Helicopter ride over Denali National Park

Just before take off.

As we took off.

The Nenana River (thawed out, except the little bit of ice you can see along the edges.

Riley Creek just inside the park.

The Alaskan Range

The Alaska Range with Mt. McKinley a.k.a Denali in the background.

Denali on the East side. There are two summits to the mountain, the left peak which is the south peak is the highest peak at 20,320 feet. The right peak which is the north summit is just under 20,000 feet.

A mountain we flew past.

Denali

Denali and some of the glaciers coming off it.

Just looking into the park. All the colors you see are different minerals that are in the ground.

The Nenana River

I have dated the pics for the day I took them so you can see the progression. One of these days I will take a picture of it all thawed out so you can see how it looks all summer. BTW, we will be rafting this river sometime this summer. That's one of the perks of the job, free rafting.

April 2, 2009

April 2, 2009

April 8, 2009

April 14, 2009

April 21, 2009

April 24, 2009

April 27, 2009

Busy, busy, busy!

WOW! What a turn around this week. I started work yesterday (Friday) and we are expecting our first set of guests on Tuesday, May 12. Everybody is working this weekend trying to get everything up and running and ready. I am going through a great deal of training, learning a new computer system that is used to check in guests. Kevin and the rest of the maintenance team are working frantically trying to get all the buildings and departments up and going. It is crazy around here. Things should settle down in a couple of weeks. I have no idea when our next day off will be but I will post the pictures I promised last time when that day comes.

Hope all is well with you all and we miss you.

Being a slacker!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I am a slacker. It has been a while since I posted. Things have been going pretty well here and we are trying to adjust to living here in Alaska. Some days are better than others but when you have to work in such a beautiful place that is to be expected. The weather has been great the last couple of weeks. Breakup (a.k.a Spring) has been very interesting. Lows have been in the upper 20's to low 30's while highs have been reaching into the low 70's. It is such a turn around from our first morning here when it was -27 degrees. Most of the snow has melted although piles still remain in the shady areas or the areas that point North. Daylight has been around 5:00ish AM to around 10:30ish PM. Even at 1:30 in the morning the other night, you could still see a slight bit of light to the North. I did get to see the Northern lights one night about 2:30 AM but it was mid April and by the time I got back in the room to get Kevin up and grab the camera it was already gone. It will be late Fall before I get the chance again to see it.

Yesterday we got up early and headed South to Anchorage. We got a storage unit to put most of our stuff in for the remainder of the summer until we move down that way. We had a nice dinner out and stayed at a hotel and came back up this afternoon. It is about a 4 hour drive so we didn't want to do that trip in one day. We of course forgot the camera because that is the kind of intelligent people we are so we didn't pictures of all the caribou we saw and the Eagle. It was really cool. Oh well!

I hope all are well and we miss you all!

Pictures coming soon. . . of the river breakup. Again, there are some glitches with the Internet connection around here and I can't get them uploaded this evening.