Holy cow. We went to ALASKA! (It was over a month ago now but we're still pretty stoked about it.) It almost seems crazier to me than going to Europe, which is kind of weird, but the flight was longer than our trip to London and it's just somewhere that few people I know have been. Everyone and their mom and their mailman is going to Iceland right now (we did too), but ALASKA?! Nope.
My best friend, Bethany (the very same Bethany that took our engagement photos!), moved to Alaska a few years ago to be with her now-husband, Scott (it's a super cute story, by the way, and we are SO, SO happy for them!) Ever since she moved there, Nick and I have been dying to visit. Of course, life got in the way and year after year we didn't make it up there.
When Bethany and Scott announced their engagement and upcoming move back east, we knew we had to get there ASAP, while we had the chance. It was a short trip, but the entire 4 days were so jam packed with amazingness that it felt like much longer. Truly, the trip of a lifetime. It's not every day you get to visit Alaska and spend time with friends that LIVE there and travel, kayak, hike, etc. all the time. I know that if we had visited Alaska in an alternate universe on our own or on a cruise or something, we would never have done 90% of the things we did. We are so grateful to Bethany and Scott for hosting us on this trip and showing us their Alaska. THANK YOU GUYS.
So here's a little recap and a bunch of photos from the first couple days of our trip to the 49th state.
Day 1
We left Bethany and Scott's house in Anchorage early on Thursday morning and drove south for our long weekend. All 3 nights of our trip were spent away from their home, and the first night we tent camped near Portage Glacier. The glacier cruise was our first big plan of the trip, and it did not disappoint. So blue and beautiful!
After the cruise, we hiked back the Byron Glacier Trail. It's hard to describe how incredibly beautiful everything was, and these photos don't really do it justice. You'll just have to go sometime. After our hike back, we climbed up a huge rock and stopped to have a few Alaskan beers. You'll find that stopping to gaze at the beauty and drink a few beers is a recurring theme on this trip, ha.
Later in the afternoon we headed to Girdwood Brewing for some local beer flights. It was fun to chat with locals around the fire. Most said that they went to Alaska for a visit and never returned home (which seems to be a common theme.) Afterwards we grabbed incredible pizza for dinner from Chair 5 - no photos, I think we are it all too quickly. Speaking of pizza, Moose's Tooth pizza was very highly recommended to us, but we didn't get the chance to go there. The pizza at Chair 5 was killer though - highly recommend!
After dinner we headed to Alyeska Resort to take the tram up the mountain to watch the sunset. The resort itself reminded me of The Overlook Hotel from The Shining, mostly because it was so massive. I'd love to see it in the winter! We headed up the mountain on the tram around 8:30 PM and the sun didn't really start setting to close until 9:30-10 PM. SO COOL. It felt amazing to have this completely full day and not have to start winding down for the night at our usual 5:30-6 PM sunset. This first sunset we saw in Alaska was absolutely gorgeous and we couldn't have picked a better place to view it from.
Even though the tram takes you most of the way up the mountain, we had to hike a pretty steep trail to get to the very top, where we snapped most of our photos. It felt so incredible to get all the way to the top and be rewarded with that amazing sunset view. Finally, exhausted, we hopped on the tram to head back down the mountain, where we saw our first and only black bear of the trip! Then back to camp we went to recoup for day 2.
Day 2
We started off our second morning with a home-cooked breakfast over the fire at our campsite. It rained pretty much all night and continued throughout the morning, but luckily the rain started to clear as we drove further south to Seward.
When we arrived in Seward, we stopped for lunch at Seward Brewing - both the food and the beers were great. Seward is a port city, so there were lots of cruise ships in the bay and people roaming around the town. We actually didn't explore the town and shops very much, but it was pretty cute from what we saw.
After lunch we went down to Miller's Landing to kill some time and check out the coast of Resurrection Bay. The Bay is HUGE - we'll share more about it in our second post. The color of the water is so blue-green and lovely. Naturally, we stopped to have another Alaskan Beer.
Later in the day, we headed to the cabin that we were calling home for the night. With a full kitchen and grill, we decided to cook a meal together and eat dinner by the fire. Day 3 was going to be an early one, so after a few more beers, we hit the hay. More to come soon!
Sarah & Nick
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2 comments
i didnt want to open this post because i wasnt mentally nor emotionally prepared for the beauty that your pictures were going to show.
ReplyDeleteBUT OMG!!!!!!
Sarah!!! take me with you next time!!! im begging you! (haha!)
Alaska is a dream of mine! it looks SO BEAUTIFUL! i dont even know where to start!
these pictures!!!! i can only imagine in person!
i cant wait for your next post!
Thanks, Les! You realllllly need to go sometime. It was absolutely gorgeous. Total dream trip!
DeleteXo, sarah