First Day of School!

Hope started Kindergarten at Denali Montessori yesterday. Her teacher is Mrs. Irene. Hope loves it! She wants to eat "lunch on a tray," so today she got the hot lunch. It was very impressive - egg roll, rice, and a "peach thing." She loves it and wants to have lunch on a tray tomorrow too.

Grumps, my dad, brought Hope back to Alaska from two weeks in New Orleans where she had a lot of fun and played a lot of Uno (the card game).

One of our favorite activities these days is going to the raspberry bushes in front of our house and gobbling up all of the ripe berries. The morning of the first day of Kindergarten was no exception.

Trip to Seward, Alaska

In August, Jolie's mom came to visit and we went to check out Seward. We took a boat ride around Resurrection Bay and saw whales, sea otters, sea lions, seals, eagles, loons, oh my! It was a lot of fun, but not real toasty. A boatride is something all visitors should do.

Glaciers:


Glaciers calving - booming and splashing - it's an incredible site!
We saw several humpack whales - Nic did a good job of getting this dive captured with our camera:

Judy is getting our photo with the New Orleans' daily paper, The Times Picayune - we'll let you know if we're published in the paper:
Steller's Sea Lions sunning (?? - sun is all relative - ??) themselves:

A side trip to Exit Glacier outside of Seward the day before the boat ride:

The sun making a rare appearance on a picnic on our way to Seward:

In case anyone is following our remodel, pics will be posted soon. And we are DONE!...with the things we're paying others to do. Is anyone ever truly done??? Well, we are as done as we can be for now. Of course, there's always the paint touch-up, picking out the right thing to hang on a strange wall, etc. And there is still more fun to be found outside (we've identified the trees to sacrifice to improve our view of the ocean!). The saga will continue - as most of you can relate to. And summer is almost over - WHAT HAPPENED??? Still hoping some of you will make the time to visit the last frontier!

Love, us!

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.

Craig's List part II

CRAIGS LIST in Alaska appears to be the go to place. Below is an article about the huge response received when a dead moose was put on CRAIGS LIST in Anchorage. The response was bigger than our rolls of blue carpet (more carpet will be ripped out of the house soon, so stand by CRAIGS LIST watchers). It makes me laugh.

Alaskans find takers for dead moose online
CRAIGSLIST: Interest is high, but giving away carcasses is risky, biologist says.
By JAMES HALPINjhalpin@adn.com
Published: May 20th, 2008 01:47 AMLast Modified: May 20th, 2008 03:51 PM
When a 300-pound yearling moose stumbled into Calvin Hay's Hillside yard and died this month, he called the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, expecting the carcass would get hauled away.

Instead, he found out he was on his own.
"I guess I assumed that they would come deal with it," he said. "I kind of joked around a little bit; I said, wait a minute, aren't you the guys that say moose are, like, natural resources and they belong to all of us, but now that it's dead, it belongs to me?"
Turns out that's about right. So Hay, 46, posted an ad for a "dead moose" on Craigslist, a classified ad Web site, becoming at least the second person to do so in Anchorage this spring.
"You could use it for dog food or stuff it and put it (in) your front yard, bear bait, whatever," says the ad. "If you live in the Lower 48, this might be your best opportunity to get a free Alaska moose. I don't really care; I just want it out of my yard."
Within minutes, the responses began flooding in, he said. He got at least 50, including one poster who offered to take just a quarter: "I want it. But I can only take a haunch. I got only a small knife and a bicycle."
When moose die and their meat is deemed inedible -- often because the cause of death is unknown -- they become the responsibility of whoever owns the land they end up on, said Rick Sinnott, the Anchorage-area wildlife biologist for Fish and Game. When they die on public land, the responsible agency takes care of removing the carcass. On private land, it's up to the owner.

I think I have seen that guy that only has a small knife and a bicycle.

Mother's Day

It's been a while since we've posted. I guess that means we've been busy (we have!). Today, though, we spent the day exploring and hiking around Hope, Alaska (about 90 miles from Anchorage). Before that, as part of our usual morning routine, we said good morning to the ocean, to the mountains, to the trees, and this morning...to a MOOSE...nibbling the landscaping in our front yard. On the way home, about 1/2 mile from our house, we spotted this bear:

It seems like we have been working non-stop on getting our house in order. Nic and I have started using a phrase that we did not invent, but can understand. It's "TIA." TIA stands for "This Is Alaska" and it's used to describe any multitude of idiosyncrasies or irritations that could be unique to this island state (like $4 avocados, or the fact that I can't find Annie's Cheddar Bunnies anywhere). Or like the fact that we ordered bathroom windows to fix this problem (portrayed in the bathroom below) about 6 weeks ago, and they'll be in "soon." Consequenetly, we've been about 4 weeks without a bathroom and no end in sight (Nic has reminded me to note that we ARE using a bathroom - we have more than 1 - so we're not that Alaskan...). The good thing is it'll be really nice when it's all done. The kitchen starts in a few weeks and I know that won't be fun.

At the end of April, we had a whopper of a snowstorm. In fact, it was Anchorage's THIRD BIGGEST SNOWSTORM ever. Nic couldn't get over the fact that he's shoveling 18"+ of snow at 9 PM and it's practically broad daylight. We are getting used to the daylight, but it does throw off your sleep. Our sleep patterns may never be "normal" again until we move back Outside (another TIA, they/we call the lower 48 states "Outside" with a capital "O" - the newspaper even refers to it as such).

Wildlife

Nic here...............so far we have seen a moose every week since moving to Anchorage. Hope and I even saw "Buzzwinkle" downtown. This is the moose made famous by first getting his antlers caught up in a kid's swing set bad enough that the Alaska Fish and Game had to dart him, untangle him, tag and release him. In November the same moose was tangled up in Christmas lights downtown and stumbling drunk on fermented crab apples, in front of a local tavern no less. He is still downtown, sober, but with a mark on his hind quarter indicating a collision with a vehicle. Tonight we saw two moose running through the backyard. Here is one we saw between our house and the local elementry school. Bald eagles are plentiful too. It will be exciting when summer comes to see more wildlife. We went for a drive and short hike at sunset (3:30) a few weeks ago and watched the ravens migrate back to the mountains to roost after a day of scrounging the fast food dumpsters downtown. From here we could see all of Anchorage bowl. Here are a couple of pictures, one with the sky line and one with the setting sun over the frozen ocean with a volcano in the background.

Our first February in Anchorage, Alaska

Family and Friends: It seems a fitting day to update our blog since this is the FIRST day we've seen moose meandering (or thundering more like it) through our backyard. Last week I followed a snowshoe hare hopping up the driveway.

We have finally moved into our house and are enjoying it - we love the views of ocean, mountains, trees and few neighbors (ok, and today a couple of moose). We moved in a little over two weeks ago and just only got telephone service a few days ago. We have a choice of two companies - one is terrible and the other one doesn't ever answer their phone. We chose the terrible company.

Check out views from our guest room (come stay in it!!).

We are enjoying our time here, although we get homesick at times. Hope is adjusting the best of all of us. She is making some friends. We went skiing Saturday and as we're getting out of the car, she starts talking to the kid getting out the car next to us. Turns out they go to the same preschool.


We have been trying to clean out our garage (the previous owner left us lots of "useful" things). One of which is a pile of carpet remnants. So, tonight we try to rid ourselves of the remnants so we don't have to pay to bring it to the dump. We posted the carpet for free on Craigslist and within 30 minutes of posting, we got 3 phone calls and 2 emails. Maybe the previous owner was on to something...hmmm...what else can we get rid of on Craigslist????

Some more photos of our activities in Alaska:

This is our playset in our backyard.

Nic and Hope are in the street in front of our house. We walked up the hill and they sled to our house down the street. Hope is in front of the playhouse built for her (and for holding tires - studded ones in summer and regular ones in winter). It was kinda chilly this day - I don't recall it getting any higher than negative 10 degrees.

Some of you will recognize our furniture in this foregin living room - that's how it still feels for now...

Skating at Goose Lake at the Ice Skating Festival! Hope is riding on a bucket and I am pushing. She found this a better way to get around the ice. Notice the "new" ice skates. They are much more comfortable than what I reported on the last blog.

Hope is enjoying helping shovel snow. She has also taken a liking to Windex and paper towels while we're not looking. She cleans EVERYTHING!

See some of you next month when we get around to Colorado and New Orleans...

With love, from all of us!