adminSwim Meet
Kenzie is getting more comfortable with swim meets (she LOVES to swim but the noise and faced-paced schedule at a swim meet can be overwhelming)… and she seemed to have fun this time. She did great! Two won two of her heats, then placed first once and second twice! She also shaved 4 seconds from her 25 free! First time diving off the blocks for a race!
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Pictures with Santa
Our traditional Black Friday pictures with Santa! Kenzie asked for Grace, Grace’s bakery, and mir AG/OG accessories…
Puppy Vaccinations
So this weekend Kenzie really impressed me. We needed to give the new puppies their vaccinations and she decided that she wanted to learn how to do it.
Rather than turning her loose on the dog with a syringe, we decided to do some practicing first and used an orange to perfect her technique. She stuck with it and practiced over and over again until she felt confident. Then she got down with Oreo and did a perfect job putting the needle in and giving her the vaccination. Not bad for 7 years old. This kid amazes me!
Funny sidenote: I just about peed myself laughing when during the practice phase she handed me the orange so that I could “hold the patient” 🙂
Last Days in the Kenai Peninsula
The last couple of days I had in the Kenai Peninsula I camped out in the truck and just wandered the area. Saw lots of amazing wildlife, drove through a forest fire, saw the salmon running (and people fishing for them in the middle of that same forest fire…people in Alaska a really serious about their fish!), and met some very nice people. I’m also throwing in a couple of pictures from the first part of the trip that I forgot to include. Great trip!
Katmai National Forest
After Denali and Fairbanks, Kenzie and Jodi headed back home. But I played hooky for a few more days to see the Kenai Peninsula on my own. I rented an SUV and headed south to Homer for an amazing experience. A trip to the Katmai National Forest by float plane to go on a bear photography excursion.
This was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. We took a float plane about an hour south and landed along the beach near a meadow where Alaskan Brown Bears gather in preparation for the salmon run. Then unloaded and began hiking through the meadows among the brown bear.
I think it’s fair to say our group was all a bit nervous, but we had an excellent guide who coached us ahead of time on how to interact and be around them [relatively] safely. He really knew the animals and after about 20 minutes of being around them, we settled in for what was an INCREDIBLE EXPERIENCE!
These bears don’t view humans as a food source, so as long as you are not threatening to them, they go about their business. By law, we had to stay 100 feet away from them, but we found that while we stayed away, they would often walk up closer to us to check us out (especially the babies who wanted to play).
Around noon we took a break from hiking and stopped for lunch in the middle of the meadow. Our guide did a quick check and pointed out that we had 21 bears surrounding us including 3 moms with 2 cubs each.
We spent about 6 hours total hiking around the area, watching moms and cubs interact, watching dominant 1100 pound males challenge other males, and just generally seeing how the bears behave. This was an extraordinary experience and one that I can’t begin to put into words. Definitely something I’ll never forget!
As if the time on the ground wasn’t amazing enough, on the flight back to Homer the float plane took a little detour and flew up the mouth of a glacier we were passing so we could all get a good view.
I threw together some video clips from the GoPro I had mounted to my shoulder as we walked around the bears. It’s just raw video and not well edited, but it gives some idea of what it was like.
Unbelievable day and a truly once in a lifetime experience!!!
Day 2 in Denali
Our second day in Denali we visited the park services sled dog kennels.
The parks service in Denali has used working sled dogs since the 1920’s to service and maintain the park. During the summer the dogs are on “vacation” and the kennel is open to the public to check out and see a demonstration of how they work. And Kenzie is all about any chance to hang out and play with dogs…
After spending the morning at the kennels, we headed back to Fairbanks to hang out for the evening before our flight the next morning. But along the way we took a quick detour to see some musk ox and reindeer at the University of Alaska research facility.
The last picture I took at the Fred Meyer in Fairbanks. It’s a sign that hangs in the entry way. This is a whole new level of delivery service I never realized existed. You can email or call in your Fred Meyer order, and then they do the shopping for you. But instead of bringing your groceries out to the parking lot so you don’t have to go in, in Fairbanks they will load your order into a float plane and fly it out into the Alaska bush and deliver it for you. Not bad!
Weekend in Denali
We’ve had Denali National Park in Alaska on our bucket list for a while, so this year we planned a long weekend to check it out. We didn’t realize it when we booked the trip, but we arrived on the Solstice (the day when the sun is at it’s northernmost point and the longest day of sunlight all year) and in Alaska apparently that means it’s a party weekend! Cars were all rented out and everyone had sold out of ice. But we worked it all out and after some shopping, we headed out to Denali.
Our first day in Denali was beautiful, and we got really luck with the weather and animal sighting. They say if you spend a few days there you’ll have a 30% chance of seeing Mt. Denali through the clouds. We go lucky and had a great view our first day!
We also spotted sheep, caribou, eagles, a lynx, hares, moose, and bears. But the highlight for Kenzie was the little Arctic Ground Squirrel!
It was also really interesting/odd to have it be completely light out at midnight. I went for a walk around 11:00pm and took some pictures, and looking at them, you’d think it was noon.
