There and Back Again

            I have been in Alaska for a week now. I’ve been having a great time. We have been able to see so many amazingly beautiful sights. During our almost daily driving sessions, every five minutes someone yells and points, “Wow! Look at that! Isn’t that beautiful, wow!” The mountains here are huge and colorful! The Rivers and streams are in abundance. Every few miles we will stop just to get out and look and to take pictures. We have even stopped to refill a couple of water bottles in the streams too! It is so beautiful here. I can’t even express. Even all of the pictures that I could share would never come close to the amazing splendor of the Alaskan mountains. 

           The first day, we flew into Anchorage. My first day lasted from 6 am Thursday morning until 10:30 Friday night. Which is 18 hours plus 22.5 and plus 4 hours ( to make of for the time difference) which equals 44.5 hours. I was pretty tired and I still am. I really haven’t quite caught up on sleep yet, but I’m getting there with a little nap here and there. Anyway, we flew into anchorage and waited for our ride over to the Great Alaskan Holidays Rental place, where we watched a 30 minute video on how to manage and maintain the RV that we rented. We drove off the campus in an E-Series Winnebago Chalet. It’s really nice—it has two slide-outs, with 6 beds, yet only 4 people are on board. I sleep in the huge bed just above the cabin. It’s pretty comfortable, at least while I am able to sleep. It’s especially a great place to sleep while the camper is actually moving. It basically rocks me to sleep. We drove off the campus in Anchorage and finished at a parking lot on the side of the road that supposedly had an amazing view of Mt. McKinley in Denali State Park. We thought we were seeing it, but were quickly corrected two days later when we actually saw it. Woah---it’s HUGE! 
         The second day we had a short drive to Denali national Park where we camped at a beautiful campsite- “Savage river.” We stayed there for two nights. The next morning we caught a bus that drove 66 miles into the national park. It was about an 8 hour bus ride. We saw all sorts of wild-life and amazing mountains. My favorite sight was the Polychrome pass. It was so incredibly beautiful! Then, once we went back to the RV, we went for a walk down a path just behind the park and we saw three grizzlies right there in the wild! --- a Mommy and her two cubs! 
           The next day, we drove to Fairbanks and North Pole, where it is ALWAYS Christmas : ) The street poles were decorated like candy canes and Santa was everywhere! We stayed at a resort RV park, no hook-ups of course, but there was a Natural hot spring there where we got to swim and relax for a couple of hours. The moose came right up to the water! We had been hoping to finally see a moose the entire trip and finally got to see them! It was really nice to be able to take a shower after that. At this point, we hadn’t showered in almost 5 days! Whew! About time! 
            From the Chena lakes hot springs resort, we drove about another 160 miles and stayed at the Chena Lakes park. We did a little bit of GeoCaching and kayaking. Now, we are in Valdez, Alaska. Not pronounced Valdehz it’s Valdeez if you please! Yesterday we drove through Thomson’s pass down Richardson highway—wow. Just wow… The mountains and the iced over lakes were beautiful. I don’t know that I will ever see anything as beautiful again as I have on this trip. Seriously, if you have never been to Alaska, at some point in your life, you need to plan to come here and see all this amazing stuff!
                Yesterday, we went on a 9-hour boat ride on the LuLu Belle out and around Price William Sound out past Glacier Island and back around to the Columbia Glacier. This was incredibly cool. We got to see humpback whales, Orca whales, Seals, Sea Lions, Sea otters…Definitely cool. It was very very cold out by those Glaciers and Icebergs. Today was just kind of a hang out day. We slept in, went for a walk and grocery shopping, did some more geocaching took a long nap, and ate a delicious beef and potato dinner. Sally is a great cook. Thanks Sal! Tomorrow, we are going to go the Valdez Museum to learn more about all the history here. We may even make it over Sugar and Spice, a little place down the road that has a video of the earthquake that happened here in the sixties. It destroyed the entire city and forced the city to relocate, at least those that survived. A 9.2 earthquake shook for 4 solid minutes and forced a tsunami in through the harbor and landed barges in the middle of the town. There wasn’t much left after that. But it was caught on video by a mariner. CRAZY stuff! We still have a week and a half left. I’ excited about driving back through Thompson pass again. That is going to be beautiful! Hopefully there won’t be any clouds this time. It would be nice to see it all. Next trip we have decided to climb mountains and glaciers. We just need warmer jackets and some rope---we seemed to have left those back in Florida. 
  It’s stressful living so close to people for so long, but it is working out nicely and we are having a great time.