Father's Day in Cordova, Alaska

We went to Cordova, Alaska for an amazing Father's Day weekend. Our house is a total sheetrock mess and we have no kitchen, dining room or living room (along with missing various parts of other rooms - we continue to miss things like real stairs, showers, carpet). [As an aside, Hope wins daughter of the year award because a few weekends ago, after a little too much partying at Kid's Fishing Day, hot dog, space walk, hula hoop, snowball, etc. - she threw up on our brand new subfloor - but she missed the BRAND SPANKING NEW CARPET by 4 inches - way to go Hope!]

This is Whittier...the jumping off point for Cordova...it was built during WWII - and has an interesting history to it...

Our weekend was a fabulous one - full of North America's longest tunnel (see http://www.dot.state.ak.us/creg/whittiertunnel/index.shtml) - where you travel for almost 3 miles on a single-wide lane that was closed to vehicles until about 3 years ago).

After the tunnel in Whittier, it's on the ferry to get to Cordova (http://www.cordovaalaska.com/). The ferry is pretty pricey (almost $400 round/trip for the 3 of us - 4 of us if you count Dora van), but it's an adventure itself. On the ferry we saw humpback whales (blowing and tail fins), Dall porpoise, sea lions, sea otters, eagles.

Some pictures of us in Cordova...

THE BEAR STORY! As told by Nic

We found a short 1.6 mile round trip interpretive hike to end our day late Sunday afternoon before dinner. The trail made it's way up through a forest to a look out bluff where you can look down at the valley below that you hiked from and perhaps catch a glimpse of trumpeter swans, bald eagles, maybe a moose munching grass or even a bear. About a third of the way up a young couple were quickly making their way down stopping just long enough to tell us that from the top they could see a bear way down in the valley walking towards the road. They were hoping to run down to the trailhead, get in their car and see if they could see the bear. We beat feet to the top, and got out the binoculars once we reached the over look. Jolie and I took turns looking and looking. We saw the couple's car way off in the distance driving the road. We couldn't see the bear. We didn't even see any swans or much of anything. Hope sat on a bench at the overlook eating a snack as Jolie continued to scan the vast Alaskan landscape hoping to see something. I looked back at Hope, heard a noise and saw something brown flash by. Maybe it was a bushy squirl's tail. I turned back to the overlook and heard a "Haramph" then back again at Hope. About 30 feet behind her was a grizzley bear sniffing the air and ambling up the hill towards us. I grabbed my pack with the bear spray, got my hand on the trigger and grabbed Hope with my other hand. Jolie and I both put our hands in the air and told the bear to go away (Jolie was actually shaking her finger at the bear as if he just hit a base ball through our window). The bear didn't run away like we hoped. We shoved our binoculars, water, and snacks back in the back pack and backed away from the bear. We put Hope beteween us and quickly made it back to the VW van. My heart rate went back to normal after two beers and three smores around the campfire that night. I didn't have time to take a picture, but here is a black bear that went by our house and van parked in our driveway in Anchorage.