Alaskaaaaa!

Oh my goodness, I love my job.

Today was the most amazing day. I can't even begin to describe it. I'll try though.

I should start by saying that amazing days have been abundant this contract. My two days in San Francisco were unbelievable. I had the best schedule and had time to see and do so many things. I had a few good days in Mexico, the best of which was spent rock climbing/running on the sands and crazy rocks of the Cabo San Lucas beaches. My first port morning in Vancouver consisted of walking around down town with friends and then running along the water to a beautiful park with an amazing panorama view of the city sky line. The first week in Alaska was spent going on runs through woods that could have been plucked from any of the Lord Of The Rings movies...

It's been glorious.

But today I got to do something that I've only seen on the Discovery Channel. Literally.

All cruise lines offer excursions to their guests that they can book before we arrive at any given port. Since this is Disney, they offer some that are for kids only. Well, the teen excursion requires two counselors to go as chaperones. The plan is to rotate around but it can be tricky depending on where you are on the schedule rotation. Anyway, my friend, Joey, and I were scheduled for the one today. It is a SWEET deal. The best. Ready? We take the kids who signed up for this thing off the ship (in Juneau), take a van to a small little airport on the outskirts of town, get handed a bunch of gear, jump in a helicopter (insert excited bounce), fly over the mountains and over some glaciers for about 15 min (more excited bouncing), land on a glacier, get an ice axe and some crampons (spikey thingies for your shoes), hike the glacier for two hours (ahhhhh!!!!!!!!!), get picked up by the helicopter and fly back to the airport.

Yeah. That was me today.

I did that. It was UNBELIEVABLE.

First of all, WOW! And second, Joey leaves next week and I won't see him until the end of my contract, so it was super cool that we got to go together. Only four kids signed up for it so our group was teeny tiny. AND they were good kids which made it even more fun. The weather was amazing. Clear, sunny skies and about 55F. I've never been on a helicopter and it was just unreal. I got to sit up front and was able to take pictures and video.

Embarrassingly enough, I can't remember the name of the glacier we stomped around on, but I'll find out. Originally it was supposed to be the Mendelhall Glacier, which is the more famous one around here, but they took us to a different one. These things are huge. They look huge from the air but when you land and actually take a few steps you realize how much bigger they are. What looks completely flat and like a fun little stroll from up high turns into something seemingly impossible. It's like a whole other planet. The fact that it's hundreds of feet deep, just pure ice is crazy to even think about. There are sections that look like rock. The color, the fact that there are rocks on it... everything leads you to think that it's part of some random mountain. But when you poke at it with your ice axe, you realize that it's just covered up. I learned that these monsters move an average of about 1.5-2 ft per day. Per DAY. How crazy is that? The one we went on is a receding glacier, meaning that the ice is melting rather than building up and it's moving back into the mountains. There are thousands of glaciers in Alaska and only a few of them are actually advancing.

It was beautiful though. Completely breathtaking. I got to jump over crevasses, cracks in the ice that go really deep and are pretty dangerous. There were streams of water that flowed down them and into big pools that were a brilliant blue. I DRANK GLACIER WATER! Yeah. Delicious. Where ever there was actual water that color would show up. The reason is that glacial water is different than regular water. It has different minerals that bring out the blue. It was cool. We'd be walking on nothing but white (it was bright too) and then we'd come up to a blue stream and a pool. But not regular blue. Brighter and “bluer” than caribbean blue. If that makes any sense. Here, just look at the pictures. I can't describe it.

No human sign for miles and miles except the occasional roar of helicopters dropping people off or picking them up. But even with that, the effect that 3 groups of 6 tiny little human beings make on these things is non existent. I really noticed it when we were picked up and our chopper hovered over the glacier for a few seconds. I felt like we were only a few hundred feet up in the air and I could barely make out the people that were still on the ground. Four tiny little dots walking in a line over this ridiculously gigantic, monstrous river of ice. Monstrous.

I'm still completely overwhelmed by the fact that I was lucky enough to go.

Now it's time for bed though. I really will try to update this more often. It's just been crazy busy and I'm still trying to figure out the internet situation here in Alaska. It's turning out to be a little trickier than the Bahamas.

I miss everyone at home and wish that you could be here to see this incredible part of the world.

I hope everyone knows how much I miss and love them.

Later!!