A pirates life for me!

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.

Alaska Adventure, Day 7

First thing in the morning, we headed down to the Denali Park Dog Kennels. During the winter the park is patrolled by dog sled teams. We went to the kennels to meet the dogs and see how they work with them. One thing I've noticed about Alaska is that EVERYBODY has dogs. And now just normal dogs, they have giant wolf dogs.

These dogs basically looked like wolves, but were friendly. It really was funny how blase' they acted when the gaggle of senior citizens walked by. They could've cared less. When Talmage strolled by in his chariot, Oh my gosh, they all jumped off their dog houses and started barking and clawing at the fence.

I had to get a picture of it, and I wasn't going to move the stroller any closer because the dogs started going wild. It would have been funny except they all looked like they wanted to eat Talmage. Which is not funny.

All the dogs on the right of this picture were a little more calm, they were the more 'friendly' dogs.

After the dog sled demo, we took a picture with the sled. Does it look like we could win the Iditarod?

Alaska Adventure, Day 5

Yes, I know I skipped a couple of days because all the pictures are on my dad's camera and it is a very high tech camera. So, you will all just have to wait breathlessly while I develop enough smarts to figure it out.

We went to Denali national park this week, it was super awesome. It is very beautiful, very large and very remote. Denali is for two types of people of people. 1.) High end travelers who enjoy traveling in large tourist buses, mainly Princess, with gaggles of senior citizens. 2.) Crazy backpackers who are looking to explore the wild backcountry, with gaggles of snow shoe hares. (Haley and Jesse...this is probably where you will go when you die.) We saw very few people like us. In fact, our baby was the only small child, aside from Thomas, that I saw the entire trip.

My mom reserved some cabins for the trip, which was very nice, because it was pretty cold and even snowed, hailed and rained while we were there. (My mother, always a southern californian at heart, brought sunscreen and straw hats for everybody). My parents cabin got upgraded, so that left Truston and I in an 'original' cabin down the hill. That's right, it was originally built in 1911. It was a tiny 11 by 11 foot cabin with one tiny window and a tiny door. We loved it for camping purposes, but I don't know how you could live there...especially during 9 month winters. It brings new meaning to the phrase, "Cabin Fever".

Here is a picture of our cabins.

Much more exciting posts coming soon...as soon as i figure out how to download my dad's pictures. :)