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| Asher's countdown |
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| Eva's countdown |
I experienced the longest birthday of my life and I was awake for all 26 hours of it. Surely 26 is a typo, but it is not. The night before our trip, I had to stay up all night packing, so I was awake when midnight on my birthday arrived in New Mexico and I was still awake at midnight in Alaska when my birthday officially ended.
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| Eva's card |
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| Asher's card |
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| Rachel's card |
During take off, I was next to Asher and Eva, who couldn’t remember flying since they were 1 and 4-years old the last time. They were both very excited and nervous. Eva was by the window and Asher sat next to me, clutching tight to my hand, while he leaned over to look out the window, too. After about 20 minutes of staring out the window in raptures, Eva turned to me and said, “My cheeks hurt from smiling so much!”
Eleanora (3) had been asking for about a year to go on an airplane, so you can imagine her delight to fly for the first time. After 5 minutes in the air she asked to go home. Haha!
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| Can you see the 3 mountains? |
Eleanora asked, “What’s that?”
“A mountain,” I reply.
“Can we go to it, Mom? Can I? Please, please, can I?”
“No, honey, it is too high and cold.”
“What’s that?”
“A lake.”
“Can we go to it, Mom? Please, Mom? Can I, can I?”
“No, that is too deep and cold.”
When we were about to land in Alaska we went over a choppy water inlet. She warned, “I can’t go in that water…it is too deep for me.”
“That water is too deep and cold for me, too.”
Her jaw dropped that something might be so deep that it would even be too deep for me.
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| Mt Rainer 14,411 ft |
Anchorage
That night prior to falling asleep, I calculated it had been 40 hours since I had lain down! The next day, we picked up the RV and Peter took the kids to Jewel Lake Park while Chrisann and I went shopping. And we shopped for EIGHT hours--by the end my feet hurt and I had a migraine, which I rarely get. The silver lining is that since my feet hurt I realized my hiking boot insoles were not supportive and I bought better insoles--the rest of the trip my feet were happy.
Jewel Lake Park, Anchorage
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| Fun Fact: The tides around Anchorage are the 2nd highest in the world--up to 40 ft. |
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| Around 11 pm |
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| So much beautiful scenery--so many blurry pictures while we drove, but I couldn't stop taking pictures! |
Two hours out of Anchorage, three failed attempts at finding a spot in a campground, led us to a roadside spot where we fell in bed at 12:30 am. Not the most restful sleep for Peter and me as each truck that zoomed by rocked us.
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| Roadside sleep spot |
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| Roadside sleep spot lake |
I woke up hopeful that today the fun could begin, only to discover that our refrigerator was broken and we had to drive back to Anchorage to have it replaced. I had a cry about it in the morning, from sheer exhaustion, but it turned out to be a lovely day, even if it didn't include my original plan of clamming and increased our drive to 5 hours versus 1 1/2 hours.
Instead, I did laundry while we waited for the RV to be repaired and then stopped at a store for a few items I had forgotten the day before. One was an item I thought we didn’t need, but Eleanora assured me by her complaints that I had made a giant oversight…I bought pillows for everyone, except the two youngest whom I thought could use our travel pillows. I thought wrong! Oh the joy when I presented them with real pillows! It was the best $13 spent—the thanks I received daily during our trip from Eleanora was magical:
“You got me a real pillow! You’re so nice to me,” and after a slight pause she'd add, “I’m so nice to you, too.” Every day she would repeat this adorable script.
In addition to getting the much desired pillow, it was a beautiful clear day so we got to see the mountains a different way.
On the way to Kasilof we stopped at Indian Valley Mine to gold pan and it was delightful. We were able to find some gold--tiny, but more than flakes; garnet, copper, and Rachel found an Alaskan black diamond.
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| Indian Valley Mine, picture from website |
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| One of the owners visited her sister in Moriarty, New Mexico and saw an ant hill that was glistening, so she panned some of it. These are all the gems she found that the ants had mined! Incredible...guess who's going to start panning ant hills. ;) |
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| Road construction at gold panning; Asher (6) was very excited and his eyes about popped out of his head when the owner told us his 6 year old used it to do chores years back. He assured us he would put him somewhere on the 40 acres where he couldn't hurt anything and have him dig a ditch. ;) I said to Asher, "I bet you wish your chores included using an excavator instead of just cleaning windows!" |
Almost to Kasilof...a day late!
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| Snowy volcano peak |
Kasilof
Due to our fun panning, it meant another late night arrival at Alex’s in Kasilof at 10:30 pm. I finally found the right state for a camping trip--we never had to set up in the dark, no matter how late we arrived! The next day we had a relaxing morning at Alex's before we all drove down to Homer, an hour away.
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| Eleanora loved Alex's dog, Rollo. Asher thought the cabin was called a cabinet |
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| Still can't get her to keep her shoes on. At least she's keeping her clothes on most of the time. |
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| Staining flowers with berries |
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| Picture by Alex |
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| Anchorage to somewhere, then back to Anchorage to Kasilof |
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