Adventure of a Lifetime

Our family vacation to Alaska was amazing! Hopefully it won't be just a "once-in-a-lifetime" adventure because there is so much more to see/do/explore...

What is still on your Alaska bucket list?

All:  Seeing Denali and the aurora borealis

R:  Taking the Alaska Railroad

Me:  Visiting the rest of the Alaska NPS units, including the remote fly-in parks

Cruising the Fjords

Our big adventure for today was the 6-hour Kenai Fjords National Park Cruise with Major Marine Tours. Since the tour didn't depart until 11:30AM, we headed out after breakfast for a look around Seward. 

At the southern end of town is the beginning of the Iditarod National Historic Trail. Established by Congress in 1978, the trail celebrates the route that first connected Native Alaskan villages and later served mining camps, trading posts, and other settlements founded during the Alaskan Gold Rush Era (1880-1920). Sled dog teams were the only reliable means to transport goods and people along the route in winter. Most notably, when a diphtheria outbreak threatened the residents of Nome in 1925, the only way to get them enough serum for inoculations was by train from Anchorage to Nenana, and then mushers and their sled dog teams (have you heard the story of Balto?) relayed the precious cargo the final 674 miles in less than 5.5 days.

 

938 miles from Seward to Nome

Monsters of the Midway

For our last full day in Katmai National Park, we spent most of our time hanging out with the bears. I had asked the lodge about the possibility of a flightseeing tour to visit Alagnak Wild River, Aniakchak National Monument & Preserve, and the preserve portion of Katmai, but nothing could be arranged for today. Guess we'll have to come back to Alaska another time to check those units off my bucket list!

Another sign pic

We're Going on a Bear Hunt

After checking out of the hotel and returning the rental car this morning, we started the second leg of our trip with a one-hour Alaska Airlines flight from Anchorage to King Salmon. 

Cook Inlet

Pressing Our Luck

Our good friends from college, RH and C, are also back here in Illinois. After some discussion in our group text, we decided to see the Cubs-Dodgers game together. However, rather than get seats in advance, we opted to park in the remote lot (free), take the shuttle to the ballpark (also free), and walk-up to the ticket window at Wrigley Field (no service fees). This way if the weather was bad or there were no good tickets left, we could just find a sports bar nearby to watch the game without having to commit any money ahead of time.

Yep, we got tickets!

Monuments by Moonlight

Our hotel is on the corner of K Street and 4th Street NW in Mount Vernon Triangle, which I had read was a safe neighborhood. So it was a little disconcerting to hear a woman screaming from the street below when we were upstairs this afternoon. We found out from the front desk that someone had snatched her purse/bags while she was on the sidewalk nearby. Needless to say, that made us rethink our plans to walk the 0.75 miles to Union Station this evening and called a cab instead.

We grabbed a quick dinner from Raising Cane's inside Union Station before the 7:00PM check in for the Monuments by Moonlight Tour that we had reserved with Old Town Trolley Tours. Here's the view we had looking southwest at Columbus Circle and the Capitol while we waited to board the trolley...

The Freedom Bell is a double-scale replica of the Liberty Bell

On the Prairie

After eating a quick breakfast in the hotel this morning, we checked out and headed south on US-69, arriving at Fort Scott National Historic Site just before 9:00AM. From the alert on their website, I knew that the park buildings were temporarily closed on Wednesdays and Thursdays, but it didn't occur to me that it also meant the visitor center would not be staffed. Oof. 🤦🏻‍♀️ 

☑ Unit #182

The Bear

Have you seen FX's "The Bear"? The show has garnered a lot of positive buzz of late, receiving several nominations (and wins) for the Primetime Emmys (10 for Season 1), Golden Globes (3 for Season 2), and upcoming Screen Actors Guild Awards. We were a little late to jump on the bandwagon, but after recently binging our way through both seasons on Hulu, count us among the fans of the show. 

Why?

1. It's set in Chicago, more specifically an Italian beef sandwich shop in Chicago. The main character, Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) is an award-winning chef who comes home to run the restaurant he inherited after the suicide of his older brother. Besides his brother's debts, he is also left to deal with both a kitchen and a staff that are dysfunctional. 
2. Food. Given that the show is about a restaurant, and Carmy and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) are trained chefs, the food itself is essentially another member of the cast. Everything they prepare looks amazing!

Several of the locations in the show are actual restaurants in Chicago, so we decided to take a "foodie field trip" around the city to try them for ourselves...

Get Me to the Church On Time

Today was the primary reason for our trip to New York... the wedding of our dear friends' daughter! Since the ceremony wasn't taking place until later this afternoon, I figured we had some time to squeeze in a visit to yet another nearby national park unit, Sagamore Hill National Historic Site.

☑ #174 of 424 NPS units for me (#168 for R)

Unfortunately, I goofed up the date when tickets for guided tours of the Roosevelt home would become available online. When I checked the website in mid-May, tickets for the 10:00AM tour were already sold out, and there was only one spot left at 11:00AM, which I immediately nabbed. To complicate matters further, the visitor center/museum didn't open until 11:00AM, so we wouldn't be able to go through the exhibits there beforehand either. Doh! 🤦🏻‍♀️

Lovely Lady Liberty

As soon as we knew that we could definitely make it to the wedding in New York, I booked tickets for us to go up to the crown of the Statue of Liberty with Statue City Cruises. As the only authorized concessioner to ferry passengers to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, there are a limited number of tickets to the crown each day. I was a little concerned since we would be there during the summer travel season, but I was super excited to find out that there were still some 9:00AM spots available two months in advance! Yay!

The Wizard of West Orange

After leaving Morristown, it took us about 30 minutes to drive to West Orange, NJ and Thomas Edison National Historical Park. 

☑ #166 of 424 NPS units

While Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph (1877) and incandescent light bulb (1879) in his laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ, by the mid-1880s his business operations had outgrown the facilities there. He moved his industrial research and development laboratory into the West Orange complex in 1887, a campus ten times the size of Menlo Park. Here, along with his teams of scientists/engineers, he perfected his phonograph, developed motion pictures, and invented many other devices and technologies.

We're Loyal to You, Illinois

Because the first game of the Continental Tire Main Event at T-Mobile Arena didn't tip off until late in the afternoon, we took it easy this morning. After sharing a small breakfast across the bridge at Aloha Specialities, we both had some luck at the blackjack tables. Yay!

Having pre-paid for event parking at Park MGM, we decided to take advantage of it and drive down to the arena a bit early. We took the tram over to The Shops at Crystals and walked the rest of the way to the Cosmopolitan for a late lunch. Since we didn't have time (or reservations) for Momofuku, we opted for its walk-up cousin, Bāng Bar, instead. Yum!

Flatbread fold-ups with spicy pork and teriyaki chicken

Surf's Up!

R's cousin A arranged for surf lessons for M and J with his buddy Kevin, owner of Heʻe Nalu Surf School. Since Kevin scouts out several locations for the best conditions each morning, we were up early, eagerly awaiting the notification about where to meet up. By 8:30AM, we were at Kalapaki Beach in Lihue. A was already there, ready to go out on his foil.

Sleeping with the Fishes

Of all of the things we wanted to do during our time on the Big Island, night snorkeling with manta rays was at the top of our list. R's cousin and her family were on the Big Island a couple of weeks before and had a great time doing this, so we decided to use the same tour company, SunLight on Water.

📸: J

To Instagram and Beyond

When I first suggested Page as a possible spring break destination, the boys asked what we could see there. I told them to google "Antelope Canyon" or "Horseshoe Bend" and find some images...

Thanks to social media, there were a plethora of pics to view.

And to no one's surprise, it didn't take much to sell them on the idea!

Flint and Spray Paint

This morning we were up early again and on the road to our first destination, Lake Meredith National Recreation Area. The park offers ranger-guided kayak tours on Monday mornings, so M was disappointed that we were visiting there a day too late. (He really enjoyed the one we did in Whiskeytown NRA in 2014.)

I had made reservations for a 10:00AM ranger-led tour at nearby Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument, so the extent of our visit to Lake Meredith consisted of stopping by the visitor center (for my passport stamps) and then heading over to see the lake. From the boat launch, it was very apparent how much the water level has dropped.

Flying Saucers

Carlsbad, NM is only about an hour or so away from Roswell. Being a nerdy geek (is that redundant?!), of course I had to visit! So, our very first stop this morning was the International UFO Museum and Research Center.

Kayaking Whiskeytown

It takes a little bit of marketing to get certain family members on board for another road trip. The selling points for making the long trek up to Northern California were:

• Visiting two more national park units, Whiskeytown NRA and Lassen Volcanic NP
• Redeeming two free Marriott hotel stays that we earned from a promo during our spring break trip
• Sleeping one night at a motel with twin beds (no complaints about sharing with a bed hog)
• Going back to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom
• Kayaking on Whiskeytown Lake

Hoop Dreams

After last summer's trip to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH, the boys put the Basketball Hall of Fame at the top of their list of places to see next. So when I started looking at what to do for our vacation this summer and found a really good airfare to Boston, our plans were set! Twenty years ago when I was in Connecticut for grad school, R came out to visit me, and we drove up to see the Hall of Fame. I remember thinking then that it was underwhelming - outdated exhibits and unfinished displays. So we were hopeful that with all of the interactive things that museums do now to engage visitors, our experience would be much better today!

"Wild & Scenic" Raft Trip

I’m so thankful that we had another day of gorgeous weather – especially today, since we had reserved a float trip down the Snake River quite far in advance. I booked the 6:45AM trip for the views of the mountains in the early morning light and with the hope of glimpsing some wildlife along the river. All 4 kids were troopers about getting up so early, and were even quite chatty. Luckily the couple who had to share a raft with our two families didn’t seem to mind.