ALASKA!

Annalee turned 7 the day we left!

One of our first stops was at Alyeska, a ski resort on the road between Anchorage and Kenai.

 

We got to see lots of native animals at a Wildlife Refuge Center...here's Addie next to a moose.

grizzly!!

pretty thankful for that fence.

Dawson REALLY wanted to touch the bison.  Lee had to hold him back.

our minivan brigade

We toured a fish cannery where they process and sell fish...of course we bought some!  All the kids thought the hair nets were hilarious.

 Well, almost all of them.

We had a little b-day celebration for Annalee and Keith. Terri's face is a reaction to part of Annalee's hair catching on fire seconds before this picture was taken.

first big adventure: sea kayaking in the freezing rain!  Addie loved eating the bull-whip kelp right out of the sea.

Dawson fell asleep...don't ask me how!!  Elephant Rock is in the background.

Grumps helping Dawson with his ping pong skills

lots of hanging contests (yes those are monkey bars at the cabin where we stayed)...Addie beat Uncle Dave and everyone else she challenged.  

at the beach where Lindsy grew up

This picture at Lindsy's beach was taken around 10 pm.  The whole 13 days we were there, I never saw the sky get dark.

Seward Sea Life Center...touching starfish

Dawson made friends with this baby seal...if you held the ball up to the window and waved it around, she'd chase it.

1-ton sea lion...no big deal.

Kenai Fjords Tour...glaciers!

Stopped at Fox Island so Lindsy could show us her awesome rock-skipping form...I mean to eat lunch.

orcas!

bald eagle...saw lots of these

sea lions

The following  pictures capture the coolest thing I've ever done...we took a flightseeing tour to view Mt. McKinley and land on a glacier!

Our plane cast a shadow on the clouds and had a perfect rainbow around it.

first view

WOW.

Words and pictures just cannot do it justice.

One of my favorite things we saw were glacier pools.  I've never seen this color of blue anywhere else.

on the glacier!

Dawson ate snow the entire time.

The summit peeked out from behind the clouds...look at the white peak at the top on the left.  It's 13 miles away.

Our brains couldn't process the sheer magnitude of where we were...this rock wall, which appeared to be no more than a mile away, was actually 5 miles away!

Annalee got to be the co-pilot on the flight back.

After the flightseeing, we drove up to Denali Nat'l Park, and got another view of the mountain...our last, since it was too cloudy the rest of our trip to see it.

ATVs!

dinner theater show

 Sled dog tour...the kids loved this!

What it's like to be behind a team of sled dogs:

9-day-old puppies...the girls wanted to take one home!

Our tour guide had done the Iditerod 20-something times!

exploring nature at Denali

Annalee turned down numerous offers from relatives to pull her (very) loose tooth while on the trip.  The morning after we got home, she jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom.  She came back a minute later proudly holding her first lost tooth!