Summer's Back!

WOW!  The last few days have reminded us of why we LOVE Alaska!  We were lucky enough to have Aaron, Karen, and another couple from Ryan's residency as guests over Memorial day weekend.  Ryan and I love to get outside to do things but when it's just the two of us we tend to push things off.  Our guests really get us out there enjoying nature with no room for excuses.

Ryan and I are not very original and we also wanted our guests to have fun.  So we took them to things we knew would have great results.  We stayed a night at the Alyeska Resort and hiked the lower Winner Creek trail and ended at the hand tram. 

 Ryan and Aaron went on the tram together while Karen and I watched.  Pulling that rope is tiring work!

 Our 5 mile roundtrip hike left us famished so we took the tram up the mountain to have lunch at Glacier Express.  The top of the mountain gave us beautiful views of Turnagain Arm, the Seward Highway, and the bore tide.  It was awesome to hang out on the snow covered mountain and feel warm in short sleeves!  That is something that definitely does not happen in Chicago!

 On our way home, we stopped by the Alaska Wildlife Conservatory.  The moose have started growing their antlers for the year.  It first comes out fuzzy then turns into bone.  We were also enthralled by a black bear that was hanging out in between tree branches.  This shows you that you can't escape a bear by climbing a tree.

 The next day Ryan and Aaron went on a halibut charter out of Ninilchik.  Karen and I went to watch a movie and went to pick the boys up.  When driving by the fish cleaning area, I thought I saw a shark head propped up by a bottle of beer.  Naturally, I had to get a better look.  It turns out it really was a shark, it was actually a salmon shark that had been caught on a halibut circle hook.  It was about 300 pounds and the captain of the boat was kind enough to give us some of the filets as gifts.  The filets were so fresh that they were still twitching (it looked like it was beating)!  I was actually too chicken to try the filets so we gave them to Aaron for his friends to try.  I'll have to ask them how it was.  The deckhand of that boat was going to make wallets out of the shark skin.  And gloves if he had enough of the leather.

 Ryan, Aaron, and Karen went on the Kenai Fjords tour out of Seward and saw a plethora of sea animals.  They said they saw so many humpback whales (and they were breeching!) that they eventually drove by them without stopping.  The sea otters were very close to the boat and there were tons of orcas.

Today Ryan, me, and the other couple went razor clam digging!  We didn't get any pictures because it was raining out but it was a blast!  At first we were not very good at spotting the "dimples" in the sand, which are the air holes from the clams.  But soon Ryan and Brad became experts and were able to coax the clams out without breaking their thin shells.

The four of us also took the boat out (it ran smoothly after a long winter) to Stormy Lake to fish for northern pike and trout.  We were skunked but saw a mama moose with her just born calf on an island in the lake.  We figured that the mom walked out to the island and had her baby there.  It looked like it was just born because it was still pretty wobbly on its legs and really skinny.  It was so rainy today that we didn't take a camera with us.

The past few days have been so much fun, we are dreading leaving Alaska at the end of this month but are looking forward to being back in a city.  It truly has been the experience of a lifetime to spend a year here.  We definitely do not have any regrets!

Blog Neglect

When I initially started this blog I thought I would be updating it at least once a week.  Then came the winter, which was more uneventful than I thought it would be.  I blame it on the dismal snow fall this winter season.  We bought lift tickets to Alyeska which went to waste due to timing and lack of snow.  However, on the bright side we got to travel more than ever this winter.  In April, Ryan and I were lucky enough to meet my parents for about two weeks in Maui and Kauai.  It was such a great experience!  It was fun to be able to spend alone time with my parents and my husband and we had a blast.

Isn't my dad so cool?  It had been 30 years since he was in ocean water!  We did a lot of snorkeling and I received my PADI open water diver certification.  We saw lots of sea turtles (close enough that I was nervous about getting bitten!), various eels, an octopus (it even shot out ink), different amazingly colorful fish, and the best part was that we could hear the whales singing underwater.  It definitely blew my mind!

Isn't Kauai so lush?  I could definitely see why it's called the Garden Isle.  This was on a road called Jeep Trail.  Coincidentally, it was identical to the Jeep Trail here in Alaska.  Driving over streams on a bumpy dirt road.  It gave me flashbacks.

 This is Waimea falls featured in the opening of Fantasy Island.

Us at the Old Lahaina Luau in Maui.  It was a very fun time!  This past weekend one of Ryan's colleagues took us out on his boat for an overnight fishing trip.  We were accompanied by his two little adorable girls and Zephyr.  We spent the night on the boat in a cove and fished in Kachemak Bay.

 We set sail (is that the right word even if it wasn't a sailboat?) out of the docks in Homer.  It's the same dock that the Time Bandit from Deadliest Catch sets out from.  We even got Zephyr a life jacket in case the water loving dog jumped ship.

Sunrise over the mountains from where we spent the night.  It was very cozy sleeping on the boat.  

 We started off fishing for halibut but Ryan caught lots and lots of cod.  The boys threw these back in the water because they are not good eatin'.

Ryan's first ocean king (chinook) salmon!  He was very excited to have caught one.  We had it for dinner and it was really, really good.  Sorry about the not so pretty picture!

 We caught 2 halibut.  They are so heavy to reel up.  I had to hand it the rod over three quarters of the way up because my arms were getting so sore!  This guy was 120 feet underwater.

 We saw a lot of tufted puffin.  I love these birds!  I wish they would get closer so I could get a better picture.

 We also saw two groups of sea otters, which are called rafts.  Sea otters are generally loners but sometimes rest together in groups.

 Ryan talked me into taking Zeph on the trip, he loved being on the boat.  Enough so that he didn't want to go to the bathroom!  The poor guy held it for 24 hours.  He didn't seem at all traumatized unlike his mama.

The Kenai River in our backyard has almost completely thawed.  The days are getting longer (sunset around 9:45 pm) and warmer.  I can't wait until it gets green again!  It'll be fun to see the river level rise in the next few weeks.

With warm weather brings our next round of guests!  Ryan and I love having our friends visit because it gets us out doing things we normally wouldn't do.  We hope that we can talk someone into flying over the inlet with us to do some salmon fishing near grizzlies!  We want to try to experience everything in the next two months before we head back to San Francisco.

Beautiful Winter Day

The Moose is Loose!!!

Ryan has been working nights and on his way to work tonight, he called me to let me know that the baby moose was in our front yard.

I grabbed the camera and realized I didn't have the right lens on it.  I quickly snapped this picture and went to get the zoom lens.  By the time I came back, the moose was gone.  So I leisurely walked back, admiring the beautiful sunset and snow covered river.  I also noticed if I got close to the ledge I could see an area of the river that wasn't covered with snow and had some ducks in it.  They were bobbing under water for food.  I could watch them bobbing under all day. 

Then I heard It.  A chewing noise.  I looked to my left and the moose had made its way to the back!

Okay, now living in Alaska for the past 6 months has educated me on how protective Mama moose are of their calf.  This guy was pretty small and I thought he still had his mom around.  So in a panicked state, I carefully but quickly made my way inside.  He didn't really care for me.  I could see him out of our bedroom window, he knew I was there but just continued on eating.  Thoughts like, "what if he charges at me and runs through the window?" went through my mind. 

But he didn't charge at me.  He continued to eat bark in the back and stayed there for quite a while.  Our neighbor eventually came down to get the next door apartment ready for a new resident and I quickly opened the door to let her know the moose was there.  She told me she saw him and that he had made his way around the corner, and that I also shouldn't worry about him charging me.  Then I felt like a huge wuss. :)  His mama wasn't around so I'm thinking that he's on his own now.  Pretty cool stuff!

Turnagain Arm in the Winter

Ryan and I headed up to Anchorage this week for my Lasik surgery.  We hadn't made a trip up since October and it was neat to see the change in scenery.  On our drive up we had rain, then snow, then rain, and finally snow.  Like I've said many times before, it was beautiful.  Alaska takes our breath away every time.  These pictures are taken from the Seward Highway.  The picture above is of Turnagain Arm, and in late summer/early fall many belugas can be seen migrating south for the winter.  

Another beautiful sight was of the frozen waterfalls we saw hanging from the rock walls on the Seward Highway. 

If you listen carefully you can still hear some water trickling down.  There were many frozen waterfalls and there was even an article in the Alaskan newspaper of people practicing ice climbing on these.  

Our drive through Chugach took us through areas with heavy snow.  Ryan felt some jealousy seeing snowmobile tracks and just imagining how fun that would be.  Hopefully we'll get out there soon.  

My Lasik surgery went off without a hitch.  It's a weird sensation to have things done to your eyes but the outcome is so worth the 5 minutes of discomfort.  My eyes feel a bit tired right now because they are healing and every couple of minutes I think to myself that I should take out my contacts.  I worry that I'll try to take contacts out, which would be a huge disaster!  It's definitely an exciting feeling to be able to see as soon as I open my eyes in the morning. 

Ice, Ice, Baby

Everything is frozen!!  The streets, trees, sidewalks, driveway, and everything else you can imagine.  The picture above is on a road we took during one of our adventures this week.  You can see that the road is still snow covered.  Actually, it's ice covered.  Road management in Alaska after a snowfall is as follows;  plow as much as you can and sand the roads.  What ends up happening is that the snow on the roads melt during the day and freezes up again during the night.  Hence ice on the roads.  But everyone here seem to be used to this concept and drive accordingly.  A lot of people have steel cleats on the bottom of their shoes so they don't slip in a store's parking lot or on their driveway.  There is absolutely no salt used ANYWHERE.  Can you imagine if they did this in Chicago?  There would be wrecks all over the place and people suing businesses left and right!

This was waiting for us at the end of the road.  Super creepy!

Everything being covered in ice means that the lakes in the area are frozen!  This gives us an excellent wide open area for Zeph's favorite activity, fetch.  The above picture shows Ryan and Zeph walking on Sport Lake.  Yes, this means that there is a truck parked on the lake!  The red tent is actually a shelter used for ice fishing.  Sport Lake had sharp icy chunks on the surface so we went over to a smaller lake, called Loon Lake.

While out on the middle of the lake, Ryan and I heard a "BOOM" and felt vibrations under our feet.  We gave each other a look and did a fast walk/run back toward our car.  On our way we realized that the ice was not caving in so we stopped to check it out.  We decided the noise and vibrations was the ice splitting.

When we were at Ryan's parents' over the holidays I saw that Ryan's mom, Laurie, had pictures from her visit here beautifully framed.  I realized that I had forgotten how lush and green it is here in the summer.  Here's a comparison of how it looks now and what it looked like in July (same bend but down by the river).

Happy New Year!

Ryan, Zephyr, and I are back in Alaska after spending a wonderful Christmas and New Year's Day with our families.  Another perk of being a Hospitalist is that Ryan can actually have real vacations!  We were lucky enough to have time to also go on a warm vacation together before heading to Illinois. 

We spent time in Riviera Maya and also Playa del Carmen.  It was so incredible to be able to go from subzero temperatures to tropical weather in 1 day!  While on our awesome vacation, Ryan thought it would be fun to go scuba diving.

I have at admit that I did freak out at the beginning of the pool course.  After realizing that I wouldn't drown if I just breathed out of my mouth, it was smooth sailing from there.  We went on 3 dives, 2 in Cozumel and 1 near Playa del Carmen.  The Cozumel dives were so beautiful, the above pictures are from that dive.  I loved it so much!  Although it was beautiful in Mexico, we were very much looking forward to being with our nephews.

The boys have grown so much!  Ryan and I were especially amazed at how much Reagan has grown, he is officially a little boy now.  Time seems to have gone so fast when seeing our nephews grow.  It was so nice to spend actual Christmas Day with family, Ryan hasn't been able to do that for the past several years.