June 30, 2008

This morning our tour bus for the Denali National Park arrived before 8 AM, and Papa and I had to drag Gigi out of bed, still in her pajamas to load her on the bus!

She would have stayed asleep, but we had to put her into her travel car seat...driver's rules.

We stopped at another hotel to pick up passengers from the Holland America cruise line.  They all wore name tags.  It was pretty funny.  There was a two year old toddler with that group.

Soon after we entered into the actual park, we spotted a bear on the road.  Since Gigi was strapped into her car seat, she couldn't really see the bear.  Fortunately, the bus was equipped with screens that showed the video that the driver took with her camera.  We had a screen right above our seat, so she could see the wildlife.

In the center of this picture is Denali (Mt. McKinley).  It's white.  You can see the peaks above the clouds.

Here are a couple of snow hares on the side of the road.  

I'm not sure what this raven is eating.  

Here is a caribou.  We actually saw quite a lot of them.

Here we are at one of the rest stops.  At each stop, Papa and I took Gigi for a quick walk around the grounds to stretch her legs.  This tour was supposed to last 7 to 9 hours!  We are actually in an alpine region right now.

One of our bus mates took this picture for us.  The weather was beautiful!

Here's another bear we saw.  I think we saw about five or six bears.  This one is a brown bear (grizzly), although it is blond-colored.  Brown bears have a bump between their shoulders that black bears do not have.

During our nine hour trip (yes, it lasted that long), Gigi and I took a nap.  Papa thinks it's funny that we usually end up sleeping in the same position.

There is only one road into the park, so you need to follow it back to get out of the park.  On our way in we passed this fox den on this hill.  We did see an adult fox, but on our way back the pups were out.

There are three red fox pups in this picture.  It was great to get a chance to see them.

The last animal on our last to spot was a moose, and low and behold, we saw a moose!  We actually saw two of them.  Here is one of them.

Papa took this picture of Gigi watching her DVD rather than looking at the moose outside.  I said that she cannot really see out of the window to the ground when she's strapped up in her car seat.  Gigi was an INCREDIBLY good girl on the entire nine hour trip.  She didn't cry or fuss at all.  This trip was pretty boring for her, especially since she had to stay in her car seat, but it was great for the rest of us to see all of the wildlife.

June 29, 2008

Today we were off on bus, then a train to Denali.

Gigi slept as soon as she got on the bus, and she woke up during our first rest stop.

Here she is with Grandma.  She's still a little sleepy.

We made it to the train depot, where we will ride for about 4 hours to Denali.  Here's Grandma and Grandpa with our tour guide, Jesse.

The train car was very luxurious!  We were on the second floor of the train car, and the roof was made of Plexiglas.  We also had our own bartender.  :)  Although, Gigi was content with her organic juice boxes that we had picked up in Anchorage.

Here's Gigi on the train car's "patio".  It was quite cold, but the fresh air felt good.

Here we are having fun on the train.  For some reason, there was an unfortunate mix-up with the dining arrangements.  The train car behind us had it's dining car closed, so those people ate in our dining car and bumped us.  It was TERRIBLE!  

Luckily, Gigi was fed, but our car mates and ourselves, did not.  To keep ourselves busy, a couple of our car mates  played "bartender" and served drinks to everyone to the dismay of the crew...but they were not present.  They were trying to sort out the dining snafu!

Although I didn't take a picture of the BEAUTIFUL view from our hotel, we are actually out on the patio having a cocktails and listening to a lecture by a man who build his own log cabin from scratch!  He also climbed to the top of Denali...the hard way, from his log cabin!  As you can see, the weather was great!  The sun was shining and the sky was clear.  It was just a bit breezy and nippy.

Gigi and Grandma are in the main lobby, where Gigi is showing Grandma her "bear" impression.  :)

Here's my two favorite bears, Papa Bear and Baby Bear.

The restaurant in the hotel was great!  The food was delicious, and the service was great!  Gigi's eating fruit and cheese from the cocktail reception, and she's joined by 'black bear', a gift from our tour guide, Jesse.

While we enjoyed a leisurely meal, Gigi watched her Little Einsteins DVD.

Papa opened up a bottle of Krug Rose to celebrate our 16th anniversary.  Notice Gigi's milk on ice with the champagne.  :)

June 28, 2008

It's the morning of June 28th, our 16th wedding anniversary!  Gigi has been a really good girl on the plane.  She slept a bit.  When she woke up, she quietly sat and watched her videos on my iPhone.

When we got to our hotel at 6 AM in the morning, the rooms weren't ready.  Papa had picked up a car for us, while the rest of us took the prearranged hotel shuttle.  We were staying at a Hilton, and Papa hooked us up!  As soon as he got to the hotel, he got us our room!  He's wonderful!  We slept for a bit and then headed out.

Alaska was celebrating their statehood day, so there were a lot of festivities going on.  Across from our hotel there was a fair.  Here's Gigi with Grandma and Grandpa.  They were watching some belly dancers dance.

Papa drove us to the Anchorage Zoo.  I thought Gigi would enjoy that the most, so we went to see the local animals.

Here's Gigi walking around the zoo.  The coat she's wearing is a gift from Auntie Suzanne, Griffin's mom.  It fit her perfectly!  Everyone commented on how cute it was.  :)  Thank you, Suzanne!

Check out the polar bears!  They were up and about!  

Here's Gigi and Papa checking them out.

The next stop...seals.  One came over to give Gigi some love.  He actually kissed the glass!

Here's Papa and Gigi looking for moose from an observation platform.  Gigi loved just going up and down the stairs.  Silly, girl.

We got to see a baby musk ox and its mama.  Gigi didn't seem to want to get to close to them.

But here she is trying to get a closer look at the ravens.  Gigi really likes birds.

After the zoo, Papa took us to see the largest float plane airport...a big lake.  We saw several planes land and take off!

June 27, 2008

We are on our way!  We met Grandma and Grandpa at the airport, as we as Uncle John.  John met us at the airport to drive our car back home.  We checked in, then had dinner at a pretty nice airport restaurant.  We flew to Anchorage on Alaska Airlines.  

Here's Papa and Gigi in their seats.  The three of us had our seats in the very LAST row of the plane!

Gigi didn't mind that our seats didn't recline, but Papa and I did.  :(

Whoops!  Maybe Gigi did mind.  I was just thankful that Gigi had her own seat!  :)

June 23, 2008

Today's field trip was a ride on the sugar train!  It was a fun ride on the train.  The kids liked the idea of going on a train, but once they were on it, they didn't seem too thrilled.  

Here's Gigi and Troy sitting next to each other.

The two of them seemed pretty comfortable on the moving train.  I think they were too short to really notice the scenery passing them by.

The highlight of their trip of eating...as usual.  Here's Gigi and Troy grubbing on strawberries, peaches, and oranges.  Troy LOVED the oranges!

After the train ride, we all kind of stuck around and had a little picnic.  The kids ate again!  I had to go to my car to get Gigi's other food from the cooler.  Here she is playing with Adam.

Emi and Troy were playing hide-and-seek, so Gigi grabbed Emi's mom, Tara, and Troy's mom, Jen, and invited them to play, too.  :)

June 19, 2008

YIKES!  Look what Gigi did to her face with Grandpa's pen!

Usually she just sits at her "desk" and draws on paper, but for some reason, she decided to experiment on her face.

I'm not quite sure what Gigi was thinking?  Luckily, the pen marks came off with a bit of facial lotion.

June 16, 2008

Today our field trip took us to an organic farm that specialized in earthworms.

Here's Gigi contemplating the adventure ahead of her.

That's Emi on the cart.  Gigi was curious as to what Emi was up to.  I think Gigi wanted a ride.  :

My little explorer is going off on her own.  She crossed the pond where these huge frogs are raised for their frog legs.  :0

Luckily, she stopped in her tracks when I called out for her to "STOP!".  She's a sweetie.  

We visited the chickens, ducks, turkeys, etc.  Gigi got to feed them.  Unfortunately, there was an over zealous chicken that attacked her for the food.  She was a bit traumatized by the attack, and I had to carry her for the rest of the visit.   :(

Under the chicken coops are the earthworms.  This whole place does not smell at all!  Unbelievable, huh?  It was really quite clean for a farm.

There weren't any earthworms under the goats, so they did smell a bit.

Emi and Gigi are looking at the horses in the stable.  I think they wanted to go for a ride, now that they are experienced pony riders.