The mountains are calling and I must go. - John Muir

Here I am! Otter sitting again. Right now they are sleeping floating in the water and its so cute that it hurts. I am back at work today after an almost two week adventure! Carolyn came up to visit! It was so bizarre having someone from home here in Seward. It also made me realize just how much I love this place. I wanted to show her everything but there just wasn't enough time.

She came in on Tuesday morning! The weather was pretty cloudy and slightly rainy. Pretty much exactly how I expected when someone finally came to visit- the weather would suck. But of course that didn't bring us down! She was able to come watch me feed the otters than tube feed the seal! Then of course we had to get chinese buffet (all you can eat chinese for $10, we always stuff ourselves until we feel sick. but its so great.) Next we biked down to the tonsina point trail head in the rain. I was completely covered in mud from head to foot from the mud splashing up on us. The hike was nice and it was only raining a little bit. We saw some eagles and saw the salmons swimming upstream to breed. 

It was a sort of awkward time for her to visit because we were losing our housing in AVTEC and the other stranding interns were heading home while I was transfering to a new apartment. buttt I couldn't move into the new apartment because a boy lived in that one and I wasn't allowed to be there until he moved out. So we were kind of stranded with all of our stuff and had to move it next door to our neighbors. We slept on the floor there for our next couple of days in Seward. Luckily our neighbors were happy to have guests, because we pretty much took over their living room. 

The next day me and Carolyn hiked the harding icefield trail! I have never hiked it in the rain so that was cool to have a different perspective. unfortunately it was also very cloudy at the top so we couldn't see the whole ice field like I could last time. We had scheduled to go home on 4oclock shuttle, thinking that was plenty of time to hike the trail. But we took our time and stopped to take pictures and eat snacks so we were really behind. I knew that we couldn't make it for the 4 o clock shuttle but I figured it wouldn't be a big deal to just hop onto the 5 o clock shuttle. We ran into the glacier guides heading down (where we took the shuttle from) and they were with a group of thirteen people. They informed us that there was definitely no room left on the 5pm shuttle. That was the last one that ran. We had 10 minutes. So we started sprinting down the mountain (not easy). after we were thoroughly exhausted and nowhere near the end of the trail we accepted the fact that we had missed it. We planned on calling my roommate to pick us up when we got to the bottom. No service. We went into the visitor center to use their phone. No phone.

Harding Icefield Trail

Luckily some guy we had met on the hike was walking by and we started chatting with him. 10 minutes later we were sitting in the back of his truckbed on top of his firewood getting a ride back to town. It was raining and the raindrops were slapping us in the face but we couldn't stop laughing at the whole ridiculous situation. The next day was a whale watching cruise! The weather actually turned out to be really nice! we visited two different glaciers and saw tons of humpback whales and porpoises and much more wildlife. It was a really good cruise.  We also got margaritas made out of glacier ice!

me and carolyn by Aialik glacier

On Carolyns last day in Seward I took her on the hike up Mt. Marathon. Somehow the weather had turned completely and it was a gorgeous sunny day. The views were spectacular off marathon and we spent time identifiying wildflowers and playing by the river. That night was our train to anchorage! The views were gorgeous! we passed glaciers, mountains, lakes and streams. We also saw a black bear eating berries by the river!
Denali itself was a great adventure as well. After our train trip there and some confusing shuttles we made camp at riley creek campground. We spent four nights there and its just a blur of hiking, nature, laughter and happiness. We did almost all of the trails near the entrance of the park- the rest of the park is trail-less. Its just route finding. On the second day we took a shuttle down the only road to the end- 92 miles. The terrain changed so much during that time and everything was gorgeous. We saw 7 grizzly bears including a mom and her cubs, herds of caribou, countless moose, and dalls sheep up on the rocks.

Our campsite

Caribou

Dalls sheep

one of the nights at our campsite, we were looking up at a cute grey squirrel climbing in a tree when all of a sudden it leaped out of the tree towards us and spread its legs. We had to duck to avoid him hitting us in the head. He sailed over us into the next tree. it was a flying squirrel! Totally unexpected and awesome!
The trip seemed to fly by but we had so much fun and had great weather in Denali! We actually even got a glimpse of the mountain, Denali. Only 30% of the people who come to the national park get to see the mountain because its most of the time covered by clouds.

Denali mountain in the background!

It was such a great trip. I never want to leave alaska!!!