Matanuska Glacier

Glaciers.

Glaciers are noisy.

You know that sound ice makes when water is poured over it in your glass?

Imagine that sound, but really loud and coming from under your feet. 

That is a glacier.

This is the water from the melting glacier running underneath it. That is part of what makes them so dangerous.

-danielle

Alaska - Hatcher Pass

This post is a bunch of pretty Alaska-ness.

 We started the day with breakfast at the Talkeetna Roadhouse.
They are famous for their sourdough pancakes and Birch syrup.
Very, very tasty.

After Breakfast - we only ordered two and split them between the four of us,

They were very, very big.

Then we drove over Hatcher Pass - famous for the GOLD!

Still hunting the sun spots!

-danielle

Alaska - North Pole

So, we told Dallin he could go on a trip if he earned his Eagle Scout Award.

He chose to go to Alaska.

Turns out Shane had work to do in Alaska, so we worked for awhile and payed for most of the trip while we were on the trip.

We traveled to Boise after church responsibilities were taken care of.

We spent the night and continued the drive to Seattle. Shane chose to take a longer route to Seattle so the boys could see the sights. 

Now they can add the Seattle harbor, the University of Washington and the Space Needle to the list of things they have seen.

We ended up at the Airport about 5:30 with a flight that left at 8:30.

Three things were very true:

1) We had been in the car a very long time.

2) We were very sick of eating Subway

3) We were at the most ghetto gate at SeaTac Airport.

But we had a nice person at the gate that reassigned seats. We were all over the plane, but she put us all together in First Class for free!

I liked her.

We landed in Anchorage at 11:00 local time.

And it was still light.
This picture was really taken at about 11:30.
No flash.
Just good 'ol sunlight!

We got some sleep, worked for a day. 

Worked a little bit the next day, and drove to Fairbanks.

McCade called it Farbanks,

Yep. Accurate description.

Santa's Reindeer!

I feel their pain. . 

Someone put googly eyes on this elf. It freaked McCade out.

Me too, actually.

Documenting the address for future reference.

And we visited Santa.

Oh, the stress of the count down. . . 

And they touched the North Pole.

Good stats to know. . . 

Even the street lights were striped like Candy Canes.
This was taken through the front windshield. 
Pay no attention to the bug corpses.

Then we tried to see Mt. Denali (Mt. McKinley).

The mountain is so tall it has it's own weather system and the weather. The mountain you can see in these pictures in the mountain in FRONT of Mt. Denali. The actual Mt. Denali is more than twice the size of that mountain in front.

I was playing with the light. Trying to capture the sun spots.

-danielle