Tuesday, January 8, 2013

January 8, 2013

     We had quite a year last year. Not to go into a lot of details, but we have made our way to the Great Alaska Council here in Anchorage Alaska. Lyman started his new job as the Chief Development Officer. He is the fundraising guru and he loves to fundraise. Hopefully with all of his schooling and his CFRE will pay off for him and the council.
     We started our new commitment on Sept 1, 2012. Yes it has been quite an adventure just moving here. We were told that "what goes to Alaska stays in Alaska". So we were able to go through all of our belongings and decided what to sell and what to leave in storage and what to bring to Alaska. That was quite a chore after 33 years of collecting things we now have to part with a lot of our treasures (or junk) depends on how you look at it.
     We went from a 2700 sq ft home in Midland to a 1000 sq ft cabin. Quite a change I must say.  We don't have room for much. We had to purchase a storage shed to hold our belongings that wouldn't fit into our cabin. We have always wanted to have a cabin in the woods and we got it. :)  
     We made our trek to Alaska, said good-bye to ManDee and Scott, stopped off at Utah and visited Shad, Brittany and their kids, Lacey, Tyler and their kids and then started our adventure to Alaska. We had to make good time so we could catch the ferry in Canada that would take us to Haines Alaska and then drive to Anchorage. We drove hard for many days, but we made it. We sure saw some beautiful country though. Parts that we have never been in before. Took some pictures for you all to look at. 
     So we made it to Alaska and our cabin needed to be fixed and painted. It was used as staff cabin and yes it was yucky!! So we lived in another part of the camp until we could get the cabin liveable and before the movers brought our stuff. We had a power outage for 3 days and not having any of our stuff here to endure the outage we had to buy things that would help us through it. One thing we had to do is to bring water up from the lake to flush the toilets so at least we could go potty. Yes we lived like pioneers for 3 days. We saw a baby and a mommy moose go to the lack and drink, saw a fox, lots of squirrels, martins, etc, but no bears (yet).
     Trying to adjust now to 5 hours of daylight here. We are behind a mountain so we get no sun at all. Yes we have our HAPPY LIGHTS and yes we need them. Taking lots of Vit D too. Then we will probably complain when we have 16 hours of daylight and can't get to sleep. We can't be satisfied can we? We have had several snow storms but nothing like they are used to. I know it is just for us so we can adjust to our new life.
     Anyway, here are some pictures for you to enjoy:
                                          Glacier
                                          Dee on the ferry from Canada to Haines
                           Dee found her name, the exact spelling here in Alaska
                                          The Denali range, Mt. McKinley
                    Glaciers while we are on the Whittier ferry the day after we got here to Alaska
                                                      Water falls

                                          Seals found a resting place
     Moose love the water. While we were passing through we found out is was hunting season. Surprise that they weren't hiding                                                 
           If you look hard enough you can see 2 dots. They are bears that we saw from a distance
   Snow at our cabin. This was a major one at that. We did have snow on Christmas which we haven't seen for a number of years.
 This is where we are living at the Rasmuson Scout Reservation. There are 2 camps here. One is for the cubs scouts, which we live, and another is for the boy scouts.
 This is the road to our cabin. The cabin is just ahead up the road. I need to find a picture and I will post later. Maybe in spring time when we can fix the outside with flowers.
     This is a picture that Lyman took of the frozen lake called Edmunds. This is on the edge of the Scout property that we live on. A lot of people snow shoe and ski on it.
As you can see they are beautiful pictures. We will post more I'm sure as Lyman takes his camera everywhere. And we enjoy looking at them too.