This weekend has been amazing. The hike on Saturday was already awesome, and then Sunday was just like the perfect day. It started with a visit to the weekend market, where Charlie and I tried some new foods:
 |
| Russian spicy beef piroshki |
 |
| Beer-battered halibut (yes, that is a big scoop of butter) |
Then, we went on an amazing drive. We were going to a reception at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, which was sort of a social disaster for us but led to many other wonderful sights. It's just incredible that there are no time constraints at all here. We just drove along Seward Highway, one of the most beautiful highways in the world, with the luxury of stopping at every lookout point that we wanted to see, for as long as we wanted. And we did stop many, many times. By the time we got home, we'd been out driving around for about 8 hours. This is just going to be a series of photos because I honestly don't have words to describe them.
 |
| Tip of Turnagain Arm from the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center |
 |
| Portage Lake & Glacier |
Thank you to dear
Carol and Gary, whose blog and photos we discovered via a Google image search when researching Portage Lake, for inspiring the following photo:
 |
| "One can actually stand at the shore and pull out an iceberg from Portage Lake. What a fantastic way to experience and touch the past." -- Carol and Gary, 06/22/2011 |
 |
| Recreation area along Seward Highway |
 |
| Looking out from Beluga Point |
 |
| Train tracks along Seward Highway at Beluga Point |
 |
| Charlie is tiny; Alaska is huge |
 |
| Walking back to the car along the tracks |
 |
| Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge |
 |
| Sunset back home |
 |
| The end of an incredible day |
Today, I went grocery shopping with Stella and Jensen, the other Yalies in the program who just arrived, and then they came over for dinner. We were able to successfully recreate the Alaskan red salmon in lemon and brown sugar that Mead made! It's nice to have more friends in town. They came just in time for the summer solstice later this week, so we're all planning to hike out to Flattop Mountain, which is apparently a big party that night.
And finally, the reason that I'm up this late writing this post is because Charlie and I had an unbelievable two-hour conversation about our use of Google products. We are basically Google doppelgangers. We shared our organizational systems of our Gmail inboxes, calendars, browsers, and more, and it was just an incredibly nerdy and awesome time. We completely rudely ignored our new housemate and missed the sunset. It was so worth it though. What are the chances that two random people who end up living together in Alaska are from NJ, love Asian food, and are Google geeks? I'm not sure, but it's pretty awesome.
Good night!
