Alaskan Adventure 2010, Part 1

The parts of Alaska that we saw last week were so beautiful. There was rainforest, taiga, tundra, and boreal forest. There were moose, sea otters, seals, and all kinds of birds. We had a fantastic time with half of Mike's family (Sheri, Nick, Bob & Emily) and we missed the other half (Garth, Rachel & Jacob). It was light for 21 hours of the day! We arrived at 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, July 3rd and were totally disoriented by the weird twilight (it looked like maybe 4 or 5 in the afternoon).

Here are some favorite pictures, from our various stops along the way:

Mike loving his kettle corn at the Fairbanks farmer's market
At the Alaska Pipeline near Fairbanks
Downtown Fairbanks (check out those hanging baskets!)
Some of the Terrys at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks (hanging baskets again)
Mike with Santa at North Pole, AK
Mike riding a salmon at the Salmon Bake (yum!)
University of Alaska Fairbanks, Library
Sheri's dogs, Zeus & Ziggy, rode around with us a little in the Yukon
We took a Riverboat Discovery Tour on the Chena River. Beautiful!
We saw this racing dog team while on the river. They're Iditarod champions!
Our riverboat tour stopped in a (replica of an) Athabascan Village. Here's one of the cabins. The sod on top works great as insulation.
This old Polaris replaced a dog sled team. But, some of the dog sledders told us that dogs are much better because they don't break down or run out of fuel.
After spending a few days in Fairbanks, we went to Denali National Park. Mt. McKinley, aka Denali, aka "the mountain" was visible, but I didn't get a great picture of it (see above). At 20,320 feet it's the highest peak in North America!
Fireweed in Denali.

More on Denali, Anchorage, and glaciers in the next post! Coming soon . . .

For even more photos, see our Alaska 2010 set on Flickr.