Alaska Part 1 : Kenai Peninsula

Tay and I went on a baby moon in August to Alaska! Strangely enough we both had a brother living up there for the summer, John in Anchorage and Ryan in Fairbanks, so we decided it would be a fun trip. We absolutely loved it! We were able to experience “The Last Frontier” as they call it, which is kind of fitting because we are in the last frontier before we enter the next stage of our lives as parents. Here are a few highlights from the trip. 

It seemed like everywhere we drove on our trip (and we did a lot of driving) was worthy of stopping to take a picture. Here are a few that we took just outside of Alaska traveling south. These are on our way down to Seward on the southern part of the Kenai Peninsula, which was a trip we took with John. We loved being able to spend time with John and do some exploring with him. 

This was a cool and random event we ran into on our way down to Seward. They had a chain sawing competition where everybody was given an hour to make a creature out of wood and a chain saw. We ate lunch while we watched, and it was amazing to see the works of art they created in that amount of time. Check them out! 

This lily pad lake was another gem we found along our drive. It’s crazy how much bigger I am now than I was on this trip! I had a little tummy in this picture, but it was still that kind of awkward in between stage. 

Here are some pictures from a hike we did just outside of Seward called Exit Glacier. The ice at this glacier was a beautifully breathtaking blue, and the glacier itself was huge! Of course the boys found an area on the hike where they could skip some rocks, boys will be boys after all. 

Most of our trip we found beautiful places to camp, and the other few nights we spent at John’s apartment in Anchorage. Here is where we camped for a night next to the Kenai Fjords, where we would take a boat cruise the next day. Camping in Alaska, and vacationing in Alaska for that matter, were pretty fun due to the length of the days. It wouldn’t get dark until 11:30 or 12:00 midnight, which made it nice not to have that constraint in planning our days. Our only constraint was our exhaustion at the end of the day after doing so many fun things, which meant we typically went to bed before it got dark 🙂

The following documents the boat trip we took onto the Kenai Fjords. The views were pretty magnificent, and this was definitely one of the highlights of our trip. 

Our cruise included lunch on a private, secluded island of fresh fish and crab. I gave my shot at skipping rocks on the shore as well. I must admit, I am not as skilled at this activity as Taylor is, but as you can see from these pictures I get quite determined to get those little things to skip. Taylor is always teaching me his techniques, so hopefully I’ll get better as I keep practicing. 

One thing that Taylor loves is whales, particularly killer whales. He was so excited for the opportunity to see some in the wild on the Kenai Fjords, and we were lucky to see so many! Our ship captain told us that he usually doesn’t see as many as we did, so we had a lot of fun. Taylor was like a little kid getting so excited when we would see the different pods coming up. They truly are incredible creatures. 

This little guy that we spotted is called a Puffin bird. I thought he was pretty dang cute. We also saw a bunch of seals perched on some rocks as we were boating back. 

Our second night on our trip back to Anchorage was spent next to the Kenai river at a camp spot we found along the way. The next day we spent fishing on the Kenai. We were there during the end of the salmon run that the river is famous for, where thousands of salmon are running the river. It was crazy to see them all jumping out of the water! It was a fun and relaxing day on the side of the river casting out our lines hoping for good luck. Both Taylor and I got a few nibbles but weren’t lucky enough to reel any in. So, Taylor decided to get more adventurous. Whenever a fish would come close to the dock we were standing on, Taylor and John would yell out “shore fish!!” and jump in with the net we had rented to try and capture the fish this way. We had quite a few come by, and after a few attempts Taylor finally caught one! He was ecstatic and quite happy, as you can see by the look on his face. It was a fun and relaxing day on the river.