myumyumyu

It’s been a full weekend! First day of work tomorrow, so this will be a quick and not very well thought out or written post. Just enough so that I can remember what happened.

Saturday evening, I went out to Eklutna Lake with Mead and Lisa for “Arts in the Park” and a nice walk around the lake, complete with happily muddy dogs :)

With Mead at Eklutna Lake

Sunday started off great with homemade sourdough waffles and hot chocolate (from scratch from cacao beans!) thanks to Mead! I later went to check out the Anchorage Museum and the market that is held downtown each weekend. The museum was really nice—I got to learn about the history of Alaska, which I always forget has only been a state for a little over 50 years. Another thing that I found really fascinating was the exhibit about Mount McKinley/Denali—there were all these incredible photographs from Bradford Washburn.

Bradford Washburn's "The Great Gorge of Ruth Glacier and Mt. McKinley," 1937

He lived to be 96, after climbing McKinley multiple times and pioneering aerial mountain photography and helping with the mapping and research of many peaks. I’ll definitely need to go back to the market—there were a lot of typical tourist booths, but also some cool ones that I want to look at again with native art, woodwork, and, of course, food.

Afterwards, I went to Girdwood, a local ski town, and took the Alyeska Tramway up 2000 feet to the top of the mountain:

Looking out from the Roundhouse

Mead's family spends many weekends skiing in Girdwood. I admire this type of active lifestyle that many folks in Alaska seem to have, really knowing how to enjoy and live their lives. I had a Bailey's raspberry hot cocoa at Seven Glaciers, the restaurant and bar at the top, as I looked at the mountains and thought about how people managed to ski down these nearly vertical slopes, when I can barely make it down a blue.

My raspberry hot cocoa at Seven Glaciers

Speaking of blue...glacier ice is blue! Apparently, this is because of its density, which makes it absorb every color of the spectrum except blue. So the blue is what reflects and is what we see...pretty cool.

Blue glacier ice