Family Visit!

My blog has been a little lonely on account of my family visiting from Texas!  I have been a little distracted and by the end of the night I am exhausted from running around with the family.  My two brothers, mother, and grandfather are visiting.  They arrived on the 26th and are leaving tomorrow already!  So lets begin with the 26th so that I can catch you up on the past four days.

After a day of work I headed into town to meet my family.  It was a simple night of grocery shopping, dinner at mcdonalds, and then headed home to crash for the night.  The airplane ride wore everyone out. 

On the 27th we went to Jack Sprat; one of my favorite restaurants in Girdwood.

For dessert we ordered apple bread pudding and raw apple pie.  My mom wants to go back for more apple bread pudding.
 This is the bread pudding....

The raw apple pie....

We headed over to the center so that I could show my family around.  I also wanted to let them give the moose calves their bottles. 

The family was introduced to Snickers.

The Wood Bison were moved into a new enclosure so that they could graze down the grass. 

This wood bison had an itch.

After touring the center we headed back to the condo and my grandfather prepared some delicious gumbo!  We popped in a movie and were out for the night.








On tuesday I had to work.  We had a porcupine presentation at the resort in Girdwood.  My family watched the presentation on such a beautiful day.  After the presentation they took the tram up to the top of Alyeska.  The pictures they got were amazing.

 I am so happy that the weather has been so nice so far.  Later, they went back to the center and fed the moose calves again.  They also walked around a bit more. 

That night my grandfather made spaghetti for everyone.  We also invited the other interns as well.  We had dinner and then played a game of quelf.  If you have never played this game it is hilarious.  There are always crazy rules and you have to remember them the whole game.  I highly recommend this game for any ages. 

On the 29th we went to Portage for the glacier cruise.  It is a really nice and short cruise.  It is only an hour, but it gets straight to the point and is never boring.  I actually really enjoy going on the cruise.  I always learn a few facts each time I go.  The view is always outstanding. 

We went to the Lodge after the glacier cruise.  The lodge is the ONLY place to eat in Portage.  It sure is yummy though.  I always get a grilled cheese, with cheddar, on sourdough.  I also get a side of sweet potato fries......I am hungry just thinking about it. 




We went back to the condo and we all took a little cat nap.  I had another porcupine presentation in Cooper Landing.  I wanted my family to come along so that we could go to the Russian River afterwards since last week I saw the four black bears.  I was not giving my hopes up that we would see one.  Well we didn't see any black bears......
we saw 6 Brown bears!!!!!!

  We were walking along the trail and some fishers in the river warned us to stop moving forward because there was a mother brown bear and her 2 cubs.  Another fisher that was in front of us kept on walking and tried to scare her away.  The mother growled at him and bluff charged him about 10 feet!  It was really scary!  So the bears eventually crossed the river.

 We eventually walked on and 20 yards later we came across another set of brown bears.  Another mother and 2 cubs were also fishing on the other side of the river. 

We know it was 2 different sets of bears because we saw both sets at the same time! 

We headed home and it was a late night for us.  We got back to the condo around 12:30 and finally got to bed.  We went to bed asap since it was going to be early rising for us the next morning.






We woke up around 6:30 (I didn't get out of bed till 7).  Parker, Corey, and I were going sea Kayaking!  I have never been kayaking before.  We were really excited.  It was in Whittier.  So we left around 7:30 so that we could feed the moose calves again at 8am.  Then we headed to go Kayaking!  The whittier tunnel is the longest tunnel in North America.  It is 2.5 miles long.  It is also a one way tunnel so we have to make sure that we time it right unless we want to wait half an hour to go in.

The town of Whittier is one of the weirdest towns in Alaska.  The town was used a lot in World War 2 to store supplies and equipment.  Since it is always covered by fog planes could not see the town from the sky.  Today we learned why no one knew the town was there......

The mountain was barely visible from the fog.

We suited up and went kayaking.

After kayaking my mom and grandfather picked us up and we had a yummy lunch at swiftwater cafe.  We were really exhausted from the weather and kayaking.  We headed back and lounged around the condo.  Later, my mom just couldn't resist having her bread pudding one more time.  Afterwards, we went to visit virgin Creek before calling it a night.  We also played a game of Phase 10 with the family and a couple of workers from AWCC.

http://youtu.be/Vj69FLnc72c  This is snickers doing his dancing....
Goodnight Lower 48,
Erin