Alaska, continued

I'm not sure how to organize this post. With limted time to use the internet (we don't have it at home), I'm tempted to just throw on a bunch of pictures with breif captions, but that just wouldn't be right. So here's a little bit more of what we've been doing in Alaska.

Mostly, Paul has been working. He is being so dedicated, and I'm really proud of him for that (but not surprised). In the evenings, though, we still have several hours of daylight to work with (do you call it "nightlight" if it's 11 pm and still light outside?) so we head out in the truck most days and see what there is to see.

The first week we were here we were driving "out the road" and happened upon some local wildlife. (Driving "out the road" is what the locals call driving on the road that basically takes you to the farthest north point of Juneau that you can drive. You can't drive to or from Juneau to anywhere else, so driving up that road is as far as a car can take you.)

First we saw Porcupine Pat. I don't know why we named him that. He was just ambling down the road, which seems to be a habit of his, because he looked like he'd had a run-in with a fast-moving vehicle before. Or maybe porcupines all look like they've had their back quills rubbed off. The only porcupine I've ever seen was on "Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey."

Anyway...

Later on our drive Paul saw a little black bear up ahead, also hanging out on the side of the road, but for some reason we had put our camera away! We pulled over and scrambled to get it out while the bear sort of stared at us. Just as I was trying to focus the picture he decided he was tired of us and sauntered back into the woods. This is the best picture we got, of his backside.

Aside from animals, the scenery is just amazing! This is a common view from our house:

I love it when the clouds are hanging low and mingling with the trees in front of the mountains. When I was coming home from a walk with the boys last week and looking up at Thunder Mountain ahead of me, I had major deja vu of the mountains in Honduras. It's so beautiful.

No more than a mile away from our house is Mendenhall Glacier.


When Paul first showed me pictures of the glacier after his trip to Juneau in March, I wasn't sure why it was so cool. Then I looked at it on GoogleEarth, and I became impressed by its size. Seeing it in person is so different. It's huge. It's majestic. It's beautiful. And, no pun intended (well, sort of intended), it's really cool!

We went for another walk out there last week and took some trails around to a spot on the other side.

As we stood on the shore admiring the view I noticed that a hunk of ice was slowly making its way inland. We waited. And waited. And waited.

Finally! We dragged this huge, heavy piece of glacier onto the sand.

It was like touching a piece of history, which sounds lame. But to us it was awesome. Think about it: That chunk of ice had been frozen for over 200,000 years! And we touched it! Rhett sat on it! (And, okay, I licked it.)

We've had a great time to far. More to come, including the two bears Paul saw tonight while I was writing this post, bald eagles, and what the boys have been up to with me all day.