A great way to visit Kenai Fjords National Park is to make the trip to Exit Glacier. You can hike all the way up to the Harding Icefield. This is a fairly intense hike up, and the round trip is about 8 miles. Some people hike up and camp on top to enjoy the sunrise. Others hire a guide to actually climb the glacier. None of the above is suitable for younger kids, so we join a ranger on a hike to the toe of Exit Glacier. We start off at the visitor center and hike through lush forest. The kids have done their homework, and earned their Junior Ranger…
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Hiking in Girdwood
We are yearning to get some hiking in on this beautiful day in Girdwood. It is easy to get occupied with laundry, groceries and work, even when you are traveling. It is a 2.5 mile hike to get to the hand tram on the Lower Winner Creek trail. Just perfect in case we don’t manage to do the tram with the dog. On the other side of the tram, the trail continues. When we arrive at the trail head, we find out from some berry pickers that we are approaching the hand tram from the other end of the trail than we were planning on. We only have about a…
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Is tidepooling just for kids?
Yesterday we went tidepooling. Not growing up by the ocean, I had never heard of the term before. But I’m quite sure that we have discovered a new hobby. Going to the beach has always been a sandy and wet affair, with lots of work involved for mom and dad. Dad in our family does not nearly get bothered by the work as much, though he takes his fair share. The need to pack towels, swimsuits, dry clothes and lots of snacks (oh the snacks) and then lug more than one can reasonably carry. All while burning feet that have lost those cute flip flops long before we even get…
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Learning about solar power. Rookie mistakes?
For about ten days now, we have had the luxury of borrowing a generator. We prefer to run our life solely on solar power (and some food), so adding a gas guzzling machine to the setup is certainly not a perfect solution. But what peace of mind has it been for me. To be able to reliably have electricity when I need to charge my laptop has changed my world. We went so far as to add the expense of a generator purchase to next month’s budget. If the solar panels are not cutting it, we have to find a solution. Being completely powerless last week did not feel very…
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Power is out in our Avion trailer
It’s the middle of the night when I hear the furnace fan blasting away. Usually it stops within a few minutes but not this time. Slowly it dawns upon me that this is not a good sign. Our battery must be nearly dead. The trailer has no power. We have been here before, about a year ago when we went camping off shore power and pretty much wanted to try out how far we could go. Maybe not the most intelligent thing to do, have we learned since. It really is not good to let your battery go below fifty percent of its capacity. At that time, we were on…
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Visiting Homer, where we meet a bush pilot
While we are fulltimers, already camping in a stunning place and pretty much living the life of campfires, beach walks and forest hikes, we decide to drive our Avion out of the park and head south to check out Homer. If you go to Alaska, you visit Homer, right? On the Sterling Highway, we stop at Anchor Point where we park in another State Recreation Area for a couple of nights. We get there late after we have first finished our jobs up north, but with the sun never leaving it’s no problem. Immediately we notice a big relief from the overload of mosquitoes that have been bothering us for days.…
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Composting at the Kenai River Festival.
Finding your tribe can feel impossible when you stay in places just long enough to get familiar with the lady at the laundromat. Friends are maybe a phone call away, but if they are in a different time zone, catching them can be challenging. This is one of those things we have not figured out just yet. The kids don’t have an issue with it. They easily make friends, even if it is for a day. We have great conversations with campers and are sometimes invited to join them by the fire. We make some great new connections, but I still miss my tribe. The other day we went to…
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Finding a new routine in Kenai.
I forgot how it feels to go to bed when the sun is still up. Or maybe it is that I have never had to try to put kids to bed when that very same sun is still right there. Up here in Alaska it has been a daily challenge. You know how it is to drive when the sun is really low and shining in your eyes? Every night when I sit down on my bed, the sun is right there, prying into my eyes. We won’t have even one hour of darkness until the end of August. On our way north, when we because of circumstances had to…
