ScrapHappy Saturday - Home Again

We are back in the continental US again after an amazing trip to Alaska. Truly a once in a lifetime trip full of so many bucket list checkmarks! We had the perfect itinerary with each day better than the one before. 

It looks like both scheduled posts went up as planned while I was away. Orange is wrapping up and I am excited about purple for July. Yay!

We were traveling during the summer solstice and experienced 20 hours and 29 minutes of daylight. Thanks to room darkening curtains we were still able to sleep at night, though with the 4-5 hour time change and extended daylight, we were never quite sure what time it should be. Fjords, trains, moose and bears were all on my list of things to see and I was not disappointed. 

We got two train trips! One up a mountain in Skagway and the other from Denali into Anchorage at the end of the trip. 

I made sure to have some hexies along for slow stitching during those trips. There was also some stitching time on buses and a long days of glacier viewing in Glacier Bay and the College Fjords

This is my progress so far on the new hexie snake quilt.  I took some time one evening after Kurt was out cold at 8:30 to pair up lights and darks. I still have plenty of yellow and blues to stitch, but sadly, I didn't remember to bring along any purples for July. I did pick up some purple fabric at a quilt shop during our trip though. There was a shop in Skagway that was looking for seasonal help. Housing provided.  So tempting. 

Our day in Glacier National Park was amazing! Glaciers of course, but also whales, grizzly bears, sea otters and bald eagles. We should have brought the good camera to be able to zoom in on some of them for better photos. 

Then we moved on to the land portion of the trip with stops in Denali state and National Parks. Our goal was to get in some good hiking. I think our best day was 23,000 steps. 

Everyone was so worried about how dangerous the moose were, I was safely on a bus headed into Denali for this sighting and never saw one during our hikes. We hiked so much! Up mountains and around lakes and through a big rain day in Ketchikan. So many beautiful sights!

There was only one hike we missed. The last lodge we visited had a treehouse, but the trail was closed for a moose sighting. We kept trying, but eventually it was time to head back. 

We ended with one night in Anchorage before our flight back home which is when we had our scariest wildlife encounter. We were on a walking path. Not a hiking trail, but a path with moms and kids and joggers. Quite populated. Then suddenly this black bear came rambling around a corner headed straight at us. We "calmy" reversed our path and warned a nice mom cycling with her three kids that there was a bear coming our way. Then we all just stood wondering where to go as he ambled right past us and scrambled over the fence, apparently confused by all of us staring at him. Who would have thought that our scary wildlife encounter would be in downtown Anchorage and not in a national park?