Coming home soon!

So this past week or so has been absolutely NUTS! We have been so busy trying to finish up having some fun in Alaska AND helping Megan and Zach move into their new house! We are so excited for them. I have lots of pictures and lots of news to tell everyone but I just do not have time. SO... I promise that when we get home there will be a post (probably REALLY LONG) explaining our last couple of weeks in Alaska.
We are excited to come home and see everyone but not excited to start school.... :( Keep looking for an update shortly!

Crossing off our "TO DO" list

So we've made a to do list of all the things we want to do before we leave (which isn't very long because we've done so many awesome things in Juneau this summer!). But there are things around Juneau, many less adventurous things that are just neat to see that are on our list. For example, Saturday night we headed out to the Shrine of St Therese. Let me remind you this is not Brett's idea of fun but he was a trooper and went along with me. The shrine is an old church that sits out on a little island in the channel. All the way around the outside of the island are rock statues with different Staints on them where people go to pray. They look like this: The church itself is all made of rock and is quite old ( I can't remember exactly when it was built but I want to say late 1800's). It's very pretty inside and out. We also went to another church that is called Chapel on the Lake that is gorgeous. It's a log cabin church that is right next to campus. It sits on Auke Lake and has a gorgeous view. Last night we headed out to the Mendenhall Glacier. The sockeye salmon are running up the Mendenhall River and the bears LOVE to hang out there. It's a favorite activity of the locals to go and watch the bears at night when all the tourists are gone. We were able to see 5 different bears. We saw a mama bear and her two cubs and 2 other bears. They are all black bears so they aren't huge but they can still be mean. The cubs were my favorite. They were running through the water and just adoreable to watch! It was getting dark so it was hard to get some good pictures because a flash doesn't go that far but I managed to get some good ones and Brett got some AWESOME footage on the video camera but we don't have the cords we need to download it to the computer so you'll all have to wait on that one. The Forest Service has built a really nice path that goes over the river and right next to the river in a few different spots. The path has a fence around it so people can view the bears and be safe. The bears spent most of their time less than about 25 yards away from where we were standing. It was awesome to be that close to them and not be scared. We did see one of the bears had a tag on its ear. They only tag the bears when they have either attacked someone or when they have displayed some sort of hazardous behavior. Let's just say we're enjoying our last couple weeks here and are going to miss Alaska, it's beauty and adventure, VERY much.

What we've been up to...

So this is the first time that I've made a post on the blog (its me Brett just in case you were wondering). Chels is down making some grilled cheese's and so I'm on blog duty, man I love grilled cheese's.
This past week has been quite adventuresome. We have finally had some sunshine; from July 3rd to about July 30th it rained almost non-stop and the sun literally didn't come out that entire time, so we were a bit depressed. But low and behold the past couple days the sun has come out and I now realize it does still exsist! With the sun coming out we have finally gotten out and did a few things.
Last friday my work had an end of the month party and we went zip-lining. It was pretty danged fun, neither Chels or myself have ever done it so it was very fun. We had five zips that were a couple hundred feet in length and then a suspension bridge. Out of our whole group I was the only one to not make it all the way to a platform and ended up sliding back to the middle, and was ridiculed by the others in a vituperate manner.
On saturday we went out to Echo Cove and had a campfire and roasted bratwursts (of which I ate to many and felt rather ill). Later on when the tide rolled out the pink salmon started schooling close to the shore and so we went and did some snagging. We caught probably close to twenty in an hours time, but only three were still good to eat.
Yesterday we went on a couple of different tours. We started the day out with the Alaska Juneau/Gastineau mine tour. They were the two main mines operating in Juneau between 1881-1945. We went through some of the old milling ruins, and then went into an old mine shaft where we saw a few demonstrations of hard rock mining techniques. It was really cool to see the technology them old boys had it leaves one with a feeling of obeisance. We finished off with some gold panning!!
Then in the afternoon we took a float plane flight seeing excursion. It was awesome, we flew down to the Tracy arm and passed over the Taku Glacier. We then proceeded to fly over part of the Juneau icefields and came down over the Mendenhall glacier. It is so awesome getting to see the area from the air, and the icefields are spectacular. Many of the tourist attractions are sort of a brummagem, but this one was great!It was a very enjoyable day off for both Chelsea and myself, it has left us both feeling in a rather spoony mood. May I add that for a tourist to have the type of day that we had, it would cost them roughly $1200. WOW! We are luckily! :)
Enjoy our slideshow!