Sunday and the end of an amazing trip

Words can't describe how awesome Sunday was.

Jason and I have followed the Iditarod pretty closely since our first trip to Alaska. We have a few favorite mushers that we are always pulling for and then other favorites that we root for too - really it's all about the dogs anyway! ;)

Originally the plan for Sunday was to go to the starting line on Willow Lake but I just so happened to see a Facebook post from Deshka Landing earlier in the week. They were advertising "less crowds, better action shots and being on last part of the trail that is accessible from the road systems." This sounded right up our alley but little did we know just how great it would be! As we drove past Willow Lake there were 10+ buses, there were buses of people being shuttled in from Wasilla and other locations and streams of cars pilling in. We happily got in the through traffic lane and headed 8 miles North into the woods.

When we arrived we were blown away by the lack of crowds and terribly envious of those that had snow machines to go up and down the trail and play on the swamp (mental note made for next time - we will look into renting one). We didn't have chairs (again, mental note made) but we had brought a sleeping bag from the house, so we spread that out. This was a total Alaskan tail-gating location - ice fishing tents were set up, fires were started and hot dogs were being grilled (all mental notes were made). Despite not having all of that stuff we had a blast!!!

We arrived around 1:30pm, 30min before the first musher left the starting line and roughly an hour before they made it to us. We walked across some of the swamp, explored some of the trail and enjoyed being together in this beautiful place. Oliver ate some snacks that then promptly turned the container into a shovel and started digging holes. He played in the snow until almost 5:30pm, taking breaks occasionally to high-five mushers and cheer for the dogs as they went by. I was frustrated with his grumpiness on Saturday but my goodness this kid is such a good traveler - Jason and I are truly blessed that he enjoys seeing new things as much as we do.

As some of m favorite mushers came through I walked farther down the trail to get some more secluded looking pictures which meant I was the only person standing on that part of the trail - most of the mushers were super friendly as they went by. I happily wished them luck with my Alaskan "celebrity" star-struck smile on my face! I mean really, the mushers are super cool but you can't help not to smile when you see how happy these dogs are.

We were only at roughly mile 8 on the trail - these teams still had 1,000 miles of trail ahead of them. Please join us in praying for safe travels for mushers and dogs! If you get a chance, follow the race this year - it's fun to try to figure out their strategies and it gets pretty exciting towards the end.

Today we are packing - ugh! Since it's going to be 80* at home and I broke on of our suitcases when we arrived in Anchorage we are shipping all of our winter gear home. Then we will be heading downtown to do a little shopping and take Oliver to see Ole 556 - the original Alaska Railroad Steam Engine that is now retired in a park.

As we leave this beautiful place for the 4th time I leave another piece of my heart here - probably the biggest piece yet. Winter is definitely our favorite season that we have experienced - given it was a mild experience but the beauty is incomparable to our previous trips. A huge thank you to John and Ellen the owners of this beautiful house (they won't see this but they should be mentioned) - they keep this house in a way that feels like home the minute you walk in. I am grateful for them opening their home and allowing us a place to vacation at a pace that is healthy for Oliver.

We would appreciate you prayers as we take a red-eye out tonight and after a layover in Seattle we should be arriving in DC at 4pm. See you all soon - bare with me if the jet lag lasts a little longer than normal this year given my new decade! ;)

Thursday, Friday & Saturday - Sled Dogs, Birthdays and the Greatest Race on Earth!

*Thursday*

Since we were going to have a pretty busy weekend we let Oliver choose what he wanted to do on Thursday. He chose that he wanted to stay at the house and play, so that’s what we did. We spent the day in the living room playing board games (Oliver now loves board games), Legos and watching toons. It was a much needed day of relaxation for all of us. Days like this are the reason that we have started renting houses rather than hotels – we have all of the comforts of home and we aren’t missing anything but we are surrounded by beautiful landscape.

*Friday*

I woke up feeling better than I had in days. I looked out the window at the head of our bed and saw it was snowing! We would have loved to sit and watch it snow but we had a reservation to go DOG SLEDDING! So we are loaded up and started the drive North to Willow, to Dallas Seavey’s kennel. Since our goal on these trips is to just enjoy the state we limit ourselves to one “touristy” trip – and this was the best one yet. Originally we were scheduled for Monday but I called and asked to move it so that Monday could be a day to walk downtown and relax since we fly out at midnight that night. Moving the reservation worked out so well for a couple reasons… We were able to see Dallas (it was also his birthday) putting the final touches on the sled that he built for the Iditarod; All of the dogs that will be with Dallas on the trail this year were in the yard so we got to love on them; and last but not least is just made my birthday awesome!!

When we arrived they were just harnessing up two of the dog teams – every dog in that yard was beyond excited hoping it was be their turn to pull the sleds. We walked down onto a frozen lake to be picked up by our team and then went on the ride of our lives. Those little dogs work so hard and you can see it on their faces that they absolutely love what they do! Half way through our ride we stopped to give the dogs a little break (they really didn’t want to stop) and take some pictures. Once we got back to the kennel we were given a tour – Dallas is a 3 time Iditarod winner and has a really great set-up for training and taking care of his dogs. Knowing that these are working dogs I never expected them to be as friendly as they were – I wanted to take all of them home!! As you walked between houses, if you spoke to one and not the other you were promptly fussed at with howling and a paw reached out as if saying “pet me, love me”. I could go on about these dogs FOREVER – I told Jason that if we had done this tour earlier in the trip I may have never left! Now as we watched the Iditarod kick off this weekend it’s really cool knowing that on Friday I was loving on those sweet pups!

I had packed lunch for Oliver but not for Jason and I and we were getting quite hungry. We were focused on getting Oliver home for his late nap so we knew we wouldn’t be able to stop anywhere to sit and eat. I wasn’t sure we would eat before we got home but Jason stopped at a gas station to run in and get drinks and found that they had a little “snack bar” inside. OMGosh – delicious food! Jason had a buffalo burger and I had halibut fish and chips… sooooooo good!

We got home and got Oliver down for his nap. Following my “I don’t cook on my birthday” rule we ordered pizza and salads from Moose’s Tooth and Jason ran into town to pick them up – perfect birthday dinner!!

All-in-all my 30th birthday was amazing – even better than I expected it could be! Oliver has now announced that he wants a Lego birthday party in Alaska! Oh boy, we have created a monster…

*Saturday*

Today was the Ceremonial Start day – they brought snow in from Fairbanks by train (Anchorage has had a VERY mild winter this year) and pack it onto 4^th street. Every two minutes a musher is released from the start line and run down the street in a parade of sorts for all of the fans! The last time that the teams will be able to be seen from the road system will be Sunday just North of the official start so for many people this is the last time they will see these teams in action. You can follow the whole race online (we do and you should too) and towards the end it can become a nail biter of a race. I’ve told Jason that by my 40^th birthday I wanted to come up and be here start to finish! Our favorite mushers were bib numbers 16 (Dallas Seavey), 19 (Mitch Seavey) and 32 (Brent Sass) - which I was very thankful for because Oliver got cold and very grumpy by the time Brent was coming down the street. There are a total of 85 mushers this year so we never would have stayed for all of them anyway. Our next Iditarod visit Jason and I will be volunteering with the ITC (Iditarod Trail Committee) to help with the starts – Oliver will be able to help us too!

Oliver napped while Jason and I relaxed. For dinner we went out to a small Mexican restaurant in Eagle River – Jason had halibut enchiladas and I had a chimichunga stuffed with shrimp, crab and scallops – soooo good!

It’s Sunday now and soon we will be heading North to Willow again – this time to watch the official re-start. We had discovered a spot that we can watch the teams without being in the midst of all the tourists!! ;) We will be bundling up extra today in hopes that Oliver won’t get grumpy today but we shall see…

I’ll work on pictures tonight…

Tuesday and Wednesday in the Last Frontier

*Tuesday*
Part of traveling with a toddler is to try to keep them on a somewhat normal schedule so after the long road trip on Monday we had determined that we would relax at home Tuesday morning and then venture downtown Tuesday night for a little shopping and dinner.

Oliver woke up at 6am (ugh!) so we cuddled on the couch for a while and then his wild man kicked in as I was fixing breakfast. He was running circles in the living room/dining rooms - I jokingly said "Oliver if you have that much energy we can go hike that off" he replied very excitedly with "where?!?" So we got ready and jumped in the car to head down the mountain and down to the end of the valley to the Eagle River Nature Center. The Nature Center has been one of our favorite walking/hiking locations ever since we discovered it on our 2012 trip - it offers at least 3 different trail heads that go way deeper into the forest than we have ever gone so there is something new every time. Unfortunately when we got there we found that the trails are almost in as bad condition as our driveway (2-3" of solid packed ice) so we enjoyed spending some time on the picnic tables on the decks (they were still covered in ice) taking pictures and just enjoying the beauty of the valley. Oliver commandeered my phone and started taking pictures - this kid has a really good eye for pictures!!

We enjoyed lunch at home and afternoon naps before heading down in Anchorage that evening. We ran into one of my favorite stores, Cabin Fever (most of their products are made in Alaska so they are the only place I buy souvenirs and gifts when we are here) before our reservation at Glacier Brewhouse. Every year that we have come to Alaska I have purchases books that have been written/illustrated and published right here in Alaska for Oliver (even before we knew he would be ours) so it was pretty cool to take Oliver in with us this time and let him pick out his own Alaska books. The ladies in the store loved that he was so excited about the books!

We had a 6:15pm reservation and I walked in knowing what I wanted. Monday the Brewhouse had posted that they had flown in King Crab from Nome... to say I was excited was an understatement. The price blew me away a little bit but I splurged... you only turn 30 once right?!? Plus, Jason's parents had gotten us a gift card to the Brewhouse for Christmas so I couldn't say no to a fresh from the Bering Sea crab!! I could not believe how much meat was in that one crab - I almost could not finish it. Jason had their ribs and Oliver had a brick oven cheese pizza with fresh fruit (do you see why we love this place so much?!?) On top of all the great food and brews our waiter was the best - he seriously should hold classes on how to be such an awesome waiter! We spent the rest of the evening playing Jenga and Sorry (the closets of the house are full of puzzles and board games).

*Wednesday*
Oliver is finally starting to adjust to this time zone... he slept until around 7am. Since I didn't fall asleep until after 4am I stayed in bed and slept until 8. We left at 8:30am and headed downtown for our first stop at our favorite breakfast place - Snow City. Breakfast was delicious as usual - they never disappoint. We took coffee to go and headed South towards Portage - our first stop was the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. We went there for the first time in 2014 and fell in love with the place. They are a rehab facility for local wildlife that have been injured/abandoned. A huge part of what they are doing is growing/releasing herds of Alaskan Wood Bison... they released a huge herd into the wild in 2015 and they are now thriving! It's a place that I love to support - they are doing great work and it gives us a chance to see Alaskan wildlife in natural habitats. I came nose to nose (with a grate between us) with a moose that had may scars and was missing an antler, we saw groggy bears in their den (they aren't sure if they want to be awake yet or not due to the unseasonal temperatures), a beautiful red fox, a very playful wolf pup and his K9 companion, herds of Bison and Elk - all in all it was another wonderful visit.

After leaving the Conservation Center we went across the road and into the Portage Glacier Valley. The intentions of going back there were to hike out to the Byron Glacier that we hiked out to in 2014 but as we drove farther into the valley we noticed that there had been many avalanches, some quite large. I started to worry a little bit because the glacier is wedged in between 3 very large (and steep) mountain faces. As we got closer we could see that one of those mountain faces had had a few slides already so between that, the warmer than normal temperatures and the “Beware: Avalanche Zone” signs we opted not to make the hike. I would have been a nervous wreck the whole time anyway. So instead we parked down by Portage Lake and walked out on the shore. This was perfect for Oliver – he loves throwing rocks into the water so we had a blast throwing rocks and ice into the lake and climbing on the larger rock scrambles.

Standing on that shore was very humbling. I was standing at the base of mountains and looking out across a lake that had mountains rising up out of it, and the very glacier that had carved that valley in its new position up on the mountain. The wind often whips through that valley at crazy strong speeds, we have experienced this in years past. There was no wind today but you could clearly see how the wind had shaped and molded the snow on the mountains. Every time I stand in this valley I stand in awe that something as simple as ice can be so powerful that it carved out these mighty mountains – we truly serve an amazing creator!

Oliver and I napped this afternoon – I chose to nap in the loft under an open window with the fresh Alaskan air blowing in – best sleep I have had in a long time!
We have spent the rest of the evening playing board games and watching toons in the living room. Not sure yet what tomorrow holds as Friday will kick off a busy weekend all centered around dog sledding!!

*Pictures will be in the Alaska 2016 – TuesWed folder*

P.S: We have encountered 2-3 people in the past two days that were shocked to find out that we don’t live in Alaska – our goal to blend in and not be “tourists” is working!! J