AK Days 3-5

So Monday Shanna, the boys, Baker and I drove down to Seward, which is about 3 or so hours south of their house. It was a beautiful drive along the coast and we stopped multiple times to take pictures, etc. First we stopped at Beluga Point, and to our surprise the Beluga whales were migrating in! It was so cool to see...there were tons of them..and they are so white! They kind of look like manatees. We were so lucky to have witnessed that! We went on down and stopped to picnic at an overlook. It was beautiful of course but we ate quickly because of the "beware of the bears" signs everywhere!! The weather was cool and the wind was whipping! The drive took us down through the mountains and pretty much followed the Alaskan Railroad. We saw Dahl sheep way up on the cliffs and the rivers flowing through the valleys were crystal clear green/blue and gorgeous! I wouldn't want to fall in...they were freezing!! You can raft those rivers too...

Further into the trip we drove over a small bridge. I was in the back seat and looked down to see "something red" in the water. Shanna turned around and we drove back over the bridge...it was the Salmon spawning! This was by far the coolest thing we'd seen so far! They were beautiful and there were thousands of them swimming upstream!! We pulled into a little park area and got out to go get a closer look. The boys were amazed and so were we! There were people wading in the water fishing too!

We finally made it down to Seward and went to check into our cabin on the water. Our cabin was rustic, to say the least, no bathroom or running water. It did have a refrigerator and microwave though. It was so cute and quaint. We built fire in the cast iron stove and built one outside. We roasted hot dogs and made smores, which was a lot of fun for the boys. We watched the sea lions play in the bay and watched the bald eagles sitting in the trees at the campsite. It was really a cool experience. We went to bed and woke up the next morning early. It was really cold outside and I was not looking forward to kayaking in that wind. Shanna took the boys to a sea life museum in town and Baker and I went to check in to kayak. We were supposed to have 2 other people with us but it turned out to be just us...which was cool. We took a ferry ride with our kayaks across the bay to be dropped off. Our guide was really cool...he was from Montana and had just gotten married on Saturday. The water was like glass and crystal clear. We were out in the middle of nowhere and it was great. We saw starfish, salmon, tons of eagles, and jellyfish on the trip. It was so beautiful and peaceful. We were looking up at the mountains with the glaciers on them the whole time, which was really unbelievable that we were right there by a glacier. Our kayak trip lasted about 2 hours and by that time we were ready to go because we were a little wet and had to use the bathroom. A ferry came back to pick us up and it was back to the camp. Shanna and the boys were waiting on us there. We were all tired as we started back to Willow. The trip back was faster of course because we had already done all of our sight seeing. We did stop at Alyeska ski resort though to scope it out. We want to go back and go skiing the next time we visit.

Wednesday was a chill day. Baker and I went into Wasilla to go to the Iditarod Trail Headquarters. It was interesting place. We went and ate lunch at the best Chinese place we've ever eaten then went back to Merrill and Shanna's. End of Day 5.