Brady's Plant

Brady planted a Zinnia(I think), for Mother's Day. It didn't do much in the house but it took off outside. It's the pink one, he is so proud of it and goes to check on it daily, it is getting "babies", as he likes to call the new buds. He even has to water it himself too. There are about 5 new buds on there. I am amazed that it is doing so well, it looked sickly when I planted it outside but wow has it taken off. Brady has a green thumb.

Smoke in the Air

This was taken one day last week. We have had some forest fires in the area and when the wind blows from the south, we are the recipients of the smoke and ash. It looks like fog but it the smoke from the fires. This is on a good day. Some days the sky looked brown, it looked like something from a sci-fi movie. Last night it got so dark from the smoke that the street lights went on at 6:30 pm, and normally the sun is up until about 11:30 pm. This is the first summer we have experienced the forest fires and hope it is the last, seeing that we have one more summer here.

4th of July

We celebrated the 4th with a few fire works out at a transfer site in Salcha, so as not to burn the forests down, it has been really dry up here. It is hard to see the fireworks because of the daylight, but we still try to make it fun for the boys, they still like doing that even in the daylight. They were waiting paitently all day for the ngihts activities and then it rained and we thought we wouldn't be able to do it, but it stopped and dried up enough to light them off. One more summer in Alaska and then it will be fireworks in the dark. We will get a butt load then and have a "blast".

Denali

We decided to do something fun this summer with Bryan going off for 6 mths towards the end of summer. We decided to take a tour of Denali National Park. It is about a two hour drive from base. We had a fun time, we stayed at the Princess Wilderness Lodge. We had a cabing looking hotle, the room was small but for what we used it for it work. They had a mini village in where we stayed, so we got to walk around and shop, eat and relax. We took the tour on the second day of our stay, we took a Tundra Wilderness tour which took us into the park for about a 5 hour ride. We got to see Caribou, Grizzlies, Dall Sheep and Brady's favorite the Snowshoe Hare. One of the tourists saw a wolf too, but it blended into the scenery and the boys didn't see it.We saw alot of beautiful scenery, even a glimpse of a glacier too. We didn't get to see the full view of Mt. Mckinley, but we have seen it enough times to know what it looks like and we flew over it on our way here too. We got a lot of great pictures, wish I could post them all on here, but can't. It is truly a sight to see. It is such a peaceful place to get lost in. It was a great tour, and the boys behaved great on the long ride.We went to eat at the Lynx Creek Pizza after, boy was that some good pizza, and for dessert we got some soft serve ice cream, it's been a long time since we had soft serve, seeing as though we don't have a DQ up here. We all had a good time but were happy to get home too. Next summer we want to take a trip down to Valdez and Seward, hopefully to see some glaciers and so that Bryan can check out his King Salmon fishing pole. Should be a good time. We are saving the biggest trip for our last summer here. In the one picture Brett is holding a set of antlers they have on display. The one is of our hotel room.

Arctic Circle

We decided to brave the Dalton Highway(The Haul Road), again to go up to the Arctic Circle. Despite having a car sick child(Brady), we finally made it up there this year, WOOOHOOOO!!! The boys didn't want to go out there, because they new how bad the road was from our firsat trip up there 2 years ago. It was so bumpy and crappy we turned around the first trip. This year the road was much nicer, it seemed to be more paved then dirt. We had a few dips that took us airborne, which got us all to laugh, until Brady threw up in the truck, mostly on the car mat. We got to the Yukon River Camp, had lunch, Brady felt better so he could eat, and we made it up to the Circle to cross it. We were disappointed, we thought it would have been better than what it was, it was just a sign as shown in the picture.We figured, not too many people actually can say they drove 200 miles to cross the Arctic Circle. It was a long trip and despite Brady getting sick we actually had a fun time.