Alaska 2013

We flew to Alaska this past week to visit family and friends. 

On our first day we took a road trip on the uber-scenic Highway 1. It is arguably the most beautiful drive you can take in the USA – the waterfalls, snow covered peaks, and sunny skies.

Taking a nap on the way

Along the way to the town of Girdwood we stopped several times to enjoy the scenery – including a stop at Portage Glacier.  It's a small glacier but the boat ride is only one hour, so it's perfect for a two year old's attention span.

The water is really cold

Ooooh, ahhhhhh

Pretty

It was in the 50's but the sun was very strong

Our next day trip was the Alyeska Resort. Alyeska is a ski resort, but even in July it was beautiful. We took a tram to the top of a mountain.

View at the top

 
Thankfully we did not come across any unexploded shells

 

We had such amazing weather on our trip. Summer in Alaska is unpredictable, so we were incredibly fortunate, we had sunny weather every day and temperatures in the 70's! Once back in Anchorage we did our best to enjoy the great outdoors.

There is tons more to do here than we could have ever done in just a week...but the focus was to see friends & family.

 Another day we hiked to Exit Glacier

Love this

We hiked to the glacier...because it is mostly uphill 

and had multiple drop offs my brother

did the entire hike holding Serena on his shoulders.

Exit Glacier so close you can touch it

More importantly, Serena turned two years old on our last day there!!!
I made this huge card in the hopes that it would get
shown on TV, but it didn't.

I was bummed.

But it was so cute!

On her birthday we invited a few friends over to celebrate.
The adults were playing games and she wanted to be

right in the middle of the action.

Everyone was so generous that
we had to borrow a duffle bag to bring all the gifts home!

 Ice cream birthday cake (my brother's idea)