and it was kinda scary.
This purpose of this blog, is to tell you what happened on a trail run that night. Grace, Truston and I went on a run (all the train runs we went on were super beautiful, I am exceedingly jealous of Alaskan runners). We ran and ran and ran. We ran into a moose that was about 3 feet off the trail..we skirted by him and kept running. Then we ran into another moose who was right on the trail. At that particular point the trail had turned into a giant mud puddle, and moose, being the marshy animals they are was standing in the mud. We couldn't really go around because the brush was too thick on one side and on the other side was the moose. So Truston slowly squeaked past, trying to avoid mud and moose. As he passed the moose, it jumped at him, freaked him out and Truston jumped the rest of the way. That left Grace and I on the other side of the moose. Grace crept by without incident. Next it was my turn. I tried to lean as much into the brush as possible, and by accident grabbed a bush of stinging nettle. Not just any kind of stinging nettle, Gigantic Alaskan Stinging Nettle, it really hurt, to say the least. There was not time to think of my throbbing hand because at that moment, the moose jumped at me, splashing water and looking like he was going to charge. Scared for my life, I yelled, "RUN!!" and we all sprinted down the trail afraid to look back. Oh my gosh, I was scared out of my skin. We kept running and the next people we saw said there was a bear and cub a 1/4 mile down the trail. We decided we had seen enough wild life for the day, so we turned around and headed back.
Needless to say, I hate moose, and I don't care if I never see another one in my life.
I am still jealous of all those beautiful trails, however, I am glad I don't have to battle Gigantic Alaskan Stinging Nettle and Moose and Bears everytime I go running.