June 2012 (part 2)

Warning! Alaska is so awesome it might make you crash your car!

Mario, in true dad style (at least in the style of my dad), drove all night while we slept to bring us to our next destination: Homer.

The view from the Homer Spit.

Driving into Homer

We woke about an hour outside of Homer to a perfect blue-sky day and were afforded the experience of driving into Homer with all its incredible vistas unveiled. Homer sits on Katchemak Bay across from one of the multitude of divine and stunning mountain ranges in this amazing state. This range, unlike some of the others, also includes a handful of active volcanoes that are part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. Homer proper sits on a very large peninsula and is a charming seaside town, but we ended up on the Homer Spit, which is a five-mile spit of land that juts out directly into the Katchemak Bay. It was a pretty awesome spot to camp, with water and mountains on all sides, plus its own drag of adorable little shops and restaurants (including one that served perhaps the best fish ‘n chips I’ve had).

Josh and YaYa enjoying the view and the rocks!

Homer is the jumping off point for deep-sea fishing trips (for the delectable, interestingly unattractive halibut) as well as bear-watching trips. As we had neither the time nor the money to engage in these activities, we contented ourselves with enjoying two perfect days of some of the prettiest and most impressive views I’ve enjoyed while camping.  

Perhaps she's pissed because I dressed her in such a hodgepodge of clothes.

Josh especially loved our waterfront site and spent hours throwing the endless supply of rocks into the water.

Note that Josh is standing in the same place here as in the photos below (where he is stranded).

The tide here was quite fast. One afternoon we all were exploring a little tide pool in front of our motorhome site. Josh quickly lost interest in the tiny hermit crabs that were all we could find and turned to throwing rocks into the tide pool. Then the tide started coming in. It left him stranded (only by a few inches of water) on a tiny little island of rocks and he refused to stop throwing stuff and come back to us. It was pretty funny. He threw rocks until the tide covered all his ammo and left him with no choice but to come in to find more. 

 
We really enjoyed Homer and are excited to return someday when we can take advantage of the many trips offered there. It’s definitely on our list for when we come back to Alaska in the future.

After our time in Homer, we had to head north to Anchorage to drop Mom off at the airport. We were sad to see her go, but we’re so grateful she could come up and travel with us! Josh especially enjoyed sleeping with her every night and playing with her all day.

The road to Hatcher Pass.

The view of the Independence State Mine from below.

During our first trip to Alaska, we read about a place called Hatcher Pass a bit north of Anchorage. We really wanted to go there, but it’s fairly out of the way and quite impossible to get to without your own transportation, which we didn’t have. We decided we couldn’t pass up the chance to check it out this time on our way back to Fairbanks from Anchorage.  Boy am I glad we went!

Hatcher Pass is home to the Independence State Historical Mine, an abandoned hard-rock gold mine. It was phenomenal! 

 

Unfortunately it was pretty early in the season so all of the paths were choked with snow, but fortunately that meant once we soaked our shoes walking through said slushy snow we pretty much had the place to ourselves!

 

 

We think this train actually moves. A couple of the cars were wired with a dozen car batteries. There was also a really cool tunnel into the mountain that we couldn’t go in because of the snow. My favorite part, besides the cool little train, was the decrepit railroad tracks running into the sky.

This is also very high on our list of things to do when we come back to Alaska someday. There were miles and miles of hiking trails right in front of us that we couldn’t get to because of the snow, not to mention because of the kiddos. We’re pretty good at getting out and doing stuff with the kids, but hiking right now with Josh is not an ideal activity (unless it’s a hike we can bring the stroller on!). There were also some really intense hikes in the area that we’d love to do when the kids are older. 

After a lovely morning exploring Hatcher Pass, it was finally time to head home. The kids were plumb tuckered out from almost a week of getting to bed after 10pm (although they both magically slept past 8 every single day!) and inconsistent naps, but it was totally worth it!

Poor Scout was knackered!

What a wonderful adventure!! We sure do love Alaska!

Awesome shot, Mario!

June 2012 (part 1)

 

 

Mario was sworn in to the Texas Bar Association by his boss, Justice Dan Winfree of the Alaska Supreme Court.  It’s official - “He’s a LAWYER!” And a Texas lawyer to boot! The clip below is not a joke, it's an actual commercial. Mario is considering growing a mustache so he'll fit in better in Austin. :) The second clip is Josh watching the first clip.

 

We are super exciting married people, and here’s your proof! This is what we’ve been doing for fun a few evenings a week for the last couple months, and we finally finished it. Like I said, super exciting.

June also brought the return of adventure to the Apreotesi family! We went on our first trip since our awesome dogsledding outing in March. My mom came up, and pretty much anytime anyone visits us wherever we live, we use it as an excuse to get out and have some fun! As this would be one of our last Alaskan adventures, we had some fun new stuff on our itinerary.

Jed and Crystal most generously let us borrow their new motorhome for our trip. The kids LOVED not being in car seats! We packed up and headed southeast to Valdez. You may or may not remember that we went to Valdez once before on this trip. As it was completely socked in with clouds (so much that we could barely see the water let alone the mountains on all sides), we were not impressed at all. This time, though, it was immediately apparent that Valdez was going to be amazing. It was really gorgeous.

Valdez on a clear day - stunning!

We had made arrangements for Mom and Mario to go sea kayaking the next day. They headed off into what seemed like could turn into a pretty rainy, cold day. Within an hour of their departure, however, the weather gods smiled on us once more and the sun came out. Their trip entailed taking a water taxi for about 90 minutes to the face of the Columbia Glacier where they unpacked their sea kayaks and started exploring. Because the bay was so choked with icebergs calved from the glacier, they couldn’t get very close to the face of the glacier itself but it does look like they had a pretty good time anyway.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While they were gone, I tried to entertain myself and the kids in the very, very small town of Valdez. One of the things we did to amuse ourselves was walk to the nearby boat harbor and wander around the docks. Perhaps some of you know that our trip to Alaska two summers ago wasn’t my first time visiting this state. My Grandpa Josephson owned a sail boat and taught me how to trim a sail, how to come hard-a-lee, what it really means to heel, and how to enjoy the ocean from the deck of a sail boat even while positively green around the gills from seasickness. He had his cat, Chili Pepper, not to be confused with his first sailboat, the monohull Moby Dick, up here in Alaska for the most part of a summer back when I was in high school. I came up to visit G and G (as we call my Josephson grandparents) for a few weeks then. When I was here with him and my grandma (who is also awesome!), we sailed out to a glacier near Juneau. On our way, we encountered a breeching humpback whale. We sat there on Chili Pepper on that freezing, deep blue water with little icebergs bobbing around us marveling at the wonders we were enjoying. My grandpa passed away of a stroke when Josh was 10 days old. Having such a young baby and living far away, I wasn’t able to go to his funeral. He was a wonderful grandpa, not just because I got to see Alaska with him. He and my grandma traveled to my soccer games from states away. He loved to cook and was our go-to family barbeque chef. His unusual taste preferences and unabashed enjoyment of delicious food were my first introduction to foodie-ism. He often told me how he knew I would do great things, and that I was fully capable of going to medical school or anything else that would make me happy, and indeed he expected nothing less of me. Walking around on that dock, surrounded by the creaks and taps of all those boats, the particular smells and sights of a marina, I missed my grandpa so much I couldn’t help crying for a few minutes. Through the haze of my tears, I could almost see his catamaran in a slip down the dock somewhere, smell his very unique, sweet and particular grandpa smell (and those of you who knew him definitely know what I’m talking about!) and feel his goatee on my cheek as he hugged me. 

Grandpa Josephson

I’m sad my kids won’t meet him in this life and get to learn about the world from the bow of his boat. I’m so thankful he was part of my life, though, and that he made such an effort to be a part of it.

Valdez Harbor

The next day we left the kids with Mom, and Mario and I got to go on our first adventure alone together since Josh was born. That was only the second time I’ve left Josh for more than a few hours (the first was the night Mia was born), and the first time I’ve left Mia for more than two hours. Mario and I got outfitted with our gear and packed into a van for a short 15-minute ride just out of town to the Valdez Glacier. It sits at the far end of a lake that drains to a fairly small river. Although it doesn’t look like it, this little lake is at least 900 ft deep according to our guide, which was a bit unsettling to think about since the water’s visibility was about two inches because of glacial silt. We put our boats in the water and soon encountered one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some pretty cool things.
 

 

This ice cave is on the un-submerged portion of an immense iceberg. Although I didn’t get any really quality pictures of it, you could hear and see water trickling down through the network of deep blue ice. It was like a living thing. It was amazing.

 

 

 

 

 

We continued on, finding a short maze of channels through the ice and generally enjoying our day immensely. We lunched on the glacier

 

 During lunch, we spotted our next stop:

See the ice cave in the distance straight ahead?

Entry is choked with icebergs.

Mostly-submerged bergs choked the entry to this awesome ice amphitheater, and our guide said it looked like we might not be able to get in, but I convinced Mario that maybe with a little poking and prodding we might be able to push a few out of the way and actually get under the overhang. It was a smashing success! 

Muscling through the 'bergs!

We cruised around the lake for a while longer and then headed back to the kiddos, who thankfully had given YaYa (my mom) a fairly easy time.

Then we packed up and Mario drove all night to get us to Homer.

To be continued . . .

Standing on an iceberg