Alaska - Post 1

I know, very behind on blogging lately, but it has been crazy busy the last few weeks...I will do my best to catch you up though! First off, remember how Aunt Theresa (Paul's sister) moved to Alaska about a year ago? Well Domi and I decided to go visit her over Memorial Day! That's right - we flew up to Alaska for a long weekend! We left Wednesday morning and took a red eye back on Sunday night arriving early Monday morning. It is a 6 hour direct flight and a 3 hour time difference.  So we landed around lunch time (Alaska time) on Wednesday, went out to lunch with Theresa and Josh, and then went to climb a mountain - might as well hit the ground running, right?  This is Flat Top...

A view while climbing the mountain...notice how steep the snow is - this is what we were climbing on!

Here is the path we took up to the top. 

Here we are climbing - it was actually a lot steeper than it even looks in this picture.  We were on hands and knees holding on to rocks to get up the final bit to the top.  It was pretty scary for us considering we have never climbed a mountain before!  

But we did it!  Here we are at the summit!

We signed the summit pole!

And this picture cracks me up...look to the left of me back in the distance...here is a man who climbed the mountain in insulated rubber rain boots and his underwear!  As Theresa kept telling us, anything goes in Alaska!  But I couldn't help but wonder...at what point did he decide to take his pants off during his climb?  He walked all around the top without seeming to notice or care that he was in fact not wearing anything but underwear and boots.  It was funny.

Here we all are at the top!

And a view from the top!

As I said, it was a pretty scary climb at the top.  Domi and I did not want to go back down the way we came up.  Theresa tried to convince us to sled down the mountain, but we weren't thrilled with that option either.  Luckily, there was a back side to the mountain that was a bit less strenuous, so we went down that way.  We did end up sledding down the mountain on our butts, which was a lot of fun, but that back side was a lot less steep than the front!  It was a lot of fun and a fantastic start to our trip!