DAY 4: Adventures Galore!!
We started off our day (and every day at our base camp at the Sergeant Preston's Lodge in Skagway. It was quite a nice accommodation, especially for the price!
Liz picked us up and made breakfast for us at her house (yum)! Then she took us to her work (Temsco) to catch a helicopter ride up to the Denver Glacier to take a dog sledding tour. We rode on separate helicopters (Joshua and I on one and Brent and Toby on the other) since we were flying up on standby (for FREEEE!...one of the perks of having Jefferies siblings working there for years)
Temsco base in Skagway
a view of the glacier fields from the helicopter
a view of dog camp from the helicopter
just landed on the Denver Glacier at dog camp
family picture at dog camp...
no huskies here. I was surprised to find out that they don't really use huskies to pull dog sleds. They use several breeds mixed together to make a super hybrid sled-pulling doggie! Many of the dogs here at camp have raced in the Iditarod Race...the grand dog sled race from Anchorage to Nome. Denver Glacier is like summer camp for them.
we rode on two sleds attached together...our musher (picture in the bottom right corner) drove the front sled and all of us (except Toby) took turns driving the back sled.
we were delighted to see the dog sled puppies after our ride...so adorable!
taking off and heading back to Skagway
the view of the three bays:
on the far left is Dyea, the middle is Long bay (where we went kayaking later) and the right is Skagway
a closer look at Skagway
It would be no exaggeration to say that Liz kept us really busy...
so next we were off to kayaking in Long Bay
the boys were totally ready to kayak!
(yep...we plugged the boys in the cargo holds)
I'm on the home stretch of this pregnancy, and I'm excited to meet this baby! She is moving ALL over the place...at my last appointment she was full breech, then she was transverse for a few days, and now I think her head is down, but her feet are kicking on the right side one moment and then the left side at the next moment. My friend
Tara (who is 3 weeks behind me in her pregnancy) and I are making a fun game out of trying to figure out our babes' positions, and she told me about
Belly Mapping on the Spinning Babies web site. It is pretty fun to guess which position this baby is in now!
Tomorrow I head off to girls camp for 4 days...and leave my two sweet littles alone for an extended period with Brent for the first time. I am sure it will be some good male bonding time for them before the baby comes along and brings more femininity to the household...but I am going to MISS them (especially Brent)!
When I get back I will finish the blog posts on our Alaska trip and some other miscellaneous events that have occurred since then...and I will get busy getting the baby's room ready and finishing some home and yard projects! I am so excited!
(Sorry Tara...I didn't mean to copy your blog post :-)
DAY 3: White Pass & Yukon Route Railway
Brent's sister Liz had plans lined up for our whole trip! On day three, she got us on the train ride up to the Canadian Border and White pass for FREEEEEE!
Joshua and Toby LOVE trains, so they were very excited!
Toby told us it this train is the 'real polar express'!
This was a beautiful train ride...lots of twists and turns, a large vertical climb, big bridges and two long tunnels.
Joshua enjoying the view
An old bridge that the railway stopped using sometime in the 60's
The train route runs alongside the original "Trail of '98"
That is...the trail that gold mining stampeders hiked to get up into the
Yukon in Canada during the Gold rush of 1898
This is the top of the pass
These are the flags of the railway line:
USA, Alaska, British Colombia, Yukon Territory and Canada
After the train ride...
We walked over to Temsco and saw Liz at her work
We went to the Summer Solstice Party in Skagway...it was a few days early due to the Chilkat/Chilkoot bike race over the weekend
Joshua met some girlfriends at the party
Then we went for a short hike to the city graveyard where we learned the gun slinging story of the town hero Frank Reid and the town villain Soapy Smith
We visited Lower Reid Falls...just up behind the graveyard
Liz took some crazy pictures of our family
Liz took us out to visit the Dyea Flats...it's another location where the Gold Rush of '98 stampeders would come to port. Dyea had a TWO mile long dock, where thousands of prospectors would lug 1 ton of required supplies up to the Chilkoot trail and the famous 'staircase' (pictured on the Alaskan Licence plate)...and into the Yukon Territory in Canada
We saw this black bear wandering around out at Dyea:
He was a lot closer to us, but he got spooked and wandered off while we were fumbling with the camera!
Liz drove us to this overlook of Skagway
I got this GREAT action shot of all these kids playing tag...with Brent about to pounce!
One more video...this is for Grandma Jane from Joshua:
DAY 2: Juneau to Skagway
On day two the first thing we did was make very certain we knew what time the ferry was leaving. We had time in the morning and a rental car, so we drove 20 miles up the coast to the Shrine of St. Therese. This is a beautiful wooded retreat owned and operated by the Catholic Diocese of Juneau, dedicated to their local Saint Therese. There are gardens, cabins and a small chapel on a wooded island connected to the mainland by a causeway.
The garden we enjoyed the very most was the Labyrinth garden:
Joshua is very into mazes right now, so he walked through the entire Labyrinth without cheating. I decided to give it a try and it was very relaxing and meditative. The lesson of the Labyrinth is that we need to walk all the way through our trials. There are no shortcuts. I like that analogy for childbirth too...that the only way to get to the end of labor is to go through it and surrender to it. Someday I want to build a Labyrinth like this in my yard...it is a lot of exercise for such a small space and a place to ponder.
Here are some of the flowers surrounding the Labyrinth garden. The flower on the top is the Forget-me-not, the Alaska state flower...which also happens to be my favorite flower.
Toby love to collect things...including feathers.
We were absolutely amazed by the little chapel on the wooded island. It was magical and peaceful and spiritual and kind of unreal. It felt like a movie or England...
There were 12 stone relief sculptures around the chapel, circling the island that depicted the trial, crucifixion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ
(see the top, right picture with Brent and Toby). It was a spiritual mecca. Each sculpture had a passage explaining the picture. I was very pleased that Joshua took the time to go through each sculpture in order, read and ponder the message. He is a very spiritual boy.
A place for quiet reflection...
Well, that was it with Juneau and we were off to catch our Ferry! The ferry was the Alaska State Ferry. It is quite nice...much nicer than the Washington ferries that we have been on before. You can actually catch this ferry down in Bellingham, Washington and take it all the way north to Alaska
(it takes several days). It's no fancy cruise, but there are nice clean observation decks, a movie theater, private state rooms with beds that you can rent, a cafeteria, and even a open air deck on the very top where you can pitch a tent and camp out! We only took the 5-6 hour ferry ride up to Haines and Skagway.
Toby could not sit still on the whole voyage. He had to explore every nook and cranny of the ferry! Joshua on the other hand, was happy sitting on the observation deck reading books and doing mazes.
We saw WHALES on the ride...lots of them. We saw a mother humpback with her baby breaching for 15 minutes over and over again. We also saw several pods of Orcas. Brent was really pleased that he was able to capture the tail of an Orca with our super slow stone-aged camera, but it is so zoomed out that you can hardly see it...so I will just spare you the strain on your eyes!
Finally, as evening drew nigh...we arrived in Skagway!
Skagway...with its beautiful port of large cruise ships and on the bottom-right picture you can see the Temsco building and helicopters where several of Brent's siblings have worked over the last 14 years! Brent was so excited to finally get to see it all since he never had the chance to work here. And BEST of all...we had our beautiful and lovely sister LIZ waiting for us right off the dock!
We checked into our room at Sergeant Preston's Lodge and begin preparations for several days worth of Skagway adventures!!
OK...we had an amazing time! It was the trip of a lifetime. There are SO many pictures that it will take me forever to get the whole trip blogged, and I've been putting it off until all of the necessary catching up on sleep, unpacking, housework, and church stuff were taken care of.
DAY 1: Portland to Juneau
This is the first airplane ride that the boys can remember, so it was pretty exciting for them as we were shoving out of Portland.
We arrived in Juneau after two pretty quick plane rides and we *thought* that we had 3.5 hours to kill until we were supposed to catch our ferry up to Skagway. Brent's sister (whom we were visiting in Skagway) arranged for us to have a rental car for that time so we could take a self tour of Juneau.
So we drove to downtown Juneau:
Juneau has a very pretty and quaint downtown area. It is very hilly and reminded us of San Fransisco or the Avenues in Salt Lake City. We had awesome bagels with fresh, delicious lox.
We took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up turning around in no other than the Alaska Governor's Mansion driveway. It wasn't until after we were down the street that we realized it was Sarah Pallin's Governor Mansion(!)...so we went back and did it again:
Kind of interesting...
although the locals later told us that she doesn't live in Juneau when the legislative sessions are over...
she stays at her home in Wasilla with her family.
Then we drove up the highway from downtown to the 'must see' sight in Juneau...
The Mendenhall Glacier:
Big, BIG Amazing Glacier!!
It comes from a large (gigantic), continues ice/glacier field that goes for miles and miles (The Juneau ice field, which is connected to some of the glaciers that we visited later on our trip). Because of this ice field, there are no roads in or out of Juneau.
Anyway, the Mendenhall Glacier is (probably?) the only glacier on this ice field that you can drive right up to from town. All the rest are way up high in the mountains. It's just an amazing sight to see this glacier coming out of the mountains and into the valley. The glacier melts into Mendenhall Lake, and there is a visitors center there with hiking trails and cruise ship tourists galore!
...there were so many Asian tourists there that I was feeling "camera technology inferiority"!
So...we wished that we could've stayed longer to play at the Mendenhall Glacier...but we were off to catch a ferry to our final destination: Skagway.
or so we thought...
We arrived at the Ferry terminal 1/2 hour before our ferry was supposed to leave, but alas...there was NO ferry, the building was completely closed
(before the posted business hours on the door). We were dumbfounded...this was when we were introduced to what we call "Alaskan time." Oh yeah... Well, supposedly just because their official website posted the ferry departure time of 4:30 one week ago, they have every right to change that time to 3:00...leaving passengers stranded in Juneau for the night.
Well, we took a chance to look on the bright-side of the situation: we had the rental car for 24 hours and there were plenty of things left to see in Juneau...so we called our accommodation in Skagway and let them know that we wouldn't make it tonight (they were SO nice not to charge us), we called the rental car company and let them know that we were keeping the car and we found a great little Motel 8 with continental breakfast service and a VERY friendly staff! They even LOVED our kids, which unfortunately doesn't happen very often.
We found a really cool park and let the boys run off some steam. The sun came out and made for a very lovely evening. The sun is SO bright in Alaska this time of year. I found it amazing that when it's behind the clouds, it's chilly and you need a jacket. When the sun comes out, the temperature feels like it goes up 20+ degrees and the sun is scorching. And it just does NOT set...7 o'clock, 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock...the sun is still in the same place. We finally left to find some dinner and turn in for bed...even though at 11:00 it was still light outside.
That's all for today folks! I will try to post one day every day or so...the trip will be posted backward...but oh well!
*p.s. I'm not understanding why the font sizes are malfunctioning and I am done wasting time trying to fix it today...I hope you can read this
Our Summer Solstice celebration every year consists of celebrating this guy:
And it is fitting that he came to us on the longest and sunniest day of the year, because he is so full of SUNSHINE! Toby makes us very happy and we're so lucky that we've had him for
4 years!
And we hope for many, many more years with him.
The many moods of TOBIAS CLARK SOLSTICE JEFFERIES:
Mmmm...U pick berries at Albeke Farm.
The Yummiest berries EVER!
making strawberry jam!
This kid here is the BIGGEST strawberry fan in the house! He was by my side every moment...taking lots of samples.
Temsco base in Skagway
a view of the glacier fields from the helicopter
a view of dog camp from the helicopter
just landed on the Denver Glacier at dog camp
family picture at dog camp...
we rode on two sleds attached together...our musher (picture in the bottom right corner) drove the front sled and all of us (except Toby) took turns driving the back sled.
we were delighted to see the dog sled puppies after our ride...so adorable!
taking off and heading back to Skagway
the view of the three bays:
a closer look at Skagway
the boys were totally ready to kayak!
our lovely and VERY gracious hostess Elizabeth
