Friday, June 10, 2011

Part 2

Beautiful, right?

This was our view from the room where we slept. Now imagine this wrapping all the way around, so close I felt like I could walk to the bottom of those snow capped mountains. The air was fresh and clear. The days were endless with one blurring into another without the help of night to distinguish one from another. I felt it a crime to go to sleep at 10 pm when it still looked like midday. This meant that most nights I didn't fall asleep until after one or two in the morning when there was finally a dusk covering the valley where our friends lived.

In the two weeks of our vacation there will be two moments that will really define Alaska for me. The first was my ATV trek through the wilderness. When the husbands decided to take a drive through the forest I was going to go shotgun with Josh until I was convinced I needed to go big and drive of my own four wheeler. I've never been on one before and was very nervous, but I took my time and had control of it pretty fast. So off we went through the woods and on keeping to a dirt path that went up and over hills. Going down some steep ones really made my heart jump into my throat a few times. Once we came to an open marsh I finally took the time to look around. I could see the sun shinning on the water in the distance and there wasn't another living soul around except for the four of us and the two children. When we came to a beach we stopped for a moment and the view took my breath away. The mountains made and arc around us and then where they didn't touch land they looked to be floating on the water in the distance. I could really see how life was like before people settled on this last frontier. There was nothing around to mar the beauty of the rolling mountains and quite waters except for a lone train that I  imagined was the first explore this new land.

My second favorite moment of our vacation was on one of our last nights there. There was a get together to celebrate a some one's promotion. Late that night after everyone had left my husband and I sat around a fire with our closest friends. The fire was hot, the mosquitoes were biting, and the day was ending, but we just sat and talked. Talked about our past when we first met and what we hoped for our futures. We talked past the sunset and into the sunrise finally deciding to call it quites when we figured our children would be up in just a few short hours.

I really enjoyed our time in Alaska. So just a few pictures to end with.
Anchorage




Balto


2 comments: