Adventure Alaska: Summer 2012 so far

Summer in Alaska Begins
This will be my first full summer in Alaska. Winter was awesome. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. I was really enjoying skiing and was a little sad to see it go. So I'll be ready to embrace it when it comes back around. Right now I'm enjoying summer. It's going to be a short season but enjoyable. The following will be a synopsis of the trips I have taken so far and some of the side adventures.

Denali National Park
Denali National Park was great. We stayed at the Grizzly Bear Lodge which was perfect. It was outside the park, so a lot less expensive, but not too far away. Cute little cabin with electricity, plumbing, etc. More than I expected. Private cars aren't allowed inside the park so we rode a bus to our selected destination. We lucked out in that our bus was pretty empty and there was no one that was too annoying. We saw all sorts of animals (caribou, moose, dall sheep, mountain goats, grizzly bears, etc). The landscape wasn't a bad site either. Denali wasn't out so we missed that, but have seen it clearly many days all the way from Anchorage. I think they say the mountain is only visible 60 or so days out of 365 so not seeing it isn't so unusual. Here are some of the pictures from the park. I hope you enjoy them.

me at the park entrance

caribou

The mountain stream that we hiked to and ate lunch at

not a bad view

mountain goats with their babies

Fishing & Kayaking in Seward
Todd's sister Laureen joined us for the trip to Seward. It was her first trip to Alaska. We did make stops along the way to Seward which included Girdwood, Portage and the Alaska Wildlife conservation center. The weather was pretty overcast so I was worried about our fishing and kayaking trip, but oh well. The next morning we woke up and it was like the clouds parted just for us. The weather was absolutely beautiful and the water was as calm as could be. The fishing trip was great. We saw so much wildlife that even the captain of the boat said he'd never seen that much in one day. Fishing was a little slow for a bit, but we did catch a couple of chickens (small Halibut). We caught our limit in rock fish and others so it was a good day in all. The next day the clouds and rain came back for our kayak trip, but it was still enjoyable. We paddled out to bridal falls. That was it for that day. We were going to go up mount marathon, but with the weather we decided to just head home.

Rest of the week
Seward and Denali were our big trips. The rest of the week we went on hikes/runs most every day. We ate and drank too much and had a blast. Here are some of those pics.

Girl Time Alaskan Style
On Laureen's last day in Alaska we went out to Eklutna for an all girl 4 wheeler trip. It was a nice trip where we saw some bears and an amazing rock slide. I'm so glad for my Alaskan girlfriends....you gals rock!

Hiking out to exit glacier

Playing with some future iditarod puppies at the Alaska native heritage center

Heading up to flat top

seward waterfal

In front of exit glacier

Swan Lake Canoe Route

Our private boat dock. This picture was taken right around midnight on our first night

Miscellaneous pictures from the summer

Our next adventure was a 3 day canoe trip with the dogs on a chain of lakes. This was not so much a leisurely canoe trip. We traveled on several lakes which included multiple portages. This meant we picked up the canoe (well Todd did) and carried all our things to the next lake. The dogs of course just got to romp and play and carry only sticks. They swam and chased sticks every chance they got. The mosquitoes were the worst part and then even they weren't that bad. It was beautiful and we had the entire lake that we camped on to ourselves. I look forward to doing this trip again. Enjoy these pictures. That's it for now, but there will be more adventures to come.