The latest and greatest

Well it was really a stroke of luck that we got on the flight. See, in order to go on all these exciting trips I have to have one of the managers at the front desk call the vendor and set everything up. When the manager called early in the afternoon on Tuesday they said there was a few seats open at that point and if we wanted to go on the flight we needed to be in the lobby and ready for pick up at 4:15 and if no more paying guests signed up for the flight then we would be able to go. Well, as you can tell no one else signed up. We were blessed with good weather even though it was overcast at the airport when we left we were able to get above the cloud cover and have spectacular views of the mountain. the day we went also happen to be summit day for a group of climbers that were on the mountain and they happen to be reaching the summit when we flew by. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

This is the plane we rode in.

Kevin anticipating takeoff.

Just after take off, that is the town of Healy.

As you can see we had some clouds.

But we were able to rise above them.

And when we did break through we were blessed to see Mt. McKinley towering above the clouds.

As we soared to above 15,000 feet we had to put on oxygen masks since the plane we were on was not pressurized.

We were able to see some of the glaciers coming off the mountain.

We were actually flying over the south peak and looking down at the north peak from about 21,000 feet.

Those black dots on the peak are actual people standing on top of the mountain.

There are a group of climbers huddled up with a string of climbers coming up to them.

The climbers walk in groups of 5 people that are tied off to each other. There was supposed to be around 10 or 12 groups climbing the mountain at this time.

This is a shot of the north side of the mountain with another mountain to the west of it in the back ground. We were flying away at this point.

We did finally go white water rafting the other day also. We did that on Thursday of last week. There happen to be a news crew there that day doing a story on activities to do in the Denali area. We happen to be flipping channels on the TV Monday night when we just caught the story being aired and there we were on the TV. It was pretty cool. The news station was the Anchorage ABC channel.

Hope all are well and we would love to hear from you.

What we have been up to. . . .

Nothing really exciting to write home about but here it is.

Last week some good friends, Phil and Denise Jones, were up here with a tour group and I was able to visit with them some. I went on a hike with them one of the days they were here. Here's a couple of the pics from the hike.

We have also been ATV riding:

I have made some new friends and we all have Wednesday's off so we have been having girls time. We went out to eat last night and had a good time.

Me, Holly, Andrea, Caressa and Julia, there was another girl that joined us but she didn't have her pic made with us, her name is Matia.

Although there are times we have a difficult time with our living arrangements (small and not much privacy) we are having a good time. We like most of the people we work with and for. I have even been promoted to supervisor at the front desk. The promotion means a dollar more an hour and we were able to move to a room that shares a bathroom with another room which means no more getting up in the middle of the night and walking across to another building to go to the bathroom. Anyway, we are still looking for jobs in the Anchorage area so that when something more permanant comes available we can move.

Hope all is well with each of you. We miss you and would love to hear from any of you.