Day 25 - Eagle River/ Anchorage AK - 9 July

Quote of the Day: “Oh, De’Etta. I wondered what all the screaming was about.” Quote by Bernard from our Elmendorf Gospel Service. God is so good. We couldn’t make it to the gospel service as Mike was sick yesterday. Monica and Quincy told us that they had a softball game tonight. We showed up and watched one of their first wins…..I was quiet and visited with spectators until the team got off the field. Then I simply had to yell….”Cole”. My dear friend Nichole, spotted me and returned the yell. Then Monica, Elvie…..oh it was great. I miss “my ladies” but God moves us on for reasons. Sweet fellowship.

We woke up this a.m. with the knowledge that this was our LAST full day in Alaska weighing on our hearts. We decided to do as much as we could.

Mirror Lake: This is a quaint lake out by Eagle River - where we used to live. The younger ones wanted to fish - so we headed out. I used to bring the kids out here quite often. The older ones would hike, fish, play baseball or volley ball and the youngers would swing. We’d picnic and fish. It was fun to take everyone out there. Trish, I think Mirror Lake is one of the first places we went as friends…..after the Eagle River McDonalds where we met. ::snort::

Mirror Lake
House across the lake. There are several of these houses being built - love the float planes

No one caught a thing, but we had fun.

Caches: We couldn’t leave AK without caching. We found 4. The 5th I THINK is under a bulldozed field.

One of our cache finds....

Returning equipment: Alas our fun is ending. We returned all the fishing gear to Chaplain Matt B. Thanks, Matt. The men folk are talking about flying up for a week of fishing next year. Gregg, Nichole’s dh, says he can let us know when they are doing a halibut trip next year…..maybe.

Softball Game: Already shared about that above. What JOY to see such dear friends again.

Packing: Mike ran out to buy diapers, pacifiers and ½ a gal of milk. Necessities for our trip tomorrow. I’m doing laundry and packing things up.

Day 24 - Anchorage/Kenai AK - 8 July

Quote of the Day: Arielle to her friends, “We’ll see you again. We’ll see you in two years!” Sadly, most of our friends have moved or are moving this summer. BUT we are blessed that Darshia and Dayton and Tammy LIVE up here…so we WILL see them again - Lord willing!

Mike woke up with the bug. The children ALL wanted to go to chapel and we don’t all fit into one rental car. Mike decided we’d go to the first service and play it from there.

We happened to sit behind a new (to us) chaplain’s family. They have 3 little boys. Zander and Luke hit it off IMMEDIATELY. I offered to pull strings to get them reassigned to W TX, but they thought they’d rather stay here. ::snort:: I used Arielle’s quote for the day, since Zander has so many, but when it was time for the family to leave Zander said, “C’mon I have plans to play with Luke!” ::snort::

It was GREAT to see some of “My Ladies” at chapel. We also got to visit with the last chaplain that was here when we were. He and his family are moving out next month to be Sr Prots at McCord AFB.

After chapel we went to BK with Dayton, Tammy and their children. The kids have had so much fun up here with friends. We “stormed Midnight Sun Park”. We had hoped to make it to the Gospel service, but by this time Mike needed to come home and sleep. Stacia also took a nap.

This paved the way for Arielle, Jamin, and I to head downtown to the tourist shops. I didn’t think there would be a moment; we seized the opportunity. Jamin enjoyed Title Wave (bookstore) and Arielle and I managed to cover all of 4th and 5th avenue before the parking meter ran out of time. LOL

These Salmon Statues are all over downtown

Anchorage is known as the "city of flowers" and "city of lights"....we drank in the lush flowers Back at the apartment, we found everyone stirring but not wanting to do much. We talked about things to do on our last day in AK. The big plan was to drive up to the Russian and fish all day, but Mike is not going to be up for such a drive (total of at least 6 hours) before we begin the flying/driving marathon back to TX. We have a list of things that we “could” do tomorrow. We could climb the mountain behind our old home, go to Mirror Lake, fish at Ship Creek or Eklutna, go to the Wildlife Conservatory, Portage Glacier….and we still have about 6 folks we’ve not caught up with yet. We shall see. I have a feeling we are NOT going to get it all done.

One thing that DID work out was to meet with Dody. She had to pick up her son at the airport at 1 a.m. We met at Village Inn at 8:30 and had a fun visit. Dody is a fellow USAF spouse, homeschooler, and long time SHS member. She moved up here the month we moved to TX. She lives OUT of Anch. We’d met before but this time we had a nice long visit….it was 11:00 p.m. by the time we noticed it was getting late. We asked a kind manager to take our photo. We even switched sides so that the same photo wouldn’t be on both of our blogs. Hmmmm….when Cindy met Dody, Cindy tried to break into a gentlemen’s car…..when I met with Dody last night I tried to leave without paying….just what sort of HomeSchool support list IS SHS? ::snort::