Alaska Day 4 and 5

Today we woke up and went on a hike behind the tram and sallie and james slept in. Mom, Dad and I went on the “Winner Creek” trail, and it was really nice and we had a good hike for about 45 minutes. Then we got in the car and drove down to the kenai river from Girdwood/Alyeska, and we went to the sunrise café. It was a nice place and I had a buffalo burger. On our drive down I watched the matador and my head kind of hurt from watching it in the car. Then we went rafting with our raft guide brent. He said to not fall in, and he had a perfect record, he told us many great stories. In one story, he was training the other guides and they always have someone fall in the river when it is 40 degrees outside and the water is a balmy 37 degrees F. The new guides could tell who it would be because they had a big drysuit on, but Brent decided to switch it up, and one time he wanted to feel what it was like to fall in, so as they went over the mild class II rapids, he winked at his friend and went overboard! He then told us he was in the water for no more than 30 seconds then they pulled him out and he lay in the bottom of the raft and thought he should pretend to be shivering, then he actually was shivering and he couldn’t move. They took him to the side of the river changed his clothes, made a fire and he said he had to go sleep after that his body was too exhausted from trying to warm itself up, it burned everything he had! Then as we were going down the river we saw many salmon jumping and we learned all about the different kinds of salmon: chum, sockeye, king, silver and pink. We saw two or three bald eagles then we came to where the Russian river and the Kenai river meet. There were many fishermen hooking salmon, they actually place the hook where they think the fish will be and if it happens to go in their mouth, they catch it! They don’t use any bait because the salmon don’t eat at that point in their life. Then we saw two brown bears fishing right next to the fishermen! It was pretty crazy, then we went further and saw two bear cubs playing in the river, so we got to see 4 bears, and the weather was really nice, we got super lucky. We finished the rafting trip without falling in, it was more of a float trip actually, and then we left and drove back to Anchorage, I watched a Spanish movie “la mujer de mi hermano” and brushed up on my Spanish skills. We got to anchorage and felt like we had been traveling all day, because we were moving for most of the day. We walked around downtown, went to the bar/grill called rumrunners and played the electronic bar game. We won a round of trivia and I had a chicken panini. Then we walked back to our hotel since we took our car back already and then went to sleep. I had a hard time falling asleep because it is still light out at 10:45 and the room was pretty hot.



Train day

We woke up early again, (what a surprise) and we got on the train, in first class or “goldstar service” and it was a great trip. We had good seats and I liked the train a lot because unlike an airplane you can walk around, go to the patio area, talk to the bartender or tour guide, have breakfast and lunch downstairs in the dining car, etc. It was cool. Then we heard the bad news. The conductor came up and told us a semi had taken out the track in front of us and we had to deboard at Taneka (sp?) and get on busses to go the rest of the way to Denali. We were on the train another 45 minutes and the scenery was great. We didn’t see any wildlife but it was a good experience anyway. We got to the switching place and it took another 2 hours to get busses there because it was halfway between anchorage and Denali and they didn’t plan on having the track broken! The conductor has been with the train 32 years, and its happened 9 times, once every 3 years this happens! We were lucky I guess. So we get on the bus finally and I sit next to a random guy, Richard, and he has a mac so I show him some tricks on it and help him with iPhoto. Our driver was pretty crazy and he told some funny stories as well. We sat in the front of the bus and talked to him the whole time. We got here 2 hours later than expected, and we ate dinner at the restaurant in the hotel. Wow, I’ve been spelling restaurant wrong this whole time, sorry. Anyway, we had dinner here and the chef walked by as my mom was asking what was in the vegetarian salad, he told her and she wanted protein, so he got excited and said he would make a special one with tofu, and he came out several times to check on us and it was really neat. Then we went to the husky homestead where they train dogs and raise them to run the Iditarod 1100 mile race from anchorage to nome Alaska, and he was really cool. The guy, Jeff King has won the race 4 times and he just won this year in march he told us all about how they train the dogs and how he doesn’t do the work, its really the dogs, and they deserve a lot of the credit. He has to care for them while they’re on the race, and he can only have 16 dogs but the best number is 9 or 10, so at the end of the race he has that many. He said he can predict which ones he will use and which ones he will send home and which checkpoints he will send them home at, before he even leaves for anchorage! There were puppies for us to hold so we “helped train Jeff King’s sled dogs” because we helped to socialize them. He told lots of jokes and told us about Alaskan life, he’s really interesting and has many cool stories and ideas. I came back and downloaded 4 cards worth of pictures and now I will edit them and then go to sleep. We wake up at 5:30 to go to the park for our 8 hour bus nature drive through Denali tomorrow. I’m really tired but it’s hard to sleep with the sun still up! Good night Tara!