Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year, Laura and I headed down to Alyeska with a group of friends. Alyeska is a ski resort east of Anchorage, which means it is a 7-8 hour drive. Since we love drives, and we've never been down that far, our trip down there was part of the fun! We left on Wednesday afternoon after dropping Chloe off with our friend Christina for the weekend. We only had a few hours of sunlight, but since we were heading south and sunsets are long anyway, it was a lot of beautiful light. After the sunset, the moonlight continued to glow on the mountains!

Our route, if anyone is curious...



Chloe at her friend Nuna's (Christina's house)

We could see Denali lit by the sunset! (It looked bigger in person...)

We stayed in a house right at the foot of the mountain. It was very close to the lifts, which was convenient for the skiiers and snowboarders. Even though Laura and I didn't ski, we climbed up the mountain as well to see what it was like. We brought a snowboard, and I considered renting skis, but we were told from everyone who went out on Thursday that it wasn't worth it - not much was open and the slopes were icy. That sounded unfun for trying to snowboard for the first time, and not worth the money to rent skis. Plus lots of people were staying back, and it was fun to just hang out with them.

The glow is the mountain.

The house itself was amazing. It had plenty of space for the 13 of us, it looked amazing and it had a hot tub. It made for a great place to just hang out and play games! Here is your tour...

The downstairs - obviously I didn't get a picture of it until people had made it their own. We didn't spend much time down here, to the right of this picture was a laundry room, bathroom and bedroom.

This is the main floor. I was being a creeper and sneaking photos....

On the right there is a bathroom and bedroom.

 

The kitchen...taken at a different time, which is why the same person from the picture before is wearing a different outfit.

We kept the wood fire going pretty much constantly!



The loft upstairs, where Laura and I stayed.

We made this corner our own!

Thanksgiving itself was amazing. Everyone contributed a dish or two (Laura and I made stuffing and pistachio salad) and we ended up with everything we could think of! There was plenty of food so everyone got enough (plus leftovers) and it tasted delicious.

Waiting for all the food to be ready!

Everything on the table ready to eat!!

Yum.

We didn't have enough space to sit around the table, so we didn't even try.

After eating we walked up the slopes to work off all the food. We made it up pretty far before we were told to leave.... it made for a fun walk though!

And since this is already such a picture heavy post, I may as well include some of the other photos that I took over the course of the weekend....

The tallest jenga tower ever.
 

We actually "broke" the hot tub this night... too much water over the edge I think. Luckily we found a seperate breaker for the hot tub so we could continue to use it all weekend...

Laura had to add in some homework, though luckily not too much... :)

We knew about half of people who went before we left, so we were able to get to know some new people this trip. I finally found people willing to play egyptian ratscrew with me over and over! (That's a card game that most people stop playing with me...) It was great!

Laura and I went on a walk down the road to get a better view of the mountains surrounding us and to see the snow. Though we've seen snow everyday for a month, its definitely not something that you could get sick of! Plus the snow is wetter here, and it sticks to the trees better, so it just looks different. Here are some pictures from our walk....

Overall the trip was great. It was sad that we had to leave early (Saturday morning instead of Sunday morning) but Laura had homework that she needed to do and we needed to get Chloe from the dog sitter. I would've stayed back, but I didn't want Laura to drive a 8 hour drive alone!

Speaking of the drive, I took lots of photos of that as well... (surprise?). We left earier in the day -- around 12:30 -- so we had more time in the sunlight.

Sun high in the sky at 12:30!

 

Sea ice!!!

Looky! We're approaching a mountain! (Denali)

:)

Looking through a telescope!

Recognize this, parents?

You should be able to see mountains... if you can't try brightening your screen. Or if you don't care that much, that's ok too.

On our drive we saw 4 moose, including 2 on the road and 1 that we had to break for in order not to hit. Since we made it home safely, it simply made for a more exciting drive home. That brings us to the end of our story. Happy Thanksgiving!