Happy 4th!

Mark was working at the Homer Campus last week, so I packed the kids into the car and we drove the 6 hours south to the end of the road in Alaska. This was the farthest trip Katie has been on by car and definitely the most I've driven with the kids by myself. Overall they did great. The boys are always great travelers they love to look at new things and can entertain themselves very well. Katie suffers from motion sickness and got sick 2 times on the drive south but not at all on the return trip. After about 4 hours of driving, you can start to see the ocean and volcanoes. So every time the boys spied the ocean they would shout ocean. Of course little Miss Katie had to shout out o-ken too!

(Sorry I didn't get any ocean pics, I was going to do it on the last day and it was too foggy for the pic to turn out)...

The weather was beautiful all over Alaska this past week. Temps in Homer were in the 60s
with the afternoon tides bringing in the good kite flying wind later in the day. Temps at our house were in the 80s! Alex collected buckets of sea shells, Sammy found 2 whole dad crabs and katie collected every little treasure she could find in her bucket. (The first time the boys were at the ocean I let Sammy bring dead crabs (in bags) home to show Nana. Darn it this time that bag of crabs blew away so they were unable to make the trip back with us. Those kids don't forget anything!).

We camped on the Homer Spit, literally at the end of the road. We were surrounded by many seagulls and eagles. Katie was so excited to see all the birds she would even forget to eat. Here's a shot of an eagle for you, perched ontop of a building...
The boys are so much bigger this year. We road on the bike path next to the ocean. They made it 3.5 miles!!!! We were almost at the end of the spit and back. My boys are getting very big!!

We stopped many times on the return to try and keep Katie's belly settled. I never feel the pics do Alaska justice, but here you go. Here's a shot at Tern Lake.

And here's a shot of the valley and glacier behind them at Turnagin Pass, highest elevation we were at on this trip. It's a bit hazy so everything is tough to see!

And here's one more shot of Tern lake with the mountains towards Seward.