What I did for summer vacation

For our summer vacation, the Clover family traveled across two countries to Alaska. To begin the trip, we dug out our winter clothes and with the weather a scorching 99 F outside, we packed. We loaded all of our many bags onto a plane and flew across the country to Minnesota. Little Clover enjoyed the snacks and I worked on the Jaywalker sock. Somewhere between Minneapolis and Anchorage on the six hour flight, I wove in the ends.

Just in time to look out the window and see ice covered mountains and glacier-blue ice.

Little Clover swears he saw polar bear tracks. The three of us kept our noses pressed to the cold and teeny tiny window as we watched the most amazing scenery pass beneath our plane. I fell in love. The mountains where huge, much larger than the Smokeys, the Colorado Rockies, and the Ozarks. As we watched the glaciers and the snow caps pass, we were greated by the largest mountain towering out above the clouds - Mt. McKinley (aka Mt. Denali).

We touched down in Anchorage and as we stepped off the plane, were greated by a 12 foot stuffed Grizzly bear and this:

The oohs and ahhs from the non-Anchorage passengers brought smiles to the people returning home. We found out that Alaskans are truly some of the friendliest people ever and love to talk to you. I think that's why ordering the pizza over the phone took me about 15 minutes. I found out quite a bit about Doug who answered the phone right away. Doug and I continued our friendly chat when he delivered the pizza that night around 10:00 pm in broad daylight. The sun set sometime after we went to bed at 11:45 (and was shining brightly when we woke up at 5:00 am to catch the train).

This was also my first time to ever ride a train. I've been on the mass transit rail systems of Atlanta and Chicago many a time, but this was a genuine train, with a dining car. Traveling by train was fantastic! You get to breathe in the scenery and Alaska has plenty of scenery to offer. I didn't get a lick of sleeping or knitting done because I was just way to busy staring out the window. About halfway through the four hour trip to Seward, the conductor opened the windows between the cars. We moved to the open air sections and snapped plenty of pictures and inhaled the cool Alaskan air. We saw more glaciers, mountain goats, waterfalls, ocean inlets, and tons of mountains. We finally made it to Seward in complete awe of the State. Our traveling was over and our vacation was about to begin.