Cross Country – take 2

It’s hard to believe it’s been three years since we first started this blog as a way to keep everyone up to date on our cross-country trip and our time living in Kodiak.

That time in Kodiak is up, and we’ve officially begun our trip back to the east and south. I need to back track, probably, and talk about our last week in Kodiak, but that’s going to have to wait.

For today (I’m actually drafting this the night before I plan to post it, so I apologize if any of my references to time sound weird. The hotel only has wi-fi in the common areas, so I have to work around that), I’ll stick with the first two days of our trip.

Day 1 was the ferry, and it either started REALLY late, or REALLY early, depending on how you want to look at it. Our 11:30pm ferry departure was delayed due to the weather the day before, so we didn’t actually leave Kodiak until about 2am on the 11^th instead of the night of the 10^th. Thankfully, the weather had rolled completely through, and we had a super calm – and fast – crossing over to Homer. Michaela even slept in a bit (after being up until around 11 the night before) the next morning, and then we took some time to grab breakfast, wander around a bit, and then get packed up and ready to head back to the truck. Fred seemed a lot less flipped out about his time on the ferry this time around. He HATED it three years ago, but I guess the years have mellowed him a bit!

Michaela enjoyed playing with a coffee straw and hanging out on the bottom bunk while I got things packed up before we disembarked. Yes, she tried to climb off the bed. Of course.

Keeping up the trend of pictures of me and Michaela together, this was during our walk around the ferry. I don’t know if she was quite sure what to think of the whole thing.

Did I mention our crossing was pretty fast? They were trying to make up some time (which they did), which meant it was a smidge windy out on deck. And, no, my daughter is not wearing a coat. And, yes, it was chilly. We didn’t stay out there long!

After a quick stop just outside the ferry terminal to let Fred out and get him some breakfast, we hopped back in the truck and headed to Seward. Our friends Brad and Christina moved to Seward earlier this summer when Brad took command of his own cutter over there. So we took advantage of the road-trip situation to get in one last visit. Unfortunately, Brad is in CT for some training, so we didn’t get to see him, but we thoroughly enjoyed some time with Christina. We did a whirlwind tour of the SeaLife Center, getting there just an hour before they closed, and then she gave us a quick driving tour of Seward – quick being the operative word. I didn’t realize how tiny it is!! From there, it was back to the house for some real food (instead of all the restaurant food we’d been eating!), and then chaos that is the Dorval family on the road! She might not ever invite us all back again!!

Michaela had no problem reaching into the cold waters of the touch tank at the SeaLife Center and touching a sea star! That’s my girl!!

Who can resist a puffin!?

And here we are with Resurrection Bay in the background. There was no getting the baby to cooperate.

After a late night chatting with Christina, it was a little tough to get going in the morning, but we finally made it out of her house only an hour late. After a couple stops in Anchorage (Red Robin for lunch!!!!!), a lost Bear (Michaela’s lovey… thank goodness for spares), and a LONG time in the truck, we finally made it into Denali State Park and were SUPER excited to get a view of Denali herself. Apparently, the mountain is only visible about 20% of the time thanks to the cloud cover that usually swirls around her, so we are counting ourselves EXTREMELY lucky to have caught glimpses of her for miles as we drove north along the Parks Highway.

Denali isn’t the only draw along the Parks Highway, though. The whole Alaska Range is just incredible and we were in awe of the scenery along the way. Here are just a couple examples of how incredible… and these were just pictures I snapped while we were driving!

So now we’re in the first hotel of the trip, the Denali Princess Lodge (a compound, really, not a hotel), and we’ll get up and get out of here at a decent time tomorrow (theoretically) so we can head into Denali National Park for a bit, and then head toward Tok by way of Fairbanks and North Pole. I don’t want to give too much away, but there very well could be Santa pictures – from the North Pole!

Stay tuned!!

(Note: We're going to be a day behind. There was no way I was getting this updated tonight after the day we had today. I'm just finally posting this stuff about Days 1 and 2 at 11:30pm on Day 3. I'll try to catch up when I can!)