Intro of Alaska, part one of a billion

Hello, I've missed you.  I feel like I've been seperated from the blog for such a long time.  I had the greatest of intentions of posting once or twice in Alaska but I think we only had internet service the very first few days and the last few days, we hardly had phone service come to think of it. 

Ok well lets be honest, I have 10 peoples pictures from the last 11 days, so I have lots to cover.  I thought I would post some of the first day.  Here we go...

We left Tampa at 6pm Friday night and arrived in Fairbanks Alaska 1am Saturday.  It was a seriously long day.  The 1am time was really like 5am Florida time so we just held our breath and put the girls in bed when we hit the hotel, they did not dissapoint and slept beautifully.

This was Anna Kate's first time flying, she was super excited and loved it.  She never once complained about her ears.

This is what 1am in Alaska looks like.  The sun not going down was really starting to bug me towards the end of the trip, in the beginning it was neat.

The next day we picked up our 15 passenger (look alike prison) van, we played some major musical chairs in the van  but it got us where we wanted to be.  The renters made our drivers agree to not drive it on a gravel road and it was funny to us how many roads in Alaska are gravel...one whole stretch of highway was being repaved and was basically gravel for 20 miles...sure we won't drive it on gravel.

On our first day we drove about 2.5 hours south towards Denali and Mt. McKinely.  We did not make it all the way there cause it's like 4 hours and we would have to take a bus ride into the park to see the actual  mountains...we weren't going all the down there.  We did stop along the way and eat a picnic lunch in Anderson, which is a teeny tiny little place. 

We saw a lot of this as we drove.  Mesmerizing and beautiful.

This is the little banks of the river where we ate lunch.

The sign leading into the town

Mom enjoying the fresh air

I loved all the stones and pebbles on the banks of the river, but I really loved how my grey shoes blended in so well with them!

All the boys of the trip, Kenny, Ralph, Lew jr, Lew sr. and Terry.  Let it just be known when together you can usually hear the laugh of hyenias nearby.

I didn't make it as far as I would for the first day, this is just half of the first day.  Tomorrow I will attempt to cover the North Pole and the shenanigans that happened at Santa's House!