Wow... Three years later

I am having a rather lazy day off. Surfing the net, enjoying the quite all while having a green smoothie. I came across the blog that Will and I did when we took our great adventure to Alaska, and I can't believe, and yet I can all that has changed in that time. Will is going to graduate in a couple of months, the little sister he greeted at the airport is now not the youngest, and well I have remained the crazy Aunt... looking for the next adventure.

I have been considering opening up the blog again. Of course the adventure is more now of trying to follow God in this alien world, eat well, live well, love well... and what an adventure and challenge that is. It's taken me on paths of discipline in mind, spirit and body that I feel I am failing in right now, but so desperate to change that. So we will see. For now I am just in reflection mode.

We are done!!!!!!!

Hey it's Will, and I'm doing one last blog. We me made it safely home and I had maybe four hours of sleep coming home. It didn't help that I had to get up at 5:30 this morning to go to Virginia and listen to a judge speak about the separation of church and state. it was LONG and BORING but a little fun all at once. Oh joy!!

I want to say thank you to everybody who donated money for this trip and those who prayed for it as well. It really worked!!! The weather worked out perfectly. And those who read this bloq, thank you!! Your comments were great. I had a great time and hope to return, but i;m happy to be home. :)


Will's keepsake... Whale baleen etched by a native!

What does the end of vacation look like?

This... Will catching some zzzz's at the Denver airport. He doesn't know we have free internet, or he might "come alive" but it is doubtful. We left Anchorage at 11:15p.m., arrived here at 6:20a.m. and we will be back to Knoxville at 3:30p.m.. Of course that doesn't figure in the "loosing of time" 4 hours... but I digress, you all really just checked in to see what antics we have been up to or some witty comments from Will.

So I would like to tell you that we had an awesome last day hike in Eagle River, but it wasn't in the plans, as duty called for our host Matt. Will was able to do homework, which he was most excited to finish. We did however enjoy a most mouth watering delicious meal at Simon and Seaforts Grille with Matt and Caroline and finish up some souvenir shopping. We dined on crab macadamia nut stuffed halibut... yes it was as awesome as it sounds. And after 2 weeks of togetherness Will still thinks I am the best Aunt Debbie, although he did contemplate driving me into the drink in Homer... and well this photo speaks of our typical time these past weeks!



I would like to introduce our gracious host Matt and Caroline. A groovy couple living the dream in Alaska! Oh and say congrats and prayers as they are expecting their first child. We must not have been too hard of guest they invited us back, but we had to commit to babysitting assistance :)



That's right.... oh sorry another attempt at humor! This is actually Ralph and Kodiak... Kodi, and well they are good host too... fully accepting of us just as we were, as long as we fully devoted them some attention.

This is really Matt and Caroline... at the picturesque sky walk downtown Anchorage!




Of course right now we are both tired, and yesterday we talked about how we just skimmed the surface of Alaska and although there are adventures we didn't get to take WOW what we did experience was incredible. As we talked with Matt and Caroline last night at dinner Matt commented that we must have had a lot of people praying for our trip, he said the fact that we saw Denali as much as we did, the northern lights with the beautiful dance and even some great whale and eagle spots; we had experienced more in 2 weeks then many others that visit. So just in case you weren't sure, God does answer prayers, oh and that staying safe in Alaska, yea he answered that one too. As we were driving to the airport last night, I was cutting over to the way I know to get to the Anchorage airport and what to my blurry eyes did I see? Yes big old moose ran in front of me... and into someone's front yard! Will and I were cracking up!

We do hope that you have enjoyed following our adventure. We want to thank you all for your prayers, support and encouraging words on the post! We hope to have a slide show post for you, once I get back to my groovy brother in law who can set it up... So don't forget to come back and visit... thanks again for all the comments and prayers!!

Warning signs...

Okay... we are back in Anchorage, really Eagle River at hacienda Kirby's our most gracious host who allowed us crazy strange travelers to crash at their home!

The above pic was a t-shirt that Will and I found much humor in, and in my line of work especially! I am proud to report that we did not in fact participate (up to this point) in any of the mentioned activities we did however find ourselves today staring down eagles on Homer Spit...



Allowing Will to "test drive" the other rental car on the spit! Surf with the "big fish"



Run with the bears... oh I mean run from the bears!



Top that off with snow shoeing around portage glacier... thanks again to our host for letting us borrow the "shoes!"











So we have been safe, blessed and had much fun! Soon we will be heading back to family and old friends leaving new ones, and well lets just end this post with... Thank God for Wal Mart! They know how to do them right in Alaska!




P.S. Uhhh, our host Matt a really in shape dude has promised us a "short hike" up baldy mountain tomorrow so this "safe post may become null and void! jk :)

Alright!! we are in Homer. It's a pretty cool little town on the coast of Alaska. Too bad Mr. Simpson couldn't make it. (If you saw the simpson's movie you would know they go to Alaska, and they just had to have visited Homer) But first, our adventure in Seward.

When we got to Seward, it was cloudy a little windy.



I had to do my thing and I took awhile. Now that would have been okay if we didn't have to be on the other end of town to get on a whale watching tour in five minutes. The lack of fresh veggies and fruit, is leaving the colon uncooperative. Thank God the town of Seward is about as big as my neighborhood! So we made it. Now the tour was amazing. after about two minutes on the water we saw two young Humpback Whales. We had some pics and one of them was of the fluke but my crazy Aunt Debbie had the wrong settings on the camera, so they didn't work out. But we got to see two different pods of Orca Whales (killer whales) and some of them even came right up to the boat.






One good thing was the fact that these Orcas were not the ones that eat other mammals, but the ones that eat fish. So if you fell in you wouldn't die from being eaten, but of hypothermia. Now that's something to look forward to. To reassure everyone, no one fell into the water. Although I almost put something else into the water.... Let's just say, the Bonine didn't work. But no worries, everything was okay and we even saw a couple eagles hanging out, a few mountain goats who appeared to be waiting for a ride, seals and a Sea Otter on the way back.



















On the way to Homer we saw this guy... or maybe girl?





In Homer, we had somewhat of a lazy day. We drove down from Seward, ate lunch in Homer, (I had some fresh Halibit) saw lots of Eagles and switched hotels all in one day. Man, were we busy!!














While we were on the beach, (yes there are beaches in Alaska, With SAND!!) we saw some kelp growing on a rock.










And this is what I thought of it








Keep the comments coming!! some portions of this post where edited due to lack of full info on the past 48hrs...

In, Around, Under and Above Anchorage and Soccer Field

We are now in Seward and Aunt debbie has forced me to do this blog post today cause she did it two days ago and it's time for me to do it. So here's what we did the past few days. We got into Anchorage around noon and needed to exchange our rental car for a cheaper one. So we went to the Avis downtown. Okay this is Aunt Debbie, and I have to take over. Will forgot that we checked out of the hotel saturday a.m., ate at snow city cafe were he consumed massive quantities of biscuits, gravy and a a breakfast burrito. Thank goodness though because it took over 2 hours to finally switch out vehicles, well maybe not quite that long, but we did have to go from downtown to the airport. The woman "Star" was her name, no kidding, couldn't get the computer to cooperate and therefore wanted to charge me a $160 drop fee!! Sorry, I still have to feed Will for a few more days. Anyway, we connected by phone with Caroline who was doing nursery duty at church so we headed to an Alaskan adventure at the Beartooth theatre. We ordered pizza, and joined all the other peoples in the theatre to watch National Treasure book of secrets while dining.

Will's back!! Go Will, go Will, GO WILL!!!!! That was the song you guys were supposed to be singing cause you were so happy that I was now doing the blog. Haha, I know you guys love me. Anywho, the rest of the story. We got to the Kirby's and just hung out the rest of the day, I know that seems boring, but I enjoy some downtime once and awhile. Especially after running around like a chicken with its head cut off these past few days. The next morning we went to church with the Kirbys. There church was HUGE!! The largest church in Alaska. Their attendance was about the same as our church in Tennessee, but the building was an old Factory and contained thousands of square feet. Each kids classroom was about as big as our Apex. Those of you who have been to my church know that is somewhat of a large room. They even had slides in the classrooms. One was about as big as the slide we rode on in Fairbanks. After church, I went and played a game of indoor soccer on their churches soccer team. And it was fun! I played goalie. Now I know you all are thinking how many did he let in. And some of your guesses are around twenty goals. But you are wrong, Wrong I tell you, WRONG!!!!!!!!! I only allowed two. And they were flukes. I had both of them. One I dove for and it glanced off my arm, hit the goal post and rolled in. The other I stopped. and when I reached out for it, the stupid ball rolled over my arm into the goal. But hey, at least I had fun. After that little escapade, we rented I am Legend, watched it and went to bed.

It's getting late so I better get off of this thing we call the "Evil One" ( the computer). Not to be confused with "Evil One Jr. (the TV), or Evil One Jr. Jr., (the Xbox), or the "Evil One Jr. Jr. Jr. (the PS2), Or "Evil One III J,. (the Wii or anything Nintendo, The Gamecube, Gameboy, Nintendo 64, Super Nintendo, etc.) And last but not least "Evil One III Jr. Jr. twice removed, (Atari.) I'll tell you about Sewerd and Homer tomorrow. Keep the comments coming. You guys were slacking the last few post. I just wanted to leave you guys with one las thought....................

Glacier flying... and driving

Well, we are in the big city of Anchorage again. Yesterday was a slow morning that developed into a beautiful flight over around and through part of the Alaska range. We landed on a glacier and Will took a nap (....).



It was an awesome day of beautiful weather and views that will be stuck in my head for a long time! Quite impressive! The rest of the day was spent driving back to Anchorage were we had an awesome meal at the Alaska Brewhouse! Of course I had salmon, Will ribs! I just saw the weather and it is supposed to snow this week here, although the temps are 30's today! We are now entering the "twilight zone" version of our vacation... I have not made a plan.... well anyone who really knows me is not surprised! So start praying!! Oh we are going to stay with some relatives of a friend! Maybe you all should pray for Caroline and Matt!!



See ya, keep the comments coming and hopefully Will will be inspired to write again soon!