Goodbye Skagway...Hello Utah....

Well after another great summer working in Alaska, it's time for us to go back to Utah and back to school. We've had a lot of fun this year, we saw lots of bears, both sets of parents came up to visit, and we saw the sun 3 times! Anyways we're back in Salt Lake now, and school started today. We are now living in the student apartments, which aren't really that bad. In fact they are identical to when Brian's parents lived in them 26 years ago. But the price is right and it's close enough so Brian can ride his bike to school. So goodbye for another winter Skagway, hopefully we'll see ya again summer of '09

We're off to see the bears....

So Jenn won a contest at work and the

prize was a trip away for the night. All the way across the ocean, 20 miles to Haines, AK. It was a pretty cool trip, we took a fast ferry over there, and checked into what we're pretty sure is the hotel that inspired the movie "The Shining". After settling in the room we ate dinner at a little local restaurant, and then took off for our twilight bear watching tour. It's right smack in the middle of the salmon runs right now, which means the bears are out in full force. Mainly the Brown bears are the ones that we see in the area. The guide we were with took us out to the Chilkoot River where we immediately saw a 4 year old brown bear hanging out in the deep grass. Throughout the night we also saw another 4 year old, as well as a sow with her two cubs. It was a great trip, but unfortunately we had to come back the next day to work. Well Brian had to go back to work, Jenn is done for the season and will be flying out tomorrow with Brian following this Thursday.

Heli-Camping...

Well it's getting closer and closer to the end of our summer season up here in Skagway, Ak and like last summer Brian and the rest of the Dock Reps went out on a campout. This year they went Heli-Camping (where a helicopter drops you off at the top of the trail). They went up that way and then back by the train the next morning. It was a great time, after getting a quick ride in the chopper up to the Laughton Glacier trailhead they hiked up to the US Park Service cabin. Then it was off to the Laughton Glacier. It's a pretty sweet hike that almost immediatly has a visual of the massive sheet of ice. More than the chopper ride, or the hiking on the glacier, the best part was just to be away from town (and tourists) for one night.

Tourist For A Day.......

Well, if you haven't hung out with us in a while then you might not know about our complete annoyance with tourists this year. Don't get us wrong, we realize that they are the one's paying our bills, but this year it seems they are more annoying than usual. All this said we decided that us and the Quackenbush's would be tourists yesterday. This does not mean that we stood in the middle of the road taking pictures, or asking over and over again how to get out free train charm, it means we finally took advantage of a couple tours offered here in Skagway. First we decided to go Glacier Country flight seeing. This is probably one of the coolest things you can do up here (besides the train of course...). The tour takes you over several of the large glaciers in the are, and finished off with the Mead Glacier which is part of the Juneau Ice Fields. It is easily some of the most amazing scenery that we've ever encountered. The pictures turned out cool, but don't really do it justice. After doing that we went across the fjord over the the city of Haines to float the Chilkat River. This river is pretty cool because it has the largest concentration of bald eagles in the world. Also, on the bus ride out to the river we had a pretty sweet encounter with one of the largest brown bears I've ever seen. It was fishing on the creek bed for salmon, while her two cubs watched. I've attached a quick video of the bear getting a fish and taking it into the woods for her cubs. It's a little shaky cause we were in a bus seeing it, also the sound is of everyone on the bus so i recommend turning it down. All in all it was nice to get away from work for a day and see some of the amazing things we have around us up here in Alaska.