Too Much Information: Alaska! Day Three

Day Three, Friday:
Honestly, the days are jumbling together in my head.

So I might have some things out of order or forget things entirely if there are no pictures.

But that is what it is like living with me, so we will press forward.

Frank had arranged for us to go on a airplane tour of a glacier.

but it was all kind of flexible...they said we would either go on Friday or Saturday and that they would let us know.

So it was a little hard to plan in advance what we would do.

On Friday we called the tour company and they said we would go sometime Saturday.

Still, the time was a mystery.

Apparently they have to wait till the sun comes up (10ish), see what the weather and clouds are like over the glacier and then go from there.

The sun, when it comes up, is still very low in the sky along the southern horizon
so even though it feels like daytime, its still not exactly bright most of the time.
A lot of my pictures are on the dark side for this reason.
I like how it captures the feeling of the place, so I've left most of them alone
but I've lightened a few just so you can see the details better.

For our morning jaunt, we drove up into the hills nearby and got a gorgeous view of the city.

There were lots of folks hiking in the snow but we just did a short walk and took some photos.

There was a guy with a drone up there and it was fun to talk to him about it.

As we drove around we were on the lookout for wildlife, specifically moose.

There are lots of "watch for moose" type of signs along the roadways.

Once the sun was fully up, Friday was a gorgeous, sunny day.

Since the flight wasn't going to happen we were thinking about going to an indoor water park that Amber had mentioned.
But we had just done the swimming thing the day before and Frank wasn't super excited about that
so we decided to go on a hike.

Anchorage was actually having a bit of a warm spell while we were there,
it was still cold but warmer than usual.
Some days it got into the teens during the day but most of the time is was around 30 degrees or so.

We all bundled up and met over at a nature preserve where they had some short hikes that seemed doable with the girls.

We borrowed some shoe grippers from the lodge
(they had a basket full of mismatched shoe grips that people had lost along the trail).
Parts of the trail were pure ice so we were definitely glad to have them!

I'm really sad that this one is blurry!

We found 2 lone shoe grips as we walked along the trail, but we lost 3!

It was really gorgeous.
I have to say that Alaska is one of the prettiest places you will ever see.

Frank and I just loved how the sun would shine through the clouds.
We noticed it multiple times during our week there.

I'm a cloud lover anyway, but the clouds in Alaska were gorgeous.

Isabelle walked some of the time but we had to carry Kaylee.
Man, our arms were killing us!

Luckily there were four adults so when we were carrying both of them, we could at least trade off.
Isabelle actually did great for awhile but then she hit a patch of ice and fell flat on her back...
she was not interested in walking after that.

We enjoyed the frozen streams.

The gorgeous crystals on everything: plants, rocks, benches and fences.

We took a little family picture.

I tried giving Isabelle a shoulder ride at one point when both Amber and I decided that our arms were toast...
and she screamed and gripped my head for dear life.
It was so sad!
(Also, the other hikers probably didn't love the screaming.)
She finally decided that she would rather try walking again.

Frank and Branden eventually took Kaylee and walked ahead of us.
We came around a corner to find a steep, icy hill
which was pretty depressing at that point since we were tired and Isabelle was sad.
but then...
the boys came around the corner in the car!
Saved!
haha

They had to go through a closed gate to come get us.

For once I was thankful for Frank's rule breaking ways.
_____

After that adventure, we headed back to the apartment for movies and cards!