Family Adventures: Vedvig Edition

Hello to you fine folks in the lower 48!

This past week has been so much fun! Ashley's parents Dan and Renee came up to visit and we toured them around the state showing them our favorite places. Since they had been here before we were able to show them some places off the beaten path that most tourist don't get time to see. They landed on a Friday afternoon, picked up their RV and came to Eagle River where we met them with pizza. After catching up and dinner we headed off for our first big adventure of the trip...a Segway tour of Anchorage! Dan, Renee and Ashley had ridden Segways before in Washington DC but this was something completely new for Adam. Luckily, he picked it up easily and soon he was zipping around on his Segway looking like a kid who just got the best Christmas present ever. Both Dan and Adam were talking about how they should get these at home and all the uses they would serve so they could justify buying one. After we were all loaded up on our Segways our guide took us down to Ship Creek where we got to see a few silver salmon swimming upstream. After that he took us down part of the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail which is a 12 mile trail that runs along the Cook Inlet. There we came across a small pond in a very industrial area where two beavers had decided to make their home. Adam and Ashley were super excited to see their first beavers and in downtown Anchorage no less! Soon after we were zipping along the trail passing beautiful coastline and lagoons. It was a much different trip than the one we took years ago in DC where we were dodging traffic and people everywhere. In Anchorage, there were hardly any cars on the roads and not very many people out on a Friday evening, it was surreal. BUT it worked out well for us and we had tons of fun riding around on our Segways. When the tour was over we were all beat and headed home for some much needed sleep.

Alaska likes to paint pretty pictures on bears like Wisconsin paints pretty pictures on cows...isn't that nice. 

Seriously, it was like Christmas and his birthday wrapped into one! 

At Ship Creek watching the salmon! 

Railroad Depot! 

Look Ma! No hands!...located at Westchester Lagoon. 

The next day Ashley's parents came out to the Nature Center for a guided nature walk through the valley lead by Ashley and afterwards she got a chance to show them our living quarters. They liked our little cabin and kitchen area and we lucked out and got to see Sockeye salmon swimming upstream on the tour.  Afterwards we soon hit the road and made our way over towards Valdez. We made it about three hours before we called it a night and camped at a beautiful campground surrounded by trees and a babbling brook.

Sunday morning we woke to a nice day and set off on our trip to Valdez. Our first stop was at the Wrangell St. Elias Visitor Center, which is the largest national park in the US. Some of you may remember this from our previous blog but this park is six times larger than Yellowstone and larger than the country of Switzerland with taller mountains too. Adam and Ashley received another Jr. Ranger badge at this park after a grueling 10 minutes of word searches, match-ups and activity pages. We are now determined to become Jr. Rangers at every national park that we go to. We walked some of the trails, soaked up the mountains and scenery before hitting the road again. Soon we came upon another highlight that is the trip to Valdez, Worthington Glacier. This is a beautiful glacier that extends down from the mountains and ends relatively close to the highway. There is a viewing platform and a trail that leads up to the toe of the glacier. Dan and Renee were a little apprehensive but once we got up to it the journey was well worth it. It has a torrent river flowing from underneath and water falls flowing down the sides of the carved rock. Not to mention a beautiful blue glacier that you could touch with your own two hands-no equipment/gear necessary. We spent quite a bit of time exploring around and had a great time hanging out by the glacier. It was well worth the hike! We hit the road again and soon arrived at Keystone Canyon, a stretch of road that curves through a rock canyon with towering waterfalls and beautiful rock formations. We of course had to stop and take in the sights, lots of pictures, video taping and enjoying the beauty around us. Then we arrived in Valdez and stopped at a  Forest Service station where we got to see Dog and Pink salmon swimming up stream. There were tons of them all slowly making there way upstream, unfortunately we did not have the heart to tell them that they were not going to make it much farther as 100 yards up was a massive waterfall. Soon we headed off to see the 1964 Earthquake Museum in Valdez which was really neat and showed how devastating the earthquake and tsunami was to the community. After that event the town had to be relocated 4 miles SW to a more stable location. Then we went to the Maxine & Jesse Whitney Museum which had a massive collection of taxidermy Alaskan animals which was so cool to see up close! They had black bear, grizzly, and polar bears, wolverines, wolves, seals, and much more. After all this exploring we were starving so we headed off for a delicious halibut dinner and made our way to a local bar called The Fat Mermaid. We had some local drinks which were amazing and watched Usain Bolt continue to be the fastest man in the world. It was awesome. Also, Valdez has a rabbit problem...you heard me right. There are rabbits everywhere. A couple let their rabbits breed and eventually left Valdez and left behind a ton of rabbits that now run around town like they own the place. We saw too many rabbits to count.

Our view in Wrangell St. Elias

Worthington Glacier in all its glory.

Look for the water gushing underneath the glacier

The glacier has melted a bit since he squeezed in there last time.

Touchin' a glacier. NBD. 

Dan & Renee standing on their very first glacier!

The view from Worthington Glacier, not too shabby. 

Bridal Veil Falls in Keystone Canyon

Tall rock walls

Our RV park had a wonderful sense of humor!

One of the many rabbits in Valdez.

The next morning we headed off for a glacier cruise in Prince William Sound. It was a cold, rainy day but we still got to see so many cool things! We saw sea otters, puffins, glaciers, waterfalls, and the largest icebergs we have ever laid eyes on. Ok, they were not as big as the Titanic iceberg (we just watched that recently and damn that iceberg was massive) but they were seriously big! The glacier cruise took us to the second largest tidewater glacier in North America and it honestly took us about an hour to get one mile closer to the glacier because they had to maneuver the boat between all the ice chunks. As the boat made its way closer to the glacier you could here all kinds of grinding and banging noises from the boat hitting ice chunks. It was so much fun! On the iceberg we got to see harbor seals relaxing and taking naps along with the glacier calving! It was such a neat experience and on the ride back home we saw sea lions hanging out on the rocky shore of islands and black bear off on the coast. When we finally made it back to shore we hit the road to make some headway back home.

Just two sea otters, hanging out.

This iceberg was seriously as tall as the boat. 

Columbia Glacier-2nd largest tidewater glacier in North America

Lots of ice chunks for the seals to relax on.

Just hangin' out.

Chillin' with my peeps

Stellar Sea Lions

Can you spot the black bear?

It was cold and windy but we had a great time!

We had a major day of driving ahead of us as we headed from Glen Allen down to Portage, but we made some cool stops along the way. Our first stop was at Independence Mine in Hatcher Pass and it was beautiful and sunny down in the valley but as we climbed into the mountains the clouds rolled in bringing the rain. We had lunch in the RV to wait out the rain and when the rain let up we finally got our chance to break out and explore. We took them up to the fallen down mine and checked out the old tools, equipment and gear that they used to extract gold from quartz veins in the rocks. We had spent about 15 minutes soaking in the awesome scenery and history until it started to rain...actually pour and so we took shelter in the old water tunnel used to bring out all the material from the mine. It was about 10 degrees cooler in there and it was definitely the "coolest" place we have ever waited for rain to pass. After a while we decided the rain wasn't going to stop and that we might as well explore anyways so we continued on. Eventually we made it back to the RV and on the drive out of Hatcher Pass we stopped to see the Little Susitna River flowing by, the prettiest, bluest river we have ever seen. Then it was time to get back into the RV again and we drove on down through Anchorage to one of our favorite stops, Girdwood. There we had dinner at a restaurant called Chair 5, if you cannot tell we like this restaurant a lot. We take a lot of our guest here. After delicious deep dish pizza and many rounds of euchre we made our way to the aerial tram. Mom and Dad were a bit nervous but did surprisingly well as the tram zipped up the mountain. At the top we could see for miles and between the glaciers and view of the Turnagain Arm it was hard to pick which view was best. After such a long day of driving we luckily only had a few more miles to go before we reached our campground in Portage. This was a unique campground in which they had a community fireplace that was in a shelter decorated with Christmas twinkle lights. We enjoyed a fire before calling it a night.

Independence Mine

Little Susitna River

View from the top of the Tram

At the top of the tram

The next morning we made our first stop at the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center. It is a place where injured or abandoned animals go for rehabilitation. It was really cool to see all the animals they had which includes, grizzly bears, bison, caribou, elk, black-tailed deer, wolf pups, black bear cubs, lynx, porcupine, and moose. We walked around checking out the animals but unfortunately couldn't stay too long as we had to hit the road because we had about a 3-4 hour drive down to Homer. The drive down to Homer is a beautiful one and we rolled in to see the breathtaking blue mountains and glacier swept valleys. We parked the camper and walked around enjoying the Spit. The Spit is an old glacial moraine that jets out into the ocean and people built all kinds of shops, campgrounds, and docks on. We walked up and down the docks taking in the cool little sea creatures growing off the bottom and looking at all the massive boats. Then we made our way through the shops and on the way back to the camper we stopped at the local bar called The Salty Dawg. It is a tiny little bar that every surface of the bar is covered in signed dollar bills. Very similar to some of the other bars we have been to in Alaska it was unique in its own nautical themed graffiti-ed way. Of course we put up our own dollar in the pool room above the jukebox (just in case anybody we know goes there and wants to find it). After a few drinks we made our way to dinner which included scrumptious salmon burgers and halibut. We capped the night with a walk along the beach enjoying the view.

Believe it or not, this is a reindeer.

Mr. Porcupine

Mr. Porcupine is very photogenic

Grizzly Bear

Baby Musk Ox 

These ducks were feasting. On what you might ask? We have no clue.

Elk

Elk #2

Black Tailed Deer

sleeping wolf pup

cute little baby cub.

The weird/cool sea creatures hanging out under the dock

Our dollar at the Salty Dawg, of course The Sweaty Yeti had to make an appearance! 

Thursday was a big day for us, we went to the Alaskan Islands & Ocean Visitor Center where we saw our first moose cow with two calves in the wild. When we say wild, we do mean it but they just happened to be resting in the bushes behind the center so it was very convenient to see. We went on a guided walk through the estuary and learned all about the plants, animals, and history of the area. After that we drove back to the spit where we headed out to go halibut fishing. We packed ourselves a cooler full of beer, and food and set sail on the Nautilus II with 28 other people. We ventured two hours out into the ocean and dropped anchor. Each of us got a fishing pole with a 3 lb weight to keep the hook on the sea floor and a nice chunk of dead, salt soaked herring to entice the bottom feeder that is the halibut. As you dropped it over the side and let the hook sink to the bottom, it took a surprisingly long time. We were fishing off the sea floor about 150 feet below the boat. It wasn't 30 seconds after our bait hit the bottom that we were getting bites! Boy, were we in for an eye opener as we reeled up the fish. Have you ever tried reeling up 150 feet of line with a 3 pound weight on it plus the weight of a 10 pound fish? If not, we highly recommend it, not only is extremely difficult and tiring but it will give you the best work out you have had in a very long time. But, in all seriousness it was extremely fun. When you would reel up the fish you would call over a guide and they would haul it up onto the boat, take it off the hook, put a colored zip tie around the tail (so that they could tell whose was whose) and then they would throw it on the floor. People were reeling them in left and right and pretty soon you had to watch were you stepped because there were fish everywhere! Each person was able to catch two halibut and each of us limited out. All of our halibut were about 28 inches long and about 10 pounds. Surprisingly halibut are very smart so there were many of casts where the bait was stolen requiring you to reel back up the 150 feet of line and get more herring. This trip was so exhausting and so much fun, could not have had a better day. The sun was shining the entire time, there were hardly any waves, and we enjoyed the beautiful scenery along the way. Ashley's favorite part was all the jellyfish! As we were fishing numerous different kinds of jellyfish floated by! Not only did we catch fish, see tons of jelly fish but we also saw whales on the boat ride to and from our fishing destination! Without a doubt, one of the coolest experiences we have had up here. To end the day we cooked up some of our halibut for dinner and sat on the beach to soak up the sunset.

Enjoying the sunshine and blue skies

Nothing but an ocean view

Graciously taking a break from reeling to take this photo 

Ashley's first halibut!

Look at what we caught! 

T'was a great day.

Unfortunately the trip had to come to an end sometime but we did make the most of our last day. We drove back to Eagle River, picked up the Jeep and dropped off the RV. After that we had a late lunch/early dinner at the Spenard Roadhouse. This has become a favorite place due to their bacon jam burger, it is as delicious as it sounds but according to dad it had "too much flavor". If that is not a 5 star review, we don't know what is. The last stop before the airport was Chilkoot Charlie's. This is a bar that we discovered on our last trip to Alaska and it has become one of our favorites. This bar is massive with several themed rooms, and a very unique atmosphere. It was a great ending to a great trip. We then drove to the airport and said our goodbyes. We had so much fun and we very sad to end the adventure...until next time.

-The A-Team