Alaska - Part Two!

Remember how I mentioned that we lucked out in weather in Anchorage and Denali?  Our luck did not extend to our visit in Juneau.  They are having the wettest and coldest summer on record (exact opposite of Utah!) and we definitely experienced the temperate rainforest in full effect.  It was chilly!

We started our trip at the Mendenhall Glacier, which has to be the most visited site in Juneau.  It's pretty awesome.  Even though the pictures don't really show it, that glacier is 700 feet high and half a mile across.  I didn't really believe that until later when we were able to kayak closer to it.  More on that later.

Mendenhall Glacier

I was also surprised to see a little bit of fall color sneaking through already.  I'm not quite ready for that!

It's not fall yet!

The salmon were running (so. awesome.) so there were plenty of bear out and about.  We saw SO many black bears taking advantage of the easy feast that the salmon provided.  This black bear was right at the visitor's center with her two cubs.

Om. nom. nom.

Speaking of bears and salmon, we later went on a hike around the same area and came across this unsettling sight mid-hike:

Uhhh...

Instantly, we were all on high alert for a bear because one was clearly close by.  Not a minute later we found her (and her two cubs) just twenty feet off the trail.  Talk about an instant heart rate spike!  We made a bunch of noise, slowly backed up, and hightailed it out of there.  It was too close for comfort for me!  Thank goodness the cubs were right next to her, rather than close to us.  That's a nightmare situation for sure!

Speaking of wildlife (again), Juneau has a crap ton (that's an official measurement, btw) of bald eagles.  Like 30,000+ or something ridiculous like that.  They are seriously everywhere.  It was fun to see them in flight.  They were also big fans of the salmon.

This is what freedom looks like.  Or something.

Juneau is also home to the Tongass National Forest which is the world's largest temperate rainforest.  It's around 17 million acres.  Huge!

Jett joined us for that too!

We also did a whale watching tour.  I was realllllly hoping to see some Orca whales but we didn't have any luck with that.  We did see a bunch of humpback whales.  They are always fun to see.

Whale tail!

We did luck out and get ONE day of sunny weather.  It was beautiful!  It was incredible to see all the different mountain ranges that had been hiding behind the clouds and fog.  We made sure to make the most of that day by kayaking and hiking.  The pictures are lower down (they didn't upload in order and blogger is a pain).

Mendenhall Lake

We also rode the Mount Roberts Tramway up to the top of one of Juneau's mountains and were able to see Juneau from above.  It was awesome to be able to see the Gastineau Channel from above.  It really is such a pretty area; it's just too bad the weather is so rainy.  I'd go crazy living there!  This girl needs her sun.

Bald Eagle at the Tramway

Tramway--can you find the cruise ship?

And of course, all visitors must do the Tracy Arm tour if they are visiting Juneau.  It's pricey but well worth the money.  The Tracy Arm fjord was carved by a mile high (!) glacier and there are still many glacier remnants along the way.  The water is absolutely beautiful.

Tracy Arm Fjord

There are also glaciers, if you are in to that sort of thing...

...which I am.  Duh!

The fjord seriously has hundreds and hundreds of waterfalls.  I'm pretty sure they have more than Hawaii.  Each one was unique and beautiful.  My favorite, however, was definitely this cascading one:

I want one.

Nature really is awesome.  

Another thing that I LOVED about Alaska is the crazy amount of wildflowers they have.  There are so many flowers in bloom there!  My particular favorite was definitely the fireweed.  It was everywhere and so bright and colorful.  Absolutely gorgeous!

Fireweed Meadow

Did I mention that we also went rafting down a river while in Juneau?  Check out the fog on the lake behind us in this photo:

River rafting

It was so eerie and so awesome.  There were some impressive rapids as well!  Unfortunately, I don't have any photos from the ride because it was raining so dang hard I didn't want to risk ruining a camera.  Oh well--I have it in my memory bank!  :)

And now we get to my favorite part of the trip--kayaking to and hiking the glacier.  Absolutely incredible, and probably my favorite thing I've done on a trip ever.

Kayaking!

I was nervous about kayaking because the lake is only 34(!!!) degrees and kayaks are notoriously tipsy.  However, we sucked it up and paddled away to the glacier.  It must have been at least a mile or two across the lake to actually get to the glacier, but it was well worth the effort.

Getting closer...

And remember how I said that the glacier is much bigger than you think it is?  Here's some proof:

Find the people.  Yep.  It's a massive chunk of ice.

Once we reached the glacier, we parked our kayaks and hiked on the glacier up to some glacier caves.  I'm not going to lie--it was super sketchy.  The glacier is really active and calving fairly frequently.  Additionally, it was a sunny day so water was flowing down and through the glacier like crazy.  We crossed many sections where the ice was hollowed out and there was a good risk of falling through an unseen crevasse.  I was totally freaked.  However, I had seen photos of where we were headed and for me the risk was worth it. 

I am SO glad I sucked it up and took the risk.  I can't even describe how amazing this place is in real life:

Incredible.

The cave continues on for about 50 yards or so until the water drops and it becomes too difficult to hike through.  The water is fast and swift.  It also leaves a creepy mist in the cave which you can kind of see in the background of that photo.  Pictures still don't do the place justice though.  If you are up for a risk, I definitely recommend going to this hike.  Be warned though--it is super dangerous!

On the glacier on our way out.

You can see in the photo above some blue streaks on the glacier--that is the running water I was talking about.  So sketchy!

Nugget Falls in the background

Still awesome though...

Mendenhall Glacier

So yeah...those are our adventures in Alaska!  You all should go as quickly as you can--well worth the price to get there!  :)

Alaska Trip - Part One!

There was this one time when I went to Alaska for two weeks.  And it. was. AWESOME.  I've always wanted to go to Alaska (the final frontier!) and when Jason's brother got a job up there for the summer, we knew it was time to finally cross Alaska off the bucket list.

We decided to first fly into Anchorage and rent an RV with Jason's parents so that we could drive that stretch of country.  As you probably know, Alaska is HUGE so we had a lot of ground to cover.  We first drove the Kenai Peninsula down to Homer where the boys went Halibut fishing.  The drive was GORGEOUS.

On the way to Kenai

Glacier Lake

The drive was a little over 4 hours long and there wasn't one part of it that wasn't breathtakingly beautiful.  The mountains were SO green.  It looked like Hawaii, but with snow. Very unexpected for me.

More of this, please!

While the boys fished in Homer, the girls walked around the Homer Spit and checked out some of the local art.  I love seeing the unique arts and crafts from each region!  If I were a wealthy woman, I would totally collect stuff like that from my trips.

That evening we had to drive back to Anchorage so that we could make it up to Denali National Park the next day.  I was really looking forward to seeing Denali along with North America's tallest mountain.  We had been warned that the mountain is typically only visible a few days out of the summer, but apparently we had really good luck because this is the view we got the entire time we were in Denali:

Clear as can be!

We were super excited that we had such good luck.  The mountain stayed clear for several days.  Our bus driver guide told us that while it was clear for us on the south side of the mountain, it was completely covered with clouds on the other side.  We had great timing!

And of course we brought Jett with us!

Denali National Park was so beautiful, but in a different way than I expected.  For some reason I was imagining that the park would be nothing but miles of trees and trees, but it was actually wide open with so many beautiful vistas.  I was pleasantly surprised!

Denali National Park

Polychrome Pass--so much prettier in real life

We saw plenty of wildlife along the way, including some weird Caribou-like creature...

Very weird creature, indeed.

And once again, we were treated to awesome view of Mt. McKinley.  This mountain is seriously HUGE.  It has nearly a 4-mile vertical rise!  It's a mammoth.

Jason wants to climb...badly.

At the visitor's center

Denali also has a lot of little lakes to check out.  My favorite was definitely this one that was lined in white flowers.  Nature is awesome.

White wildflowers.

We also got to see plenty of glacial runoff.  It was especially interesting to me when it mixed with the clear creek runoff.

Awesome.

And of course, we saw the Dall Sheep which is the animal that Denali was created to protect.  It's a pretty cool sheep.

Baaaaah!

However, I was slightly more impressed with one of our final sights as we left the park.  We were lucky enough to see a Grizzly from less than 50 feet away.  I was SO thankful that I was on a bus that could move away quickly if a bad situation arose.  Those bears aren't to be trifled with!

Grizzly

PARTICULARLY when they have baby cubs...

But they are so cute!

We got to watch Mama and babies play for several minutes before the bus driver had to move on.  It was definitely the highlight of the Denali Park tour.  So. Awesome.

The last bit of wildlife we saw in the park was the famous Caribou.  Sadly, Santa's sleigh was no where to be found.  Maybe next time...

Purdy.

On our last day in Denali, we decided to check out the Alaska Husky sled dogs that they use in the park during the winter.  They love people and were so dang cute!

Even though this one looks less than impressed with me...

They even did a demonstration sled run.  I wanted to be the person on the back quite badly!

RUNNN!!!!

After seeing the sled dogs, we headed back to Anchorage to fly to Juneau to meet up with the brother-in-law.  I'll post my Juneau adventures later this week!

Washington DC - Days 4 & 5

Happy Monday!  How was everyone's Easter weekend?  Hopefully it was as good as mine.  I do love holidays that revolve around family time.

It's time to wrap up the remaining Washington DC posts!  I'm combining the last two days together so this will be the last post on my DC trip.  It's been fun to look through these photos and reminisce!

Jess and I decided to spend our Sunday visiting Mount Vernon and Arlington Cemetery.  It was a pretty dreary day outside, which was a big change from the heat we'd been experiencing the days before.  We started out at Mount Vernon which is the estate on which George Washington lived and died.

Mount Vernon

I really liked Mount Vernon.  The rooms inside were all so colorful and unique.  They also have done a remarkable job of preserving the artifacts on site, and most are originals including the bed George Washington died on.

George Washington just might be my favorite founding father.  I think that most men would've let the power go to their head, but he always kept complete power at bay and because of that we don't have a monarchy currently ruling America.  Thank you, Mr. Washington!

And you thought you were done with blossom photos...NOPE!

The estate is large and has some incredible views of the river.  While down at the wharf I was lucky enough to catch a bird making a nest.  Pretty awesome!

Being a farmer's daughter, I was also really impressed with the 16-sided barn that Washington designed to help process the wheat.  Basically, they lined the floor of the barn with grain and then the horses walked on it to open up the wheat and let the seeds drop through the floor where they could be scooped up and cleaned.  Pretty ingenious.

Also, it looks cool.

George Washington's tomb is also on site at Mount Vernon.  Grave sites never stop being a bit eerie and surreal.

George Washington's Tomb

Overall, it was worth the trip out there to see where the father of the US lived and walked.

The petals look like pink snow on the ground!

After we finished up at Mount Vernon, we headed to Arlington cemetery.  We had quite a rough time finding parking that was affordable.  We went on quite a random goose chase trying to get there in as cheap a manner as possible.  Luckily, our adventure placed us right at the footsteps of this lovely monument:

Iwo Jima Memorial - Huge and Breath-taking

I think this might have been my favorite memorial of all the ones I saw in DC.  It was just HUGE.  Pictures don't do it justice.  Also, it's such an iconic image and they did a fantastic job of capturing it.  The gold lettering around the base is a list of all the American wars fought to date.  There are so many wars on there for a country so young.  I hope they never fill it up, but we all know that one day it will happen.

Arlington is definitely worth visiting, just to try to grasp the sheer enormity of the place.  There are so so many graves.  They have 100 funerals per week there, on average.  It was very humbling.

Arlington

Of course we also watched the Changing of the Guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  I think Jess and I could have stayed and watched the ceremonies all day if given the opportunity.  There is just something about the reverence of these men that guard this tomb day in and day out.  We were lucky enough to see not only the changing of the guards, but also a Wreath Ceremony.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

We stayed at Arlington until the sunset and then headed back to Jill and Dave's place where they had a birthday cake made for me!  So very cute (and delicious)!  It was such an unexpected surprise.  I am so glad that we got to stay out there and spend some time with their family.  Being so far away from them is not fun!

On our last day there, we decided to hit up the famous DC Cupcakes.  There was quite the line at 10 am when they opened!  We got half a dozen to sample.

DC Cupcakes

They were delicious.  My favorite was the Mint Chocolate.  We snacked on them throughout the day.  

Jess had an earlier flight out than I did, so I dropped her off at the airport and then headed back to the White House to try to get a better view of it since it had been closed off the day we had first visited it.  I lucked out!

The White House

They were having some sort of picnic on the front lawn.  I tried looking it up, but I never found out what was going on.  In either case, it was good to get closer and see it in person.

Next, I hurried to the Metro so that I could go see the Supreme Court.  We had walked past the Supreme Court a few days prior and I hadn't even realized it.  I took pictures of it without even realizing what I was snapping a photo of.  Total fail.  Anyway, I wanted to see it one more time before leaving for my flight.

US Supreme Court

I'm really glad I went back!  I happened to time it perfectly with the start of the debate on the constitutionality of Obamacare.  There were news crews and protesters all over the place.  It was quite a different scene from when we walked past earlier in the week.  It will be interesting to hear the decision from the Supreme Court on the case in a few months.

Anyway, that's my DC trip!  I hope to go back one day and spend more time in the museums.  There is just so much stuff to do in that region, and the vast majority of it is free.  Love it!