An Alaskan Thanksgiving Weekend

I was going to say that I would start with the best part, but it's hard to decide what the best part was!  The "finally" snow that came down on Saturday, beginning early in the morning and lasting through most of the day?  Snow that was so fine it still only resulted in about 2 1/2 inches after all of that time?  Enough though so that yesterday, Sunday, we were able to take the skis out in the barely, minimally sufficient snow and ski for a little more than an hour -- and it was even really good!  No pictures though, you'll have to take our word for it!

Funny thing, when we got home, sans house keys, intending to come in through our garage, the power was off in the entire neighborhood and many blocks beyond, for an as yet unknown reason, and we were locked out of our house for about 3 1/2 hours.  Many errands and 3 trips back to the house to check later, it magically came back on.  So we got our flu shots, books for traveling later this week, and a new monitor and other supplies from Best Buy in the meantime.  Time to get an extra key to hide for emergencies!

Thursday morning we ran a 5k race, which was my first time in WELL over a decade.  I've run a 9 minute mile in a marathon (26.2 miles), and here I ran about an 11 minute mile for 3.1 miles -- time to get in better shape again.  And I was grateful to be running, since it's been ten years after a car accident that left my neck in chronic pain for several years and not wanting to be pounding the pavement again.  It seems to have improved enough just this year to take some of that!

Although the time was embarrassing, I was 7th in my age group out of 24 women, so I guess getting older has some advantages!  Maybe that will even inspire me to move up!  Brian and Lance, our former landlord ran with me, and we're pictured here with Lance and Mary's NEW tenant, who also ran.  Then it was back to Lance and Mary's for pumpkin pie - it turns out to be a good trick to eat the pie BEFORE Thanksgiving dinner - when I actually have room for it!

Dinner was great - as usual.  Creamed fennel was a new dish this year, and I made new recipes for brussel sprouts with balsamic vinegar and sweet potatoes with thyme and garlic - love the food at Thanksgiving!

Friday night we went to the movies to see The Theory of Everything about Stephen Hawking - excellent!  And Saturday, after 4 years of trying to get into Van's class for Caesar Salad at The Marx Brothers Cafe, I finally made it - Brian, Lance, Mary & I went at noon, ended at 3, with 5 different wines, 4 different Caesar Salads, and tastings for balsamics, olive oils, cheeses, and anchovies - it was excellent, and we were glad that we went.

And now, it's back to work but only for 3 days, as very early Thursday morning (more like late Wed. night!) we leave for Mexico and a year-end course with Landmark Wisdom Division.

A Sunday Hike in Eagle River

After Christmas shopping on Saturday, Sunday was definitely a day to get outside again.  We've been wanting to go for a long hike again, and between schedules and weather, it had been weeks since we'd been up in the mountains.  Lance & Mary, our former landlords, went with us to the South Fork Trail in Eagle River and up the trail to Hanging Valley.  It's about 2 miles to the bridge along a fairly flat trail with some up and down - then more climbing for the next approximately 2 miles up to the Hanging Valley.

The sun was out, the sky was blue (in some directions anyway!), and it took us about 4 hours to finish. Brian and I had done most of this hike twice, but we never allowed enough time to go all of the way.
We were able to go most of the way without Katoolahs, but once we started climbing more, they made for a much more comfortable hike.   You can see that once we got up higher, there was more snow.

Hard to believe that we'll be in Mexico in 9 days!  Conference time for Judy, and Brian's going too.  And before that, Thanksgiving with Mary and Lance and a special treat -- Van's Caesar Salad class on Saturday at The Marx Brother's Cafe -- with 5 white wines to taste!  Then Mon - Wed and work and late, late Wed night - or early Thursday morning - we fly out, back on the 12th.

Oh, and I forgot!  Brian and I are signed up to do the Turkey Trot, a 5k race on Thanksgiving morning - the first one for me in more than a decade!  Wish us luck!

A Busy November

Wow-How could it have been this long without posting?!  And, it's not been busy with what I usually like to post, which is pictures of us outdoors hiking, biking, and (sniff, sniff) skiing, which is usually front and center by now!  Nope, not this year - it's been in the 30s and low 40s and not a snowflake to be seen in November - rain, yes.  Ice, yes.  No snow. We surely have been enjoying our house though and the gas fireplace that Brian put in to replace the standard fireplace that these town homes were built with.

More moose - it turns out the moose are around our new home a LOT!  Brian went to pull out of the driveway the other day and there was a moose right in back of him in the road.  We had a speaker here early in November for a keynote at UAA - came for dinner and couldn't get out of the car because there were two moose alongside of his car - he got great pictures for his family though!


We're looking forward to a trip to Mexico for a Year End Course with Landmark Wisdom Division, our first time going.  Landmark is a high performance training and development company, and what I bring back from these conferences always empowers my life and my work in unique and highly effective ways -- and with fun, play and ease - I can't wait!  But SKIING -- I need you! (This picture is from Sheep Mountain, 3 years ago - at Thanksgiving - just a few days away now!)

November also was a month (and part of October) that I participated in a Health & Fitness Challenge, and I lost 9 lbs. as a part of that -- and got more regular with my gym workouts.  The busy-ness of the last 2 weeks or so has presented a challenge again for the workouts, but the weight has been stable, and I'm out to lose another 3 lbs. and then maintain!

Last night we got ourselves out of the house at 8:30 pm - no easy feat, as we sometimes go to bed by 9:30 or even 9:00 - for the first tap of the Nouveau Beaujolais at Crush!

The guy in the funny hat "delivered" the cask, which was tapped and then drawn out with free wine for everyone in the place!

We enjoyed a glass, though it was getting late -- but it was fun all the same!

An Early Voting Trip that ended at Crush & Wolverine for a Sunday Hike

Not much to say about the early voting, except that City Hall was closed.  I had invited people to join us for early voting and then an "after party" at Crush -- we stopped at AFN on the way for the best arts & crafts show in the region and got in just under the closing - everyone was wrapping up and getting ready to go home!  I had my eye on a pair of sealskin and black beaver mittens, and I wish that I had brought them home - I could tell they wanted to come with me!

Crush is always a special trip -- great wine, great bites to eat - I love their cheese trays!  And then home for a quiet dinner, "Doc Martin" and an early night.

Today Brian finished painting our guest bathroom - only the floor remains now when the flooring that we ordered comes in - and then we went to Basher Rd. to hike Wolverine.

We knew that we didn't have time to summit, but we were out 3 hrs. and 10 minutes on what still is a significant hike (at least for us!)  The total distance round trip to the peak is 10 miles with an elevation gain of 3400 ft.  They estimate the hiking time as 6-8 hours, and we were close, but no cigar - meaning we were probably another hour from the summit, so 2 hours anyway to go up and back from where we were! Notice the snow!  We took our Katoolahs (spikes!)  and put them on soon after we started - they make such a difference in the footing, especially coming down.

The high point of Wolverine is 4455 ft., but it has a couple of nice things about it - one is that it's 15 minutes from our house, so when time is a consideration, it's a quick hike to fit in.  Also, the route from Basher Rd. is a nice walk in for the first 45 minutes with some elevation gain before it really climbs at the juncture with the Near Point trail.  There are some pretty steep sections on the way up, and I was glad when we reached the cairn, marking a big open area with a sharp left to go up the saddle and on to the peak.

This is the third time that I've climbed up this far - once a little farther, and never had time to go to the top -- the next time, leaving the day for the summit!  Brian has been up to summit - he and Lance road their bikes in one day to the junction and chained the bikes and climbed from there - saves about an hour or so.  Next time!

Hiking on the bluffs at Kincaid

We had a wine-tasting event on Friday night and went to see "The Judge" on Saturday - that's a full weekend for us!  The weekend started with my pulling in the driveway and realizing there was a big bull moose right next to the driveway!  As I got out of the car, he made his way across the street and began chomping on a bush of our neighbors directly across from us.  A few days later, I went out to walk to work - I can walk 40 minutes right to my office on trails!

  

The wine tasting was fun, but I'm a lightweight drinker, so we were finished in no time!  We did order 1/2 dozen bottles to be picked up at the Brown Jug Warehouse this week.  And saw several people there that we knew!

 Sunday it cleared a little (at least it wasn't raining), and we picked up Lance and went to Kincaid, a shorter ride at least to explore the bluffs there again.  We didn't have snow tires on yet so didn't want to drive up in the mountains - they have a fresh coat of snow!  Kincaid has a large network of trails, but we started on the bluff trail that runs along Cook Inlet. 

We were able to make our way down to the beach along Cool Inlet - not exactly a beach I'm more accustomed to on the ocean or even the Great Lakes or Cape Cod . . . and not the kind of beach that you jump in the water from!  A beautiful day though in its own way with the mountains mixing with the clouds.

 

We had a pretty good 2 hour hike with a lot of up and down, and that seemed like enough for one day!  We hadn't seen Lance for a while and really enjoyed hiking with him.  

Moose have been around a lot lately as attested by the two sightings above and then more when Brian was biking this week.  He ran into these two right in the middle of the trail and was forced to stop and wait until THEY decided to move on.  They do take their time.  The week before the encounters above, I was walking home from work and had to slow down behind the biggest bull moose that I've seen in the middle of the trail.  He wasn't in a hurry either, and he kept turning to look at me - not a good sign - I had to wait until he lost interest and moved off the trail into the brush. 

And finally, this weekend was a lot of catching up and cleaning house, plus organizing the garage for winter (Brian!) Bikes are hanging from the ceiling, and THE SKIS are in residence now!  A sign of things to come - and before too long if we have our way.  

Well, you can see where we're headed!  Any day now - I read they've had snow in Hatcher's Pass, so it's only a matter of time.  The first year that we moved here, I think that we were skiing by now!  

More hiking tomorrow until the snow fills in.  

A Busy Weekend in Anchorage

The weekend of Sept. 19-21 was busy with a Wisdom Weekend, but this past weekend was filled with lots of activity -- Friday night we had tickets to Radical Reels, Banff Film Festival adventure shorts showing at the University, Saturday was a bike ride and then dinner and the opening night of the symphony with Lance and Mary.  Then Sunday was our usual commitment to hiking, this time out of Eagle River again but exploring the trail to Blacktail Rocks.  We knew that we wouldn't have time to actually climb it, but this was a re-con mission, designed to get us up there to look at it.  Next time.

The guidebook talks about the trail from going over Baldy and continuing on, but we prefer the longer and more gradual route around and up - still plenty of climbing!  We did pass through blueberry-filled meadows that are described in the book -- even now, Sept. 28 - they evidently haven't frozen yet.  We passed some blueberry pickers, and they had the right idea - when you have to stop to catch your breath from the steep climb, whip out a container and say that you want to pick berries!

After about an hour, we were up on top of the ridge, which is pretty wide and runs between Baldy and Blacktail Rocks.  Once again a beautiful day, and views on either side dropping down into valleys.  We had to get back or we might have challenged ourselves to the extra 2 hours of going up and down Blacktail Rocks.

The guidebook says that it's easy walking across the ridge until you're 1/2 mile and 1100 ft. from the top - then it swings pretty much straight up.  It also says the mountain was named for the lichen on its southern cliffs - it's not a pretty mountain, but they say it's an impressive view of "black-and-gray capped cliffs rising from the green valley below" (50 Hikes in Alaska's Chugach Park).

We saw more hikers on our way down and several families picking blueberries, resting a various points along the way. It's great to see so many children hiking with their parents, even 3 and 4 year-olds, trucking right along!  Behind Brian, you could see Denali clearly yesterday, which is about 250 miles away.

And Cook Inlet below, Anchorage not that far away!  Home for a halibut dinner and work on our fireplace - Brian just finished installing a gas fireplace insert for our fireplace.  It was nice to come home to, and I'm looking forward to getting up in the morning with it!

Before pictures here and after pictures next week - we're using it tonight but we'll wait for the show and tell til the last fabricated piece we're waiting for is in place!

South Fork Eagle River Hike up to Rendezvous Ridge

It was another beautiful weekend in Anchorage - at least some of it!  A rainy Saturday at the start, but cleared in afternoon, and we were running around anyway - another house project not quite finished when we moved in - the extra full bath, which needs a bathtub replacement, new flooring, tiling, etc.  Brian to the rescue!  Picked out our bathtub and fixtures, and now all that he had to do is get it ready and put it all together!  Just kidding Brian - lots of work there for him, but he always comes through with such a nice job -- and we've decided to get a gas insert for our old fireplace, so that will come next - or at the same time!  So nice having a husband who's a contractor!

Saturday night was a "house concert" that we always appreciate being invited to at the home of Tom Begich and Sarah Sledge -- always nice to have good music and great company with about 40 other people packed in to hear the people that Tom invites up - usually folk singers, broadly defined, and always impressive and enjoyable!  Then, since we hadn't been outside other than to run errands, we went for a walk downtown and ended at Crush, one of our favorite places, usually for a glass of wine, this time for a wonderful warm apple cake and great coffee!  A beautiful night for a walk.

Sunday morning is almost always a planning time for "Where should we hike today?"

So first I have to share my favorite picture from our hike today!

 After a great omelet, if I do say so myself, with onion, mushroom, celery and swiss chard with feta cheese (I should have taken a picture!), we took off for the South Fork Eagle River trail.  I've always wanted to do the ridge trail from Rendezvous Peak out of the Arctic Valley, and it seemed from the guide book that it was a 10 mile trail necessitating dropping a car off at one location and driving to the end.  We had never gotten quite organized for it, and I was intimidated by wondering if we were in shape for it.  We discovered that you could access the ridge trail from several places, so today, we started from the South Fork Eagle River trail.

Almost 2 miles from the trailhead, a narrow path starts up with signage for the Rendezvous Ridge trail.  It is a gradual climb up that intensifies considerably along the way, initially through some pretty tall grass on both sides.  We know there are berries still out for picking, so Brian stopped and got out his whistle and confirmed the bear spray was "at the ready!"  If I was a bear, I'd hang out here - it's beautiful!

We went from sunny and fairly warm hiking - it was about 59 degrees and very sunny - to extremely windy and cold closer to the top - this was a notch that we came to before having to continue on, where we met a photographer who had been in Brian's class when he took black and white photography a year or so ago.  The hiking got much steeper towards the top, necessitating much stopping and recovering of breath by me!

Once at the top, you can continue along the ridge for several miles!  The reward!  The views are incredible, and we liked doing the hike in this direction.

There were SO many cars in the parking lot, and we saw hardly anyone on the hike.  We met two guys and their dog on the last peak before we started down, and this picture is looking south over the ridge that we had hiked.  There was definitely weather moving in, and we weren't sure if we were going to get rained or snowed upon at the higher elevation before we started down!

The hike down, though highly anticipated, is almost as difficult as the hike up - easier on the heart & lungs, as Brian said, but murder on the thighs and hip flexors from bracing and uneven descent.  We stopped at one point for a rest, as we were pushing across the ridge, unsure of how quickly the grey-black clouds were moving in.  As you're returning, the town of Eagle River is spread out for viewing along the valley - so pretty!

Ah. . . you can see why we love living in Alaska!!

An Anniversary Hike!

It's been a beautiful weekend in Anchorage!  Today was definitely a hiking day, and we went back to Baldy Mountain in Eagle River, where we did a partial hike in late winter/early spring, but no summit.  Today we took the same longer, more gradual route up, with beautiful views of Cook Inlet and Denali way off in the distance!

It was so much nicer hiking up than with spikes in early March and slogging through snowfields.  That was a beautiful sunny day too though, and we've enjoyed this hike.  Today we went all of the way up to the ridge that runs over to Baldy - or you can take a left turn to Blacktail Rocks, which we'll do the next time.

There was a beautiful view looking down through a valley, which exposes another ridge hike that I've wanted to do ever since I moved here - it is 10 miles and a hike for two cars, leaving one at the beginning and one at the end - it may have to wait til next year while we get in better shape again.  This is an "easy" hike in the guidebook, and it seems like enough for an anniversary Sunday!

The high point of Baldy is 3038 feet with an elevation gain of 1300 ft.  Most people go up the face of it and make the loop down with the more gradual descent, but we did it in reverse.  I think in the future we'll do both with the more gradual elevation, as it has better views!  Next time, Blacktail Rocks,, elevation 4446 ft., named after "the dark lichen eking out an existence on the mountain's southern cliffs"  (50 Hikes in Alaska Chugach State Park).  Looking forward to it - maybe next weekend?

Baldy is described in the same guidebook as a "bare, rounded knob" above Eagle River.  It looked like "take your daughter to hike day" today with several little girls climbing with their parents.  We took a short rest stop on top of the "knob" before starting down the steep way - a little muddy and slick and probably won't go that way again.

And honest, I did take a picture of Brian, which apparently didn't turn out, but he had the camera in HIS hand today!  Now for a halibut dinner and a nice glass of wine!  

Halibut Fishing in Ninilchik - The Freezer is Loaded!

Brian has been salmon fishing for silvers since he's been back in Alaska and came home with 4 silvers - and this weekend we went halibut fishing on a charter that I had bought a groupon for last year and we never got to use - they had agreed to hold it over to this year, and we went out on the last weekend for the season.  It was a beautiful day, though, and we couldn't have asked for anything nicer.  All 6 of us out on the charter fished our limit - we could only take 1 over 29 " and one under for a total of 2 fish each.  We came home with 4 total, 27 pounds of filets, nicely stacked in the freezer now - that is a LOT of halibut, which is my very favorite thing to eat!  Ninilchik is about 3 1/2 hours away and just about to Homer.

Don't know if you can see from the picture, but they launch off the beach by having a big tractor push the boat off a trailer.  It's an easy day on a charter in most ways, because they have so much of the work done for you -- we were out for 5 hours in the sun and on the water, though, and just reeling in and jigging the line is work enough for me!  What a gorgeous view though, and fun to come back with so much.

Today, the last day of Labor Day weekend, we restained our deck, took a long bike ride on the Coastal Trail and came back to a halibut dinner - Lance came over and had dinner with us, our former landlord - and our first fire in the fireplace!

Tomorrow it's back to work!

New House Pictures and Colleen & Ivana's Visit in June!

After much work and quick work, we moved in just in time for Colleen's visit - we were only living here for about 2 days before they came and Brian especially did an unbelievable amount of work taking out carpeting, putting in laminate floors, new appliances, tile backsplash, and we both painted.

We've been very happy here (though we haven't been here much), and we had a great visit with Colleen and Ivana.  We did a hike up Rendevous Peak, on a glorious day, did a float trip down the upper Kenai, and spent a night on Prince William Sound in Surprise Cove - also did a little kayaking.