Llamas and Tigers and Bears, oh my.

It's been a weird fall.  Temperatures have bobbed between properly freezing temps and the 50s.  The birch and fireweed have long since faded, but the snow hasn't come, which means that the ugliest part of the Alaskan year has stretched from a couple of grayish weeks to over a month.  The kids are actually hoping for snow...which will last for about a week after we finally get some stuff that sticks.

The frost is promising.

Our only snow so far.  It melted 12 hours later.

The temperature is finally falling, though, and we've got predicted highs in the 20s next week, so we (I) did our winter layout.  My storage closet vomited its summer contents all over my living room and we (I) spent an hour and a half pairing mittens and gloves, sizing snowpants, and digging hats out of pockets.  Somehow I'd acquired four extra pairs of boots over the winter; since the girls all wear boots at least one size too big, I kept one in-between pair and donated the others, along with some of the extra gloves and hats that apparently spawned during their summer in the closet.  We are ready whenever the cold decides to arrive.

Fall's busy. Of course, I'm starting to suspect that homeschooling six kids means my life's busy and will be for a while.  During the fall, though, we add four birthdays and three major holidays into the mix. Since Rick was gone on a job-mandated camping trip for a few weeks, we also made a couple trips down to Anchorage and Denali National Park.

Denali was the first.  For most of the year you can only go 15 miles into the park with your private vehicle; otherwise you have to take a bus or start walking.  Lots of people take either of those options, but with the aforementioned horde of children, I'm not hiking in bear-country and I'm certainly not sardining us onto a bus for a minimum of 6 hours with the requisite car seats.  However, after the summer season ends, the park road opens up for another 15 miles.  One perk of the mild weather was that I knew Bertha could make it out that far.  I packed us up and headed out.

It was beautiful.  Most of the wildlife know where the people will be and stay beyond the 30 mile line, but we did manage to surprise a caribou.  We also got our first taste of winter during a couple of snow flurries. We ended the day with the girls getting their Denali Jr. Ranger badges and some gourmet popcorn at one heck of a deal ($1 a bag instead of $8 because the guy was closing for the season and wanting to get home to Fairbanks a.s.a.p. because his wife was having a baby the next day).  It was delicious.  I may have eaten all of the Black Bear Crunch (caramel with dark chocolate drizzle) on the way home.

Anchorage was a much longer trip.  The afternoon before I had the feeling I needed to get my snow tires on, which was weird because it isn't consistently freezing or icy and the roads are clear.  I'm glad I did, though, because the roads iced over during the night and I was fishtailing all over the road on the hills outside Fairbanks. I can't even imagine how it would have been in my normal tires.  

In Anchorage, we went to the temple, which is always a good experience.  One of my favorite parts of the trip was getting to visit with some of my favorite people.  We took the kiddos to the pool on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson--which was luckily indoors, because even Alaskans don't think swimming outside is fun in 42 degree weather.  After the temple, the girls and I went to the Alaska Zoo.  It's a tiny zoo since it's limited to animals that can survive sub-freezing temperatures for a third of the year, but it was fun. There were a decent variety of critters, from your typical Alaskan animals like polar bears, moose, and foxen to yaks, tigers, and one very pissed looking llama. 

We also ventured out to a mall.  I remembered why I don't miss them. 

The drive home was incredible.  I love the shifting daylight up here.  Frankly, it's easier to appreciate a gorgeous sunrise at 8:30 than at 5.  I also love how the drive seems new every time I make it.  

For most of this trip home, we had a pretty good view of Denali and his wife (the Tanana native name for Mt. Foraker, the second highest peak in the Alaska range).  We even won the lottery and could see the peak of Denali.  This may not sound like anything special, but at 20,156 feet, Denali makes its own weather and you only have a 1 in 3 chance of seeing the whole mountain.

We made a side trip to Talkeetna.  It's a quirky little town about twenty minutes off the Parks Highway that serves as the base camp for the flight-tours of Denali.  I've wanted to go for a while--mostly because of the name, to be honest, but also because it is supposed to be beautiful and have the quintessentially offbeat Alaskan sense of humor.  I picked the wrong time of year to visit.  I'll have to try again next summer when everything isn't grey and dead, but the quirkiness was definitely there.

The best part of the trip was the BEARS.  The whole time we've been here, we've heard about bears but never seen them in the wild.  In all fairness, I don't exactly go looking for them, and we get more moose wandering around Fairbanks than bears--so seeing these guys, just 20 feet off the side of the highway outside the entrance to Denali, was amazing.  Totally worth almost hitting the guy ahead of me.  (I didn't see the bears at first, just the car ahead of me throwing on his brakes and giving me a heart-attack while I slammed on my brakes, 'cuz Bertha doesn't exactly stop on a dime.)  When I could think again I pulled off the road, clambered into Brenna's lap, and took several pictures from her window while the park ranger eyeballed me to make sure I didn't get out of the car.

Any way, that's been our fall so far.  With any luck, winter will get here soon, and the party can really get started.

Epic Alaskan Summer Part 5: The Grande Finale

The last act of our summer began quietly. My mother came up for a pleasant, low-key visit.  Since she has already been to Fairbanks a couple of times, we skipped the tourist traps and found some stuff she hadn't seen. We went hiking at Creamer's, visited the botanical garden again, drove down to Delta Junction, and hit up the beach at Tanana Lake. The last was particularly memorable for the kids, as they brought home Swimmer's Itch* as a souvenir.

(*You're happier not knowing.  Really.**)
(**Fine.  It's a skin rash caused by snail parasites in fresh water.  It's very common and very, very miserable.  You're welcome.  And, in our defense, this is the only time they got it out of the many times we've gone.)

E, making good choices.

 We left the kids home to scratch and went out on the river. It was cool seeing all the beavers.  It was less cool that the river was so low that I had to drag the kayak through several feet of calf-deep mud to reach the little cove where we were parked. 

This lump is a beaver.

We took one morning to visit the musk-oxen at the Large Animal Research facility.  Mom had never been, and really enjoyed seeing the fuzzy, knee-high babies.  The highlight was the massive cow moose just chilling on the side of the road, eating fireweed as we drove by.

This little foxen bolted out of nowhere during the tour.

Apparently people need to be told that falling off the Trans Alaska Pipeline can hurt them.

We also nipped out to the pipeline (it runs from Valdez to Deadhorse, skirting Fairbanks on the way) for some pictures.   It was a really nice trip; I'm lucky my mom likes me enough to come all the way up to visit.

Just a few days later, the big event of the summer started. Two of my sisters and their kids came up for seven crazy days.  For months we'd discussed and planned and researched, and we hit the ground running.  The first day was spent recovering from the red-eye flight and just getting an eyeful of Fairbanks.  They wanted to see ice sculptures, so, out of the two year-round ice museums available, we went to the Fairbanks Ice Museum.  I chose...poorly.  Well, I guess that's not fair. The video was informative (but about 15 minutes too long), the ice sculptures were fun (if rather small), and it was cool to watch the professional, prizewinning ice sculptor work.  It ticked all the boxes and the fam got to sled down an ice slide, but if I had to do it again, I'd try Chena Hot Springs instead. Of course, then we'd have missed the chance to talk with a bunch of tourists from New York.

The next day we started out on possibly the most ambitious (or stupid) part of the visit--a turn-and-burn trip to Valdez for a glacier cruise.  As you might recall from our earlier June excursion, Valdez is roughly 6 hours away--8 if you have a car full of women and kids who are extremely well hydrated.  We packed Bertha full of kids, snacks, and sleeping bags and headed down the Richardson Highway.

Once we finally arrived, Valdez was amazing, of course.  Worthington Glacier was beautiful, and we did eat at The Fat Mermaid this time (I recommend it, and not just because of the name).

We stayed in the sketchiest little campground about 15 minutes outside of Valdez proper.  It turns out some of my very favorite people from Fairbanks were down there as well, and had a run-in with a bear--unfortunately, we weren't lucky enough to make any ursine friends.

The promised bear.

What it lacked in bears, the campground made up for in glaciers and waterfalls.

Not our campground (we had too much estrogen in our party) but it made me cackle every time we passed it.

After chasing bunnies and roughly 500 Korean tourists, we made it on to the ship.  It took some politics--and a very assertive Amy with a cunningly placed cranky toddler--but we managed to get a decent table for the cruise.  We got 6 hours of beautiful views, glaciers, sea lions, and otters.  I was hoping for a whale, but Alaska continued to be a punk and we were denied.

It was windy as hell and about 40 degrees, but this was where they spent 90% of the trip.

We were compensated for the disappointing lack of bear and whale by the thousand rabbits, three porcupines, and four moose we saw on the drive home.  Even without the moose, it would have been a great drive.  I haven't laughed like that in a long time.  If Brenna's slightly traumatized, well, she shouldn't have listened in.

Not the best photo, but this was taken after sunset, so stop complaining--we did the best we could.  This is a mama moose in the pond and her baby is the grey blob on the hill.

Back in Fairbanks, we went to soccer games and gold-panning, kayaking and hiking.  I took the kids out on Tanana Lakes, and that evening we big kids went out on the river, which was fortunately a little higher this run.

Since Alaska enjoys making you work for what you want, we watched the weather and on the single, solitary clear night we went out to look for the aurora around 1 a.m., when it was finally dark enough--and were lucky enough to catch some of the show.

One of my favorite parts was when we abandoned the kids to go hiking at Angel Rocks.  It was easier sans children, but still a bit of a kick in the butt.  Amanda beasted it, but generously waited for Amy and me to catch up. It was gorgeous.  Jumping on the squooshy, ankle-deep moss on the side of the trail was the best part.

Of course, we had to visit North Pole and the Santa Clause House.  We managed to sneak into the Antler Academy and see the reindeer, who are exactly as grumpy and pushy as you'd expect.  The kids mostly enjoyed it, though.

 Our last adventure was the 40 Below Experience at the Riverboat Discovery.  Since the ice museum apparently wasn't cold enough, we had to drop things another 60 degrees before everyone was satisfied.  There really isn't a way to describe how it feels when your nose-hair freezes with the first breath.

Well, I tells a lie.  The last adventure was packing.  Rounding up the various small articles that go missing over vacation is always a challenge, but we got extra excitement over a souvenir that was inexplicably gone.  We turned the house upside down and *thhhppppbt* nothing.  I kept having the weirdest impulse to check the trash.  Now, usually I manage to suppress urges like this, but after fighting it for two days, I gave in.  Luckily, I didn't have to dig long.  The lost items were promptly recovered and I was the conquering smelly trash-panda hero.

And thus ended the epic Alaskan summer of 2018.  The seasons have turned and now that I've finished this chapter I can finally move on with my life (and, with luck, a more recent blog).  I'm glad I got to relive this wonderful summer.  Alaska may have my heart, but Family is where I'm home.