Distant Visitors

Unbelievable. A blog post full of... people! After 13 years of begging, and multiple years of broken promises, i finally had some of my best friends come and visit me this past summer. The Lehoczky-Escobar family finally showed up in Alaska in June and brought 2 of their 4 children with them. I have never done anything up here with children, so i had a lot of learning to do.

Orion and Amadea doing some bouldering at Fern Hut.

The biggest learning curve for me was that i had no knowledge of how slow travel can be with kids. Our two mile walk to the end of fern valley took 4 hours round trip, making for an average speed of 1mph. After that i kind of scratched some options off the list of things to do. We had a good time, it was great to see my friends, and we did a reasonable number of things during the short time they were here.

Yalli and Orion make their way across icy Crow Creek on a human powered tram. I was impressed at how well they did. It's actually a lot work!

Sandor documents the ordeal while waiting his turn.

The weather was a little spotty but not too bad. I was sure it was going to rain at any moment in the Talkeetnas, but it never did, and even cleared up by the time we left. Girdwood was similarly cloudy. We went down to Seward one day to get some better weather, and although it was sunny there was also a frigid cold wind making it uncomfortable to walk along the waterfront. We did have some nice days in Anchorage, and a jackpot day of perfect weather in Prince William Sound.

Fisher exercises his formidable powers of persuasion on a new victim.

Amadea finds a tunnel to explore under the boulders.

Sandor and Yalli pause to admire a beaver dam when they should be admiring the awesome horn of granite behind them.

On our way back Orion disappeared after running off into the tundra like a crazed lunatic. Thus there are virtually no pictures of him on this trip.

It started to clear up once we were leaving. Typical.

Meanwhile, underwater in Seward.

This cool bird at the Alaska SeaLife Center had a staring match with Orion and Amadea.

~~I don't remember what it was called~~ A very cool looking bird called a Rhinoceros Auklet. It can hypnotize small children and command them to do it's bidding. A wizard of sorts.

Also a cool duck. Puffin on the left. This tank was for rehabilitating birds. Many of them would dive for food, and on the next floor down you could watch them from below.