The Larsen's Come To Town....

Well this is turning out to be the summer of family. Again we have been trying to convince our families to come and visit us the last three years we've been living in Skagway, and this year they finally listened. Brian's Mom and Dad were hear last month, and last week Jenn's Mom, Dad and brother Eric came up to stay with us. It was a great time for all of us, after a long flight and ferry ride the Larsen's went from the 112 degree heat of Phoenix to the balmy 45 degree heat of Skagway. We were really excited for them to be able to see what we've been doing up here, and also to get the Alaskan experience. Like when Brian's parents were in town Ed, Linda, and Eric were able to do most of the tours we offer here in town. Also one day Brian, Eric, and Ed went sport fishing out in the fjord for salmon, they caught a bunch, Brian's being the smallest (mainly cause he let Ed bring in his big fish). The also saw the glaciers from the air and the water, had a trip though the brothel, and panned for gold. We even were able to see a couple bears on the side of the road. Needless to say by the time we put them back on the ferry out of town this morning we had totally wore them out! It was a great time.

Look out Skagway...Brian is a Fireman

So Brian decided that it was finally time to give back to the great city of Skagway and become a volunteer firefighter. Mainly he is working on the EMS team, but when you join one you're automatically on the other. So far the main excitement has been meetings every tuesday, and competeing in the sport fishing tourniment...(he didn't catch anything). Brian wants to become a physicians assistant, so working with the ambulance is a great learning experiance. It's pretty exciting stuff working on the ambulance, mostly it is older people who get exausted walking through our 20 blocks in town, and people tripping on the boardwalks.

the hart's come to town

Well it took three years of us coming to work up in Alaksa for our parents to finally decide to come and visit. Brian's Dad and Mom came up last week to visit, and Jenn's parents and brother will be here later this month. It was a great time for Brian's parents to come because the weather was pretty nice most of the time, although it did piss rain one day so they could see that too.

We were able to get them on lots of the shore trips that the cruise ship passengers take when they come here. They were able to go Kayaking, take a streetcar ride, go through a brothel, have a salmon cook-out at an old gold camp, take a flight over the glacier icefields, and then canoe out to one of the glaciers. Oh and of course they got to ride the train. In addition to seeing everything that there is to see here in Skagway they were here on the 4th of July and were able to take part in all the small town festivities.

Here's some pictures we've taken up in Alaska....

Happy 4th of July

Well, it's the 4th of July and Skagway has a pretty sweet celebration. It is the ultimate in small town parties!! First there was the fireworks show out over the fjord, thing is, it doesn't really ever get dark here so the fireworks go off at dusk (11:30pm). Also since the town across the bay has more people, and there's only one guy that does fireworks our show has to be on the 3rd. All that said it's still pretty cool.

On the actual holiday we have the small town parade, the town of Skagway is so small that the parade goes down the main road, turns and then comes back the same road. All of it takes about 35 minutes.

After the parade the town broke the Guiness World Record of largest egg toss. Pretty awesome right?

We've finally got our blog up and running...

Well we decided to start a blog a while ago, but with our busy work/play schedules it never really got past naming it. So after 3 months of saying we need to get to it here we go! We are up in Skagway Alaska again for our third summer, this year we are working for the White Pass Railroad. It's a tourist railway, with cruise ship passengers being our main customers. It's a pretty sweet gig, we work in paradise for 4 months out of the year, and it basically pays for our school in the winter. This year has been pretty awesome! We've been able to see tons of stuff that most people will never see until they are old and take a cruise.