Our Life in Alaska and Beyond

After spending some time at the AWCC, we went over to the BBVC. It's a really nice visitor center with some really cool displays and exhibits. Also, the girls had been working on their Jr. Ranger booklets and they were able to turn those in and get some really cool patches. Great job girls! Enjoy these pics from this beautiful Alaska summer day! 

Both of these patches are so cool! The BBVC Jr. Ranger patch, and the Chugach National Forest Jr. Ranger patch.

After going on the glacier cruise, we spent the night at an Air B&B in Girdwood, and then before coming home the next day we stopped at the AWCC. We've loved having a season pass here. It's always so fun to see all the cool animals, and it's in such a gorgeous location! Enjoy the pics!

Black bear!

This post is dedicated to the many pics I took of the beautiful, blooming fireweed while running outside in July, lol. Enjoy! 💗

I got Ruby to run with me a few times! (Love the daisies here too!) 🌼 7/15/24

Just a few extras from July 2024. Such a fun month!

Friday Fling in Palmer. This peony was huge and so pretty! 💗 7/12/24

Chrissy invited me to go with her on a little overnight backpacking trip, and of course I had to go! It was my first time backpacking, and it was so fun! We hiked just over four miles each way, and Chrissy supplied most the gear. We started at the Crystal Lake trailhead, and we actually read the map wrong and ended up going to a different lake than we had originally planned, but it all worked out, haha! We camped at Island Lake, and it was so beautiful! There are quite a few trees in the Uintas that have died from spruce beetles, but I think it's starting to recover, and it really is still so pretty. I loved backpacking, and can't wait to go again!

My friend Claire asked me to hike Ben Lomond with her, and of course I wanted to! This is a huge hike, (the longest I've ever done, nearly 16 miles!), but so beautiful too! We started super early in the morning, and it took us a little over 6 hours. It was a a big one, but so fun, and I'd love to hike it again! Claire is one of my friends from hygiene school, and I love that we've been able to stay in contact! So fun to spend some time together! 👯‍♀️🥾⛰️

Some of my very favorite photos ever I took on this hike. It was so pretty! 🤩😍

Glacier National Park has been on our bucket list for a while, and last summer we decided to make it happen! We were able to reserve a camp site for a couple nights right in Glacier, and we kind of just worked around that. With Ruby just finishing 4th grade we were still able to use her family parks pass. It was an amazing trip and I can't wait to share so many beautiful pics! 

It is quite a drive to get to Glacier, so we split it up over two days. On our first day we made a little stop at Mesa Falls. We've made this tiny detour a few times, and it is so worth it! Mesa Falls is beautiful! They also have a little visitor center which is kind of fun to walk through. After Mesa Falls, we continued our drive and then spent the night in Butte, Montana. It was a lot of time in the car the first day, but the girls did great!

Upper Mesa Falls

We loved having Steph and Alex stay with us! After getting off work on Saturday I finally met up with everyone at our house, haha, and we all had a yummy dinner of salmon tacos! Later that night after putting the girls to bed, all the adults stayed up and we played some games. It was so fun!

On Sunday morning we had a big yummy breakfast of bacon and eggs and then we drove up Hatcher Pass. We were planning on doing a longer hike, but it was pretty foggy and overcast, so we decided to just explore around Independence Mine. We hadn't done that for a few years, so it was fun to check out again! It's very similar to Kennecott Mine, where we were a few weeks ago, not quite as big though. Afterwards we also drove over to Summit Lake and explored around there too. The views weren't quite as impressive with all the clouds moving in, but it was still so pretty! Enjoy these beautiful foggy fall pics!

The fireweed this fall was so pretty! 🔥

We've had such pretty colors this fall, and we've tried our best to get out and enjoy it as much as we can! A few Sundays ago we decided to hike Scout Ridge trail. It was so pretty and we decided fall is our favorite time of year to hike it because of all the beautiful colors (and no mosquitoes!) 

With the girls starting school mid-August we tried to get as much fun into the end of summer as we could! Scott had his normal Wednesday off and we decided to hike the Butte. Ruby didn't feel super great, but we decided to hike it anyway. Unfortunately I took her to the doctor the next day and found out she had strep throat, poor little thing. She was a trooper for doing this whole hike though! A couple weeks later I ended up getting strep throat too. 👎It was a little bit of a rough start with sickness in August, but since then we've been pretty good! Hopefully we'll continue to stay healthy! 

The next night we camped just outside of Valdez at Blueberry Lake State Recreation Site. It was just a little lake and campground, but it had beautiful views. We went on several little walks just exploring the campsite and Ruby tried fishing, but unfortunately didn't catch anything. With our campfire dinner that night we had some delicious s'mores! Yum!  

So good! 😋

The next couple days we spent in Valdez. We had beautiful weather and loved spending time together in the camper van! I think if it weren't for covid we would have spent more time walking around Valdez in town, shopping and stuff, but we still had fun! We walked around the harbor, did a short hike above the Civic Center (where we found lots of salmon berries), and camped across the water, over by the hatchery. We loved Solomon Gulch Hatchery we were could watch huge sea lions eat salmon after salmon after salmon! (See my IG for videos!) Enjoy these pics! 

I couldn't get enough of the beautiful blooming fireweed!

One of the big things we wanted to do with Grandma and Grandpa when they came up to visit this summer was to rent an RV (or a camper van as the girls called it) and road trip to Valdez. None of us had ever been to that part of the state, and it ended up being so fun and so beautiful! We were able to rent an RV from our bishop for Monday thru Friday and we loved it! We had great weather and a great time being all together! The only hiccup was that I left my camera battery at home so I wasn't able to take pictures on my big camera. Luckily cell phones take pretty good pics too, so we still have plenty of pics from the trip. 

The first stop on our trip was Matanuska Glacier. We took the short little hike to the viewpoint and it was beautiful! We enjoyed all the sunshine and fireweed, and of course the glacier. So pretty!

Scott and I had the amazing opportunity to go on a day trip to Katmai National Park! All of Alaska has seen a decline in tourism this summer and so lots of companies have been doing specials for Alaska residents. I saw that Katmai Air had a 25% discount for a day trip from Anchorage so once my parents made it up here I jumped on booking this deal for us! Even with the discount it was still pretty expensive, but in my opinion it was definitely worth it as a once in a lifetime opportunity! (Although I'd love to go back, haha!) 

It worked out perfect with my parents watching the girls so Scott and I could fly out of Anchorage early in the morning, and then we made it back by late that evening. We first took a small nine passenger plane to King Salmon, and then from there we got on an even smaller float plane (it was just me, Scott, the pilot, and the copilot!) to Brooks Camp at Katmai National Park! We landed on Naknek Lake, right at Brooks Camp and the NPS Visitor Center. We had a quick bear safety orientation by a Park Ranger, and then we were free to explore the park! Most of the time (and where most of these pictures were taken) we were on one of the viewing platforms, so we were close to the bears, but we were safely above them. However, to get to the platforms we had to walk on the trails and the most famous viewing platform (Brooks Falls)  is about a mile from the visitor center. We had a close encounter with a bear while on the trail, but we were able to let it safely pass, giving him plenty of room, and it was all good! 

The best part of Katmai was just how many bears there were! I had no idea we were going to just see them everywhere! It was truly amazing! We probably saw about 50 bears total. I've read that they are able to tolerate each other, being so close, and they're not as aggressive (as say grizzly bears in Denali) just because of the abundance of food (salmon) available. There was definitely no shortage of salmon as you'll see! Enjoy all these amazing pics!!! (Also, huge thanks to my friend Britta who lent me her 70-200mm lens. I was going to rent a lens, but it wasn't able to be delivered on time, so she definitely saved the day!)

I've tried to identify some of these bears by using pics from the Katmai NP FB page, the 2019 NPS identification guide, the Meet the Bears of Fat Bear Week 2020 guide, and remembering info from the Bear Monitor, who was on the Falls platform the second time we were out on the platform. I've probably got some wrong, but it was still fun. I love these bears so much, haha!

One of my favorite pics of the day 🐻On the Falls Platform

One of the reasons Grandma and Grandpa wanted to come up this summer was to be here for Ruby's baptism! We were so glad they were able to make it up and spend this special day with us. Because of covid, the normal stake baptisms have not been taking place so we were able to do a special baptism, just for Ruby, at Point MacKenzie. Scott baptized Ruby in one of our ward member's lake, and it was perfect. We scheduled it for Tuesday, 7/7, because the weather forecast was the best for that day. It ended up being a gorgeous day, and Ruby said the water wasn't too cold, haha. 

After being baptized in the lake we came back home and Ruby quickly changed, and then she was confirmed by Scott. She was given a beautiful blessing, and we're just so proud of our sweet Ruby. She is the best big sister and helper at home. She's always wanting to do what's right, and in most of her free time she loves to read the Friend magazine. She's such a good example for all of us and we're so happy she's in our family. Congratulations to our precious Ruby! 💗

The first hike we did with my parents after they got here was Scout Ridge Trail. This is one of our favorites, however, this time there were so many mosquitoes! We had bug spray, but all of us still got so many bites. I took hardly any pics just because we were trying to hurry and finish the trail to get out of the bugs, haha. It was still pretty though and so fun to be with Grandma and Grandpa. 😊

Noelle is always on the lookout for flowers