Alaska

As promised, we got cold weather. But the warmth of relationships and love from family more than made up for that! What an absolute joy to see Duane, Lisa and Owen again, and to meet Hudson for the first time. Both kids greeted us at the airport as if they had known us all their lives, and remembered us from last week. It was awesome. And we got right into being poppa and granma! Last time we were here Owen was 6 weeks old and we saw his first smile. Now he is five and we saw him ride his bike without trainers for the first time, and saw his first encounter with the tooth fairy! With Hudson, everything was first for us, and what a joy it was to love on this little man and be loved in return. He is such a cutie and a real sharp cookie. He has a real sense of humour and is such good mates with his big brother. They are both so grateful and so polite. "Thank you!"s, "You're welcome!"s and "Excuse you!"s roll off their tongues so naturally. It was so fun to be able to spend such a good amount of time with them.

A couple of days after we arrived it snowed. Up to 20inches in parts of Anchorage. For us it was gorgeous of course, to everyone else a pain. It was so pretty, but it didn’t stay long on the ground with the next morning breaking with clear blue skies. Duane and Lisa put their house on the market a week after we got there, so the first week was spent painting and fixing things and getting it spotless for the market. It worked! They sold it to the first people that came through.

After all this hard work we took a vacation in an RV (motor home) for three days. That was crazy! We left in the middle of another snowfall! Not supposed to be much but enough to make the neighbours think we were nuts! Camping in this weather?! It snowed for about two thirds of the journey, then it began to look a bit brighter. By the time we found a place to park for the night (Portage – the lake we sailed on 6 yrs ago totally iced over), the clouds were breaking and the sun began to shine. We pulled the deck chairs out and sat wallowing in the surrounding beauty! Amazing. Then we heard it. About every 10 minutes or so a cracking, roaring sound, almost like thunder. We soon realized the sound was avalanches crashing down the mountain behind us. We watched, and in the next hour or two we saw 4 or 5 of them. Wow! God made our day!! We roasted marshmallows around a campfire, ate them with chocolate between crackers (s’mores!), and stayed the night in the centrally heated RV, and the next day was brilliant clear skies. Mountains covered with “icing” all round!

It was hard to get our heads around 15 hours of sunshine, but colder than our midwinter! But it meant for long days to enjoy the beauty. We traveled on to Seward which reminded us of Queenstown, actually an inlet surrounded by snow covered mountains. Breathtaking beauty again. The Sea Life Centre we visited was stunning with fish and other creatures we never see in NZ of course. A most restful and enjoyable time all round, in one of the most magnificent parts of the world.

Later in our stay we took a drive north to Hatchers pass. We passed signs warning us of moose, but that was as close as we got to them. The bush in Alaska does not get a lot of opportunity to grow! It is too cold, and then the weight of snow keeps the branches stunted when they do grow. We walked up a snow bound road to get close to an old disused Gold mining plant (Independence Mine). The peace and tranquility of the mountains was wonderfully refreshing. Frozen rivers with patches that had thawed. So picturesque. Squirrels, snow birds, gofers, beavers, busy doing their thing. The family pet dog was very interested in this activity! Foxes here turn white in the winter and brown during summer. Amazing God! Thankfully, we didn’t see any of them until we went to the zoo the next day where the kids were involved in an annual fun run. The beast that really got our attention was the polar bear swimming in his pond. We could look through the glass side of the pool. What a massive creature, but looked weightless and so graceful and cuddly as he played with a large piece of pipe and some other “toys” they had given him. But I was glad for the glass between us!

We completed our stay with an early celebration of mother’s day. We went to the “Moose’s Tooth” restaurant for pizza extraordinaire! It is so popular you can’t book, and have to wait for up to two hours depending on the size of your group before you can be seated. Great atmosphere, great food, but best of all, the company! We were sad to say our goodbyes, and promised ourselves never to leave it so long before visiting again. We were also sad to have missed a family gathering to farewell Chris’s mum. We did say our goodbyes before we left, knowing they could well be our last. She is now in a far better place.

We have arrived in Seattle and after a few days we will be traveling to Eugene Oregon to catch up with the Scroggin family. Then back to Seattle for a few more days before heading out to London where we meet up with Dee and Hye Young who used to work with us in KKNZ. Then off to Norway for a few days, then back to London to catch our flight to Zambia to meet up with Rebecca.