Alaskan adventures

I’ve already put all but one of these pics up on facebook, but recently upgraded my WordPress install, so I’m reposting them over here in an attempt to use the new gallery functionality.  Not exactly sure how this will turn out, and this post may end up getting highly edited, but here goes…

I’m currently enjoying my last day of leave prior to slogging back to the office.  Since I figured out the gallery editor function in this version of WordPress, I can now go through the vacation day by day.  2 July we landed, had breakfast at the Snow City Cafe, went by Wild Berry Products and picked up some chocolates, had lunch at Moose’s Tooth, and then drove up to Wasilla in the rental car to grab the pickup truck.

3 July brought breakfast at Gwennie’s, followed by a rental Harley ride out to Potter Marsh.  After dinner with one of Kelly’s high school friends who she hadn’t seen in 15 years, we picked up Randy & Heather and headed down the Seward Highway.

We spent the 4th checking out the festivities for the Mount Marathon race.  There are some crazy characters who show up:

After a minor SNAFU with Jim & Diane’s friend Mike’s boat right before we came up, we ended up laying on a halibut charter for the 5th:

6 July brought another drive, back from Seward to Wasilla.  168 miles is 50 miles further than a complete lap of Oahu, and it really felt good to be going from one place to another, instead of going around and around in the fishbowl.  We had dinner with family, and a great game of Trivial Pursuit.  I had seen a BIG cow moose on the way down to Seward, but when a roadside bush conspired against me and made my picture a big green blur… I haz sad.  But, on the way home from dinner another cow was kind enough to hang out on the side of the road for me to take pictures.

On 7 July we headed out on Jim’s boat and went up the Deshka river in search of fish.  While we didn’t end up catching anything, we saw a couple guys haul a nice king salmon out of the river, and got a LOT of action of the bald eagle variety:

Having been skunked on fish on Sunday, Monday brought our trip up to Talkeetna and a jetboat ride with Mahay’s Jet Boat Adventures.  I might get around to captioning these shots, but for now I’ll just keep posting them in groups:

The 9th brought our last day in AK, and BABY MOOSE!!!  I did finally see Denali on our ascent out of ANC, but will definitely be back to get better pictures in the future.