What to do? What to do?

In about a month from now Justin will be leaving me...to go to watch his younger brother graduate from high school! Yeah Austin! This trip will serve three purposes: 1. Obvious: to go to Austin's graduation. 2. To pack what's left in our storage. 3. To bring our storage unit stuff and the rest of his family out here to Skagway! Unfortunately it will not be a permanent move for my in-laws, but we will have them here for a week and a half! We are SOOOOO excited, we've been planning for a couple of months of what we want to do when they get here. Here are a few ideas:

Ride one of these to the Laughton Glacier trail head.

Hike to this cabin and set up camp

Then we'll keep hiking so we can look at this!

After that we will hike back to the cabin and spend the night and then ride the train back home.

Another idea that we have is:

Ride one of these...

...and land on something similar to this!

We'll probably try to do both! Of course we plan on eating lots o' halibut and salmon, beholding the majesty of the landscape and no getting eaten by bears!

Life in Skagway...part one

First things first. When you are in Alaska or the Yukon (most people that come to Skagway end up traveling to the Yukon Territory since it is our neighbor) it is very important to have some type of camera with you at all times. Amazing landscape photo opportunities occur at such an overwhelming rate that it can be frustrating at times when you are without a camera. It is common to come across scenes such as these:

Which way is up and which way is down?

Yakutania Point. A great place to watch for seals and whales.

Flying from Juneau to Skagway.

Road trip to Anchorage

Skagway isn't what you would call a fishing village. We cater mostly to the cruise ship companies. However, some of the families here do fish for a living and when you live here and you are in the loop of when the next fishing boat will make a special stop in Skagway...it's quite the event:

The boat finally arrives.

We've all been waiting patiently...it was too gorgeous of a day to be impatient!

Getting ready to start selling!

The big one!

Our fish! 31 lb beauty!

We paid this guy on the dock 50 cents per lb to fillet our fish for us. Not a bad deal since we didn't know how!

The best cut! Halibut cheeks are usually eaten right away. The rest is vacuum packed and put in the freezer.

Local fishing licenses are cheap and many people, especially in the winter, will buy crab pots and shrimp pots and tether them to the dock railing. There's nothing better than fresh sea food! Here is my friend Brooke pulling out her shrimp pot:

Dumping shrimp into the bucket.

"I am NOT a shrimp! I am a KING PRAWN!" Ha ha!

It's easiest to pop their heads off right away.

Justin's favorite is to make shrimp etouffee. He fell in love with Cajun cooking while living in Texas for two years. Have I mentioned that he is a great cook?? Well, he is!

Skagway brings out the outdoor enthusiast. I got into the habit of taking a walk every morning before work. This is what I often saw walking across the Skagway river bridge in early spring:

While enjoying the outdoors you always have to be on the look out for these:

Don't try to pet them. They're not nice.

If you do try to pet them and they suddenly see you as food or baby bear assassin, don't run! Use this:

No, this doesn't work like mosquito repellent. It works like pepper spray...because that's what it is. This particular model has the ability to hit a target 30 ft away!

Lunch break on a slow ship day. If you were to look at this street mid week it would be literally flooded with people.

That's all for now! There's more to come!

Arctic Bell Heather and Blueberry Blossoms

Another hike to Laughten Glacier. This time I thought I would post some of the beautiful vegetation growing along side the trail. It's a sparse representation, but this is what I had on my memory card and wanted to share them!

Fungus!

Blueberry blossoms!

Arctic Bell Heather

More blueberry blossoms! In late August/ early September these will be ready to eat!

Happy.

Home of the north wind

I never heard of Skagway until Justin and I met. He told me he was going to be a tour bus driver in Skagway, AK for the summer. I had been to Alaska once on a family trip. We flew into Anchorage and rented an RV and drove to such towns and areas as: Talkeetna (We ate the best sourdough pancakes there), Seward (Incredible landscape! We took a day cruise there and saw the most amazing wild life!), Homer (went out to the spit and watched as they brought in the day's halibut catch), Denali (beautiful country and more amazing wildlife!). It was an amazing trip and I thought that nothing could be as beautiful as Alaska. Skagway didn't let me down.

The view looking south from downtown.

Is that the star of Bethlehem, you wonder? No, it's the full moon over Skagway.

Only us winter folk get to see it. It never gets this dark in the summer!

The view looking north from our back porch.

I loved Skagway so much when I first came and Justin and I got engaged that I had to come back. We figured it would be a good idea to come for two summers and pay off some debt then go back home. This summer will be number three.

Justin

You know, I've never been good at keeping journals. The day to day life of me isn't inspiring enough, in my opinion, to put it down on paper. But I find that when I'm alone with my own thoughts, which is my common state of being these days, my thoughts threaten to riot and cause me to word vomit on the first person I see. It's not a pretty sight...or sound. So I guess this blog has to turn into something that is meant to keep my sanity in check until summer rolls around and brings the tidal wave of tourists that end up taking away my ability to think at all! So here goes:

That's my husband, Justin. He's a man, not a boy pretending to be a man. And he's my man. He's not afraid of responsibility. He's not afraid to cry. He's not afraid to say it like it is. He's not afraid to open his heart to anyone who is in need of a friend. He has a booming voice that can be heard over crowds in basketball games. He is a master of accents. He has a dream of being a sports announcer or voice talent for animated films (and he would be amazing at either of these). But for now he's a computer technician at our local railroad company. It's not his dream job, but like many other people, does it because it pays the bills.

He's good at his job because he is extremely smart. He never worked with computers before he got this job, but because he figured things out on his own while working at the local Radio Shack, the rail company had enough Justin fans to get him hired on. He's a master story teller. Anyone who knows Justin knows that this is true. When we first met he was a bus driver, first as a school bus driver, then as a tour driver in Alaska. I love listening to his bus stories. I think in the next post I'll write down one of his bus stories. He has red hair. I love his red hair. I hope we have red headed children. He hopes we don't. Apparently life isn't easy for red heads.

He tells me I'm beautiful everyday, several times a day, often at times when I'm not really all that beautiful (i.e. in the morning, no make up, bad breath, hair that could easily be mistaken for some kind of rodent nest). He is one of the most interesting people that I know. I always wonder what's going through his head. I love him.

Glacial Proposal

So here's an update for ya! I'm engaged!!! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYY!!!!!

Here's how it happened:

After I had been in Alaska for a couple of days with Justin he woke me one morning and said, "OK! It's time to get up! We have to leave by 7:30!" I asked where we were going and he said, "it's a surprise!"

Now there were three main things that I wanted to do when I got to Alaska, one was ride the train because all summer I heard him talk about taking his passengers to the train yard to ride the train because it's a really pretty tour. Two was go on a hike, any hike in Alaska would HAVE to be absolutely beautiful! Three was eat Salmon. It's good.

So he tells me to dress in hiking clothes and we get ready and get in his green VW bug and start driving... I soon notice that we're driving toward the train yard and I get really excited and exclaim, "Are we riding the TRAIN?!" He says, "Yep!" and I thought that was a great surprise! We ride the train up a canyon a ways and he starts to look troubled and I asked him if he was ok and he broke out of whatever trance he was in and gave me a big smile and said that he was great! It was an absolutely gorgeous ride!



The train stoped part way and we got off at a trail head and start hiking. We were hiking in a rain forest and it was so pretty my heart almost melted. There were blueberries growing off the side of the trail and we stopped and picked some and they were so good! I was loving life and I was thinking, wow...what a great surprise!

I wasn't sure where the hike was leading to and after a couple of miles I asked him if there was a peak that we were hiking to or a specific place that it ended and he said there was. It got to a point where I had to watch my feet closly so I wouldn't misstep and after another mile I asked what it was that we were hiking to and he straightened up and said, "that!" I looked up and saw the most beautiful glacier!!! No words could describe how beautiful it was! Like looking at a majestic inspiring palace! I was so happy! I was definitely thinking that this was such the great surprise!

We kept hiking and challenged ourselves to get onto the glacier itself. The hike got a little precarious at that point. We were crawling over small boulders that would rock under our weight we could hear underground streams running close by. We were about to give up and turn back but we decided to make our way up to the top of a certain hill and when we did we saw that we were actually on ice! It was part of the glacier flow! We also had really good view of the mountain where the flow started. We sat down to rest and eat a granola bar. After staring at the glacier for a while the clouds came down and covered the mountain. That's when Justin got on one knee and said, "Gretchen, I thought that if I was going to do this that it should be while on a glacier in Alaska..." and he pulls out a box and opens it to show the most gorgeous ring! Tears are streaming by this point and he asks me to marry him. I said no.

Ha ha! Just kidding!!! Of course I said YES!!! and threw my arms around him and we kissed a lot!! A few minutes later the clouds lifted and we could see the glacier more clearly than we had the whole hike!!! It was amazing! When we boarded the train again the narrator for the train announced that we just got engaged and everyone was so excited or at least pretended to be. :)







Later on Justin said that he made dinner reservations and we dressed up and I got my salmon.

It was the best day! Justin is the love of my life and I feel so lucky! So there's the story! I hope you were able to handle the cheese! I feel like I've waited long enough to deserve some.

Shamefully late!

I'm headed out to Alaska in 11 days!!! This trip has more significance to it than it did when I casually mentioned it at the end of my last post. One of my "friends" that's working out there is Justin...and he's turned out to be much more than just a friend.

It feels a bit late in the game to be mentioning this now. But as I said in my last post...it's taking me some time to fully join the blogging world. I keep up on my facebook much better.

Justin and I met through a common friend while he was living in Provo. There were a bunch of friends getting together at said common friend's apartment for dinner and Justin was his roommate. It's kinda tragic for me to say that we were both too scared to really talk to each other until after he left. Facebook is a blessing for this reason!

When he first got up there he was alone so I would catch him a lot online and we chatted. And then it got to be where I would sign in for the one purpose of finding him there waiting to talk to me. It soon got to the point where that wasn't enough. I remember the first phone conversation...nervously waiting for him to call, wondering if I would remember what he sounded like. But as soon as we started talking it felt natural and it was fun! He made me laugh all the time and we've just been growing closer ever since!

I'm so lucky! Not only am I going to see the most amazing person in the world, but I also have such an amazing sister and brother in law that made it possible! They have a lot of frequent flier miles and offered to buy my ticket! I'll be getting quite the tour of U.S. airports since that's how frequent flier miles tend to work. I start off by flying to Dallas and from there I go to Santa Ana. From there I go to Seattle and then to Juneau and from Juneau to Skagway! I'm so excited and very nervous! Justin feels the same way. I only have a one way ticket out to Alaska...so that means that I'm there until he's done working and then we'll be driving home together.

I can't wait to write about how things go! I really feel so lucky to have found Justin! It may be crazy to say but I love him...even though we haven't even had our first kiss!...soon to be taken care of...;) I'll be posting pictures soon!