Eklutna: the Native Word for AMAZING

This week, Andy looked online for nearby lakes we could take Ripley swimming in because he absolutely loves to swim.  He stumbled across Eklutna Lake, which is about an hour north of our house.  Eklutna is the water source for Anchorage - what a fantastic place to have our dog swim!

We got going around 8:30 and when we got to the lake, the water was perfectly calm:

The scenery, much like pretty much everything in Alaska, was completely breathtaking.  We let Ripley head out for a swim right away:

On the way out of town I checked out the Chugach State Park website (yes, even though this place is over an hour NORTH of our house, it's still in the same State Park as many of the other places we went over the last few days), and it recommended two trails to hike.  One was "easy" and circled the lake, but was 12.9 miles one way.  Kind of a lot of distance for an easy Sunday.  The other was the Twin Peaks trail which was only 2.6 miles.  It was listed as "moderate to difficult" but since I've been in Alaska for almost a month now, I am clearly an expert hiker.  Twin Peaks it would be!

The first part of the trail was densely treed - and densely mosquitoed. Oh, and really F*%#ing steep! We got completely eaten alive and kept saying "it's going to be windy soon! the bugs will go away! It will get flatter!"  We were such idiots.

View back down from roughly a mile up.  Already wishing we'd chosen the "easy" hike.

 After swatting countless mosquitoes, sweating profusely and swearing more times than I'd like to admit, there was a break in the trees and we got to enjoy the view!

Worth it! So pretty.

If I look like I'm dying, it's because I am.  This is not an attractive picture of me, but I feel like I need to remember my pain the next time we decide to take this hike. 

Soooo nice.  Love this view.

 As we got a little higher up, we started to see the twin peaks.  They were really rocky and there weren't any trees on this part of the trail.  We kept our eyes peeled because the website mentioned there would be sheep up here. (Wild ones, not the kinds you make sweaters from)

So we climbed, and we climbed, and we climbed some more. We hit the two mile mark and felt pretty good about ourselves, but it kept getting steeper.

Eventually, we got to a point where it was so steep and rocky, we didn't want to take Ripley any higher.  Andy and I, determined to finish the damn hike, decided to trade off with the dog.  From the point where we stopped, there was just a little ridge to cross:

And over the hill...the payoff: (Andy's pictures)

The view from the end of the trail was nothing short of spectacular.  I felt like I was in a granola bar commercial.

From that point, you could also see back to the twin peaks.  There were sheep, but they're REALLY hard to see from the pictures.  I promise we saw them.

Can you spot Andy and Ripley waiting for me to finish the hike ?

My turn to see the view.  I even took this fantastic self portrait to prove I made it.  

On the way back down, after I fell on the trail (I didn't hurt myself, but I'm sure it was funny to watch), I got a chance to take more pictures of wildflowers.  Boring to you, maybe, but I'm happy to put my new book to work:

This one was hard to tell from the book, but I think it's called "Twinflower" - see how they are all in little pairs?
For reference, the flowers are teeny - smaller than my pinky nail.

Lungwort - kind of an ugly name for a pretty flower

Meadow with lots of Northern Paintbrush (yellow) and Geraniums (blue)
This is also probably the LEAST steep portion of the trail in the last 2/3 of the hike.

My new favorite - Northern Monkshood.  The book says it's very poisonous, but it's also really pretty.

Fireweed - knew that one

Columbine - this one was more pink than the red ones we've been seeing

Alpine Lily - so tiny!

 The walk down was definitely less painful than the walk up, but it was long, and it felt like it went on forever.  Every time we turned around a switchback we thought we were almost done, only to see that the lake was quite a ways down.

Andy looking weary.
This is the viewpoint where we first saw the lake on the way up...
this is how we knew we still had a LONG way to go.

The whole trip was about 3.5 hours, not including the drive.  So far, this is my favorite place we've been.  I think it helped that we didn't anticipate how bad the hike was - because it was really bad.  In looking at the website again, it looks like we did 1800 feet elevation gain in the 2.6 miles, which is pretty steep.  We're planning to come back and do the flat trail another time.  I think we could probably do the 13 miles in the same amount of time!! 

What a weekend!

Saturday Part 2 - Portage

After our busy morning with the Riordans, we headed home for a nap and then headed out on another excursion - this time out to Portage.

Portage is about at the end of the Turnagain Arm - remember that bit of geography?

A is our house, B is the Portage Glacier

Portage is famous for having a big glacier.  Well...it used to be big, anyway.  There's a visitor's center on a lake where you used to look right at the glacier - the glacier has since retreated quite a ways up the mountain.  We visited Portage when we came out here last August.  It's only about an hour from Anchorage and is a nice drive along the Turnagain Arm.  Like last year, the weather in Portage was kind of crappy.

driving in along the Arm - those're rain clouds.

Before you get to "the" Portage Glacier, you drive in through a National Forest with great scenery and lots of places to camp.  We might put this one on the list for when we're ready to bust out the tent.   We got out and decided to walk around.

view of another glacier (not "THE" glacier) up the mountain

Ripley enjoying the trail

forest!

me by a big tree that fell over.  Thrilling!

Andy took this - how cute is this little mushroom?

How cute is this dog? - As you can guess, he found the water.

Ripley also liked the really nice walkways through the forest

Columbine!

After this day, we were exhausted.  We went to bed before 10 p.m. (Ripley fell asleep about 10 minutes after we got home).  Little did we know the next day would be killer in terms of physical activity...

Friends!

Andy's friend Brian and his wife, Anna, are in town! We have friends! Andy and Brian have known each other since Kindergarten and they are two sides of the same coin.  I really liked getting to meet Brian before the wedding and I'm glad to finally know some of Andy's friends.  I just wish they didn't live in Texas.  If you were at our wedding, you probably remember Brian:

Best. Wedding speech. Ever.

Needless to say, I had to prepare myself for a lot of laughing.  The two of them together are completely hilarious.  


On Saturday, we picked them up to hang out.  We decided to take the dogs out to Flattop to wear them out.  Brian and Anna's dog, Nuka, is a 10 month old lab/shepherd mix.  She needs the wearing out.

Brian had a new camera - Andy enjoyed taking pictures of him messing with it.
There was a lot of maturity displayed on this little outing

Me and the dogs.

 The weather, as it has been all week, was perfect.  Maybe a little windy, but otherwise awesome.  More of the same great views along powerline pass:

backside of Flattop

A new flower - I got a book so now I know what I'm looking at.  This is called False Hellebore.
It's really pretty, and apparently, also poisonous. 

The dogs made fast friends. I think it helps that they look alike.

 Ripley showed Nuka how to play in the water - she wasn't too sure about how cold it was and the fact that it was moving.  They don't have rivers like this in Texas, apparently

Such a nice day!

After our hike, we went back to our respective houses (by the way, Brian's parents live in our DREAM neighborhood...they might be getting us as neighbors when we're ready to buy), and then met back up at one of the Saturday Markets in Anchorage.  (we didn't take the camera for this part of the day) This one was downtown and is where most of the tourists go.  The stuff to buy is mostly kind of cheesy - a lot of touristy t-shirts - but there are some nice local people who sell some awesome handmade stuff.  There we met up with Brian's parents, his brother and sister-in-law, and his aunt and uncle - the whole gang! They were planning to go to the air show later, but somehow the plan morphed into enjoying the weather on the rooftop deck at the Snow Goose, a brewpub in downtown Anchorage.  We had a great time with the family and enjoyed a couple of beers and a lot of laughs.  Thanks, Riordans!! Hopefully we can see a lot more of them before Brian and Anna head back to Texas in a couple of weeks.

Turnagain Arm

On Wednesday we popped out after work for a quick adventure.  Since we basically live on the edge of Chugach State Park (which is enormous) there's always some close-by options if we want to get out and enjoy the weather and the scenery.  We figure we need to make the most of it before things turn into winter around here!

So we drove about 15 minutes south of our house along the Turnagain Arm and stopped at the first interesting trail head we saw.  For reference, we live at the "A" on the map, we drove straight south and then a bit to the east.  The Turnagain Arm is that sliver of ocean that runs south of Anchorage (like an arm, I guess).:

Just off the parking lot was a nice waterfall with people sunbathing and even swimming.  I'm not ready for glacial water, and I'm pretty sure the world isn't ready to see me in a bathing suit ever, so needless to say, I stayed on dry land.

This is the view from the parking lot, looking across the Arm:

When you start up the trail, there's a number of little paths with interpretive signs about wildlife and the native plants:

Ripley enjoyed exploring the river:

After hiking for a short while, we got to the top!  I don't know if we were at the end of the trail or not, but the trail got really steep and turned into shale/gravel and we decided it was a good spot to turn around.

The view over the inlet - so pretty!

The boys:

The tide was really far out - a couple days later we drove down this same road and you couldn't see any of the mudflats.

At the end, Ripley got his reward - swimming!! He really enjoyed himself.

Not too bad for a Wednesday evening!