See how my garden grows…

Memorial Day weekend I planted my seeds and starter plants.  I decided to do zucchini, pumpkin, corn, peas, tomatoes, and strawberries. Here is my garden on June 8th.  The front left is the tomato plant, front right is the strawberry, back right is the pumpkin, back left is zucchini, and corn and peas are in the middle.  The pumpkin, tomato and strawberry were started before planting – the others are just starting to poke up two weeks after planting.

And a week later on June 15th this is what I had! You can see the three corn rows I planted and the peas must have moved while watering – the zucchini plants are coming up too!

June 22nd:

And today!

Woohoo! I’m gonna have lots of veggies!  Gotta love the Alaskan Midnight sun! 20+ hours of daylight makes my garden grow!

We’re BACK!

Monday we left to go camping in Denali National Park.  It was cold and rainy – of course. And the tent leaked, so the last night we ended up putting Ruby and Sierra in the camper with Grandma and Papa, and Dustin slept in the front seat of the car while Karis, Maddie, and I slept in the back of the car. Dustin turned on the heat occasionally and our car read 38 degrees!  We saw a bull moose driving into the park (and I didn’t get a picture) but we didn’t see any more animals, besides birds and rabbits, while we were camping.  However, when we were setting up camp the Ranger came by to let us know that about an hour before we got there a Grizzly Bear had walked right through the camp site!

   

Don’t worry, that bear picture was taken at the Zoo in Anchorage! LOL!

After we camped for two nights we headed to Anchorage to check out the ‘big city’.  Um, its too big for me! I like Fairbanks, thank you!  Our first stop was the Zoo, of course! Here, Dustin got to see his Grizzly, black bears, and even some sheep and tigers and yaks, etc.

 

Dustin really wanted to see a Grizzly in the wild, oh well, he’ll have to settle for the zoo! Here are our Moose Children:

 

After the zoo we headed to the Wildberry Park – saw some reindeer, and bought some jam (we had to go back the next day and get two more jars of their Wild Blueberry Jam – YUM!!!) Then we headed to the Portage Glacier – here are some pictures of the mountains outside of Anchorage

And then we parked when we got there to walk closer.  There was a Black Bear alert sign stating that some bears had gotten used to human food, so be careful. We teased the girls, does that mean they like our food, or they like HUMANS FOR FOOD!!!  And we were calling them bear bait!

Here are the pictures of the Glacier:

I always thought that glaciers were in the ocean, but apparently they are just large blocks of ice between mountains and sometimes in the ocean and they melt.  So this one used to be in the water, but it has melted up into the mountain.

And we headed up the hill back to the car – but wait!!! What’s that?

Hmm… that would be the black bears that are used to humans! There was a momma (already crossed into the bushes) and this is the baby! They were about 50 yards from us!!!!!!!

And off he went after his momma!!!  Um, yeah, kinda scary when the bears are between you and your car!

So we headed back to our car, quickly!! And on the lookout for more bears!

Our Weekend

Saturday we headed out to the Knotty Shop. Lots of cool pelts, souvenir-type gifts, and wood carvings… we want to get a wood carved ‘Welcome Moose’ before we leave.  While we were there, they had these large wooden bugs… of course we had to get a picture by the Alaskan State Bird – the MOSQUITO!!!

Here are some more bugs/animals

 

Then we headed out the Chena Hot Springs.  We didn’t get to go in the actual hot springs, they only allow 18+ and we didn’t bring our swimsuits anyway. But here are some ducks and ducklings enjoying the warm water!

 

And the girls feeding the resident goats, Bert and Ernie

 

And inside the world’s largest year-round ice museum. They have 4 bedrooms where you can pay $575 a night to spend the night in the 20 degree hotel ice room!

Here is the workshop where the husband and wife team carve everything for the ice museum.

 

The ice bar where you can have an Apple Martini in a carved ice glass!

 

Here are some of the beds and ‘amenities’ in the ice rooms. The beds were covered in caribou hide.

 

The igloo with a Coke-a-Cola Polar Bear

And thankfully they provide the parkas! Maddie is snuggled in the sling underneath my parka! Karis kept saying she was cold and wanted Daddy to hold her. Puh-lease, it was warm – only POSITIVE 20 degrees – phssh! We can do that no problem!

 

Then on Sunday, after church we headed out to the Chena Riverboat Discovery in Fairbanks. We got to ride a Steamboat down the river, see a float plane take off and land, see Susan Buchers’ Iditarod dogs and kennel, and then there was an hour stop in a faux Chena Indian village where we learned about the Athabascan Indian traditions. It was so cool! The guides were young (18-25) but they were taught the native traditions growing up and plan on teaching their children.

Pictures of the boat

 

Traditional Chena Indian Parka

Some Reindeer

 

The girls by a large stuffed moose!

The float plane we saw take off

 

The dogs and the kennel. We even got a signed copy of the book Granite – who was the lead dog on Susan Bucher’s team for the four years they won the Iditarod

Here they are getting ready to pull this ATV around the track

 

So we had a jammed packed weekend – and Karis was a MONSTER on Sunday. We let her sleep in today and the little bum didn’t get up until 11am!!!

I’ll have more pics of the girls later – this post is already long. But Maddie had a well baby and Sierra has Cheer camp this week, so look later this week for an update.