Alaska! Days Four, Five and Six

Day Four, Saturday:
Saturday dawned...an overcast day.

This was not good news for us as the flight was cancelled due to weather and clouds over the glacier.

Frank's one big activity...Gone!

We managed to overcome the sadness though

and decided to go to the indoor water park after all.

Here's the review of the indoor water park:

Kind of fun.

Water was warm-ish but a little too cool for the small kids.

A couple of big slides that were fun for the adults.

and overall just a little sketchy.

Could use a good cleaning.

Not that we didn't have fun...we did.

But for the cost, I would have preferred warmer water and cleaner dressing rooms.

And the kids completely rejected the hot dogs we bought them.

We picked up pizza on the way home and sent the boys to rent a couple of movies.

We really gave Blockbuster some serious business while we were there.

_____

Day Five, Sunday:

Sunday morning was our earliest morning because we had to be to church by nine.

And I'm telling you, we got used to sleeping in!
 But we managed to get up and out the door by 8:15

What 8:15 looks like in Anchorage in January

which actually meant we were way early to church.

But it also meant that we met a couple of people, one of which turned out to have grown up in our neighborhood here in Utah and knew all kinds of people that we know.

Small world.

After church we spent the day at Branden and Amber's house.

Breakfast for lunch

Playing with the girls

More cards
(Frank would be sad if I didn't mention that
he kicked our behinds in hearts with a final score of only 7)

Bath time where Frank got to use the gift he got for the girls for Christmas-Bubble guns

Branden made cookies

Amber made Orange chicken for dinner.

...and the day passed way too quickly.

Before we knew it, it was time for the girls to go to bed

and for us to get back to the hotel 

since we had an early morning flight.

Day Six, Monday:

We did take one last picture in Alaska.

The one and only moose that we saw while there

was a stuffed moose at the airport.

As you can see, Frank was less than impressed.

The view from the plane as we came into Utah was spectacular.

the white stuff that looks like smooth snow is the clouds!

So gorgeous.

Welcome home.

_____

So my Christmas gift turned out to be practically perfect.

Spending lots of time at the apartment, playing with and cuddling my grandkids, talking and playing games and watching movies with my son and daughter-in-law...

 it's exactly what I would have chosen for myself.

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!

Frank and I felt it was important to get a picture of this moment

It's not everyday you get to visit a place that is basically extinct everywhere else.

Alaska! Day Two

Day Two, Thursday:
Frank and I stayed in a hotel in downtown anchorage, which is about 20 minutes from where Branden and Amber live.

The view from our room. Taken at about 9 a.m.

In the mornings, we would sleep in (because, why not? It's so dark!), then eat breakfast 

and then we usually went for a drive to see the sights.

The girls tend to sleep fairly late, so there was no rush to go over to their house.

We could see a beautiful partially frozen inlet from our hotel so we drove around to get closer to it.

I stayed in the car, while Frank got some good pictures. Brrrr.

We found a nature walk and went for a short hike.

The entire area was pure ice but as we exited the car, a guy on a mountain bike rode past.

I was impressed.

It was really cold down by the water that morning...there was a breeze and my hands and face were so cold!

But we skated and gingerly walked along.

It was very pretty.

As we were walking along on the frozen pathway, a runner came by!

She had spikes on her shoes and was running along on the ice like it was no big deal.

Alaskans.

The family decided to come over to our place to swim in the hotel pool.

We were pretty excited to have a pool at the hotel and imagined fun times splashing and playing with the kids...

but it turned out that the pool wasn't a "play with the kids and frolic" kind of a pool

it was a lap swimming pool as part of the workout room.

There were a few problems with this:

a lap pool is kept quite a bit cooler than a frolic pool

a lap pool is small

a lap pool just might have people who want to swim laps

We still gave it our best efforts and had fun

but the girls were cold pretty quickly.

and I think the guy who was attempting to swim laps left sooner than he might have originally planned.

After our little swimming party, we decided to go to lunch.

But the idea of getting everyone to the car and driving to a restaurant seemed like so much work

so we took the recommendation of the valet parking guys and dashed across the street to a sandwich place.

We had no coats, wet hair, and the girls were barefoot.

Afterwards, we went back to Branden and Amber's place in the hopes that the girls would nap.

I think having us there messed up their sleeping because there were very few naps the whole week.

We rented some movies from the local Blockbuster.

Yes, Blockbuster.

and just had a relaxing evening together.