Today mom and I went kayaking on Piledriver Slough with Bonnie (we went geocaching there a couple years ago too)! She and mom and a falling-out for a couple years, but they suddenly seem to be fine with each other again lol. I missed hanging out with her, so that was cool. It takes 2-3 hours if you're just lazily floating along, which is enough for me..it gets uncomfortable sitting for so long! It was nice listening to the Swainson's Thrushes and smelling the spruce forest. <3 We saw a moose too! It was SO HOT though (89)..the breeze felt like it was coming out of an oven! I bet that fire near Murphy Dome has grown a LOT today. Still nice to get out in nature though! It's nice getting better at paddling too :P

Today and yesterday were Customer Appreciation days at work, where most everything in the store was 50% off and there were garage sale type things too..we made over $2000 yesterday!! Awesome. It's fun, but VERY tiring..worth it though!

( a few pics from today! )

Day 179. A song that makes you think of the color red: "Crimson Thunder" by HammerFall

Today was another gorgeous day! Before we left Juneau, we had breakfast with Christine and Jim. It was weird..as we were pulling in, I suddenly remembered that's where dad and I ate when we came on the ferry!! So weird your brain can suddenly remember things like that. We'll definitely have to come back and adventure with her again! I was excited to see which glaciers I could spot, and oh my, it did not disappoint..it was INCREDIBLE. Our B&B told us about Herbert Glacier, which you can walk 9 miles one way to (D:), and I saw it as we flew away from Juneau. Everything was stunningly beautiful. I was wondering what other glaciers we were seeing, when we started flying over one and thought "huh, this one looks familiar." It was when I spotted the cruise ship in front of it that I knew: we were flying by Margerie and Grand Pacific Glaciers in Glacier Bay!!! I might have seen Margerie from the air before, but this was my first time recognizing it! So cool!! Not only that, but I finally saw Hubbard Glacier from the air! I've been dying to see it for years lol. At 76 miles, Hubbard is the longest tidewater glacier in North America..it's 6 miles wide at its terminus, and it's advancing! When I showed mom, she was like "wow, that is a BIG glacier" haha. After that I saw a lot of glaciers I knew: Columbia, Meares, Valdez, Harvard, Yale, Barry, Coxe, Cascade, Knik, etc..it was super awesome!! (Too bad Malaspina was covered by clouds, that glacier is like nothing I've seen before, the glacier that looks like chocolate and ice cream mixed together LOL.) So amazing!

After we landed and got our room at the hotel (which is..ehhh, but I've stayed in worse) and had dinner, we walked over to the museum to see their exhibit about the Franklin Expedition! A guy did a presentation and told us about the different things, and then we walked around and examined the items more closely. Most of the artifacts were from the Erebus, which was found first (2014, and the Terror in 2016..I remember reading it online when they finally found it!)..there was a sextant, plates, cutlery, part of the ship's wheel, etc..but by far the coolest thing was the ACTUAL LETTER written by Crozier and others before they disappeared, found in a cairn by a lieutenant in 1859!! Of course I knew about the letter, but I didn't expect to actually see it!! There aren't many surviving documents from the expedition, so that is super awesome! After that we walked back to the hotel..another successful day :D

Tomorrow is my 30th birthday (omg O_o), and what better way to spend it than taking a boat to Portage Glacier and going to Title Wave Books? You might get sick of glacier pics after this :P

( yet more glaciers under here :P )

Today was a geocaching event called the Park and Grab Expressway, put on by the same couple that hosts the Christmas party and other events here and there. We had to find four puzzle caches, where usually what you do is solve a puzzle to get the right coordinates, but for the event they just gave us the coordinates. Over the summer I heard another cacher (Hal) was really ill with prostate cancer and didn't know if he'd make it, so I was very pleased when I saw him at the event. It was hard for him to walk, but he seemed happy and in good spirits, which was awesome. We got paired with partners for the event, and Hal was my partner. It was really nice just driving the backroads of the hills with him and talking and having fun geocaching..the weather has been absolutely AMAZING this weekend, in the 50s and 60s with blue skies. We had some great views of the Alaska Range, which I hadn't seen in forever since it had been raining for like two months straight..they looked so white and perfect and glorious in the sun. <3 For the caches, you were supposed to notice what was on them or around them, like numbers on the box or smiley faces on the lid and stuff like that. We'd get quizzed at the end about what we'd notice and have to enter a code to open an ammo can and win the elusive ~Golden Nano~ haha. Before we started out the guy said we'd be going to someone's house, which the owner knew about already. So Hal and I pulled into a house's driveway and were like "well this is weird O_o" haha. We were poking around and looking under the stairs and stuff, and Hal was like "are you sure we're at the right house??" so I looked and NO, the correct house was ANOTHER MILE DOWN THE STREET!! AHHH OMG haha! I'm really glad the owners weren't around, that would have been even more embarrassing haha. I hope they don't have cameras. :P At the correct house was a lady dressed up as a man, and we had to solve a riddle to get a clue..ours was something like "if you buy a dozen 3 cent stamps, how many do you have?" Hal was like "..uhhh, 3??" and I thought about it for another second and I was like "12!!" Yay me haha. I grabbed a candy bar from her bag, even though I don't like peanut butter, and stuck it in my pocket. After finding all the caches we met back up at the place where we started. We got quizzed on what we saw in and around the caches (the first people to get back to the building got a prize as well)..a lot of the things we noticed were red herrings lol. There was a tie between a bunch of people (we knew the first three numbers, but had to guess the fourth), so the host (sorry, forgot his name lol) asked if anyone grabbed a certain item out of a cache..one guy did, but his guess was wrong, so the host asked if anyone had taken candy from the riddle cache..lots of people did, but we had to have the wrapper to prove it. I pulled mine out of my pocket, and I was the only one to have it on me! So I got to guess, and when I turned to three the lock popped open!! I guess not liking peanut butter can help after all. :P There were two Golden Nanos, so I gave one to Hal, since he was my partner lol. The event was so fun..I'm pretty sure that's the most fun Hal's had in a long time. He hugged me and his wife said she was glad I was his partner..aww lol. Hopefully he'll be well enough to go to the Christmas party too! Very fun, satisfying day :D

Look how gorgeous it was!

I wish I could have gotten a better pic, but I seriously couldn't see the screen at all haha..the Alaska Range looked grand though <3

On Friday I saw the Northern Lights for the first time this season! Yay, I love watching them dance. :D And amazingly, there is NO RAIN in the forecast for the next week!!! A little is ok, but two months of it is depressing D:

( September 29-30 )

One thing about summer I love: when it's warm and sunny in the morning, the clouds build up and look puffy and awesome, and we get a rainstorm! The one today was AWESOME..there were dark clouds and the wind picked up and then it just started pouring! I heard one clap of thunder, which seems to be normal in an Alaskan storm. It was so fun and exciting to watch!! I'm glad I don't have to worry about tornadoes lol

June 4 - Where do you prefer your donuts from? One of my coworkers brings in donuts every Tuesday, usually from Wal-Mart I think. The Donut Shop has pretty good donuts too, and sometimes ones from gas stations are too

June 5 - What cheesy movies do you enjoy? I love really bad disaster movies, like 2012: Ice Age, Volcano, etc

Today's trivia: The longest interval between the births of twins is 87 days

I never get tired of this view of Mt. Hess, Hayes and Deborah :D

( look at all the new pokemon i've caught lately! )

On Saturday, it rained most of the day..it was alright though, since I wasn't on a glacier cruise. :P Mom and I went into "town" (Gustavus, 9 miles from our hotel) for something to do. We didn't have a lot of time (maybe an hour and a half..the hotels have great van schedules for people to get around). We looked in a couple stores, and then walked to a geocache 1.3 miles away (good thing we found it after all that lol). We had to hurry on the way back so we didn't miss the van..mom called it a "forced march" haha. Mom can walk a lot faster than me so she went ahead to catch the van, so I just started muttering "stick it, you've got it in the neck, stick it" the rest of the way back..not sure how Cherry thought of that, but it works LOL. We just hung out at the hotel the rest of the day..

Yesterday we went whale watching before our flight left (everything's very coordinated with the flights, that's why the glacier tour boat had to come back so early). We went near Point Adolphus (a famous whale watching area, unfortunately not named for Adolphus Greely LOL) and saw lots of whales! All around us were rain showers, but above us was some blue sky and the sun sometimes came out! What!! Mom and I have crazy weather powers, I can't get over it haha. We also saw some sea otters, lots of jumping fish, a sea lion eating a fish and birds practically flying in its mouth to try to steal the fish haha, and a bald eagle. After that it was time to leave. *sniff* Andd the good weather followed us back again..the van drivers said it was the nicest day in they didn't know how long..wow (mom also woke up with a cold this day..I was thinking "I hope I don't ge--NOOOO I DRANK OUT OF MOM'S WATER BOTTLE YESTERDAY [Saturday]." I even said "you don't have germs!" How's that for irony. :P I hope I don't get sick too!!)

We were able to grab the geocache at the airport before we left. I didn't think we were going to stop at Juneau this time since our tickets said Gustavus to Anchorage, but we did..that's the normal thing I think, and the people going to Anchorage just stay on board (if I lived in Juneau, I would go to Glacier Bay at least once a year! It's such an easy and short journey from there). And weirdly enough, it was cloudy in Juneau, but after we landed the sun came out!! I guess if you want sunny weather, travel with me. :P I was on the wrong side for Mendenhall Glacier again, but I did get a pic of it from the runway. The pilot said the Fairweathers were on that side too, which made me briefly disappointed. But THEN..OMG. I saw some glaciers and mountains through the clouds, then all of a sudden I looked down and see the epicness that is Malaspina Glacier!!! It's HUGE, the biggest piedmont glacier in the world. I saw some of it on the ferry a few years ago, and maybe night flights, but I was definitely not prepared for how AWESOME it was! It's one of the most incredible things I've ever seen! Mt. St. Elias and Mt. Logan (the second highest mountain in North America, after Denali) were also out and there were icefields and glaciers everywhere!! OMG I was squeeing so much haha. I was definitely glad my seat was on the right side then! Definitely one of the best flights ever!! I love Alaska so much. <3 I didn't like seeing the citiness of Anchorage after the Perfect Glacier Paradise haha. I didn't see Denali on the flight to Fairbanks, but the sunset was nice. I'll definitely have to go back to Glacier Bay, that place is amazing!!

( more pics! )

Last night I saw the Northern Lights for the first time this season! I got a blanket and laid on the grass and just watched the aurora dancing above me. <3 <3 There were thousands of stars and some random satellites and I even saw a shooting star! The lights just stayed white/light green, but their dancing is always beautiful. It was a great night and I am SO lucky to live here <3

( here's a couple surveys from tina's lj! )

Last night mom and Bonnie and I went to a program called Dark Winter Nights..it's where regular people tell a story of something that happened to them in Alaska (they broadcast it on the radio too). My favorite story was told by a guy who used to drive the buses in Denali. He was having a great time engaging the tourists and getting them to sing and they were seeing cool animals..but there was one person he kept looking at, a 10 year old boy with just a blank stare on his face..this group of people kept trying to engage him and encourage him but nothing happened. When they stopped for a break his mom came up and said his dad shot himself right in front of the kid a year ago and he hadn't said a word since..they were with a prayer group and they thought a trip to the wilderness would help the kid. The tour guide got a drum out and started singing and he was drumming with the kid's hand in his..and then he just started mouthing the words and beating the drum harder and harder till he destroyed the drum and fell to the ground. He said the kid's first words were "I'm thirsty" LOL. After that the kid kept asking questions and him mom was just sobbing. Wow. He said that now the guy is training to be on a talk show radio I think

Another powerful one was this guy who helped build the new Black Rapids Lodge (I think he served us lunch when we stopped there once). He and his friend and dog were caught in an avalanche while backcountry skiing..he was able to dig himself out, but it took two hours and he knew his friend and dog were dead. A couple months later he went back and dug them out..the dog was curled up by his friend and had a paw on his shoulder..OMG. So sad, but the dog provided comfort till the very end. I loved how people kept saying that even though Alaska can be a hard place to live, everyone bands together and helps each other. Alaska is our home, with amazing experiences (like one person said they saw amazing Northern Lights at a hot springs) and nice like-minded people :D

There was also a cute reindeer you could take pictures with!

I pretty much turn into a five year old when I'm around animals LOL ("it's so cuteee!!!")

JUST LOOK AT ITS CUTE FACEEE haha

We also found three geocaches, so it was a successful day :D

( List one thing that you're allergic to )

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Mom and I went geocaching with Bonnie today and along the way we saw three moose! We turned around so we could take pics and then...


...they crossed the road in front of us! I really like this pic..a mom and her calves close together. So cute hehe. I love seeing moose..it's been a long time since I've had a moose sighting that awesome!

( day 12: what If you could travel back in time, where would you go? )

Wow, I need to go flying with them! I've never done a flightseeing tour out of Anchorage before. That panoramic view of Colony Glacier was super pretty and epic. *drools* I would LOVE to do the Prince William Sound Glacier Tour..OMG that sounds SO epic :D


( Favorite Power Ranger the movie scene )

Today's trivia: Emus are picky eaters preferring the parts of plants that have concentrated nutrients such as seeds, fruits, flowers and young shoots. The rich foods they favor become abundant after a rainfall. Once the food in a specific area has been exhausted, emus often travel hundreds of miles following rain patterns across the arid Australian land. These nomadic birds have an uncanny ability to orient their movements toward areas where the rain will fall. They seem to be attuned to subtle weather cues, such as the sight of distant cloud formations and the sound of distant thunder, to lead them toward areas where rainfall will produce the rich foods they seek