Most of 2017

Hello Everyone!

Sorry it has been so long since our last blog post. Life sure has been busy this year! Since our last post we had a great trip to Colorado and another very short, but fun summer here in AK. Work has been very busy for both of us. During the summer we tried to make the most of every minute of daylight and so during fall we embrace a slightly slower pace.

Let's rewind all the way back to April when we spent two weeks in Colorado. Our first week was spent in Buena Vista for some much needed family time.

We packed our bikes with and took off on a week-long road trip during the second half of the trip. We visited Fruita, Moab, Cortez, and Durango - biking 12 of 14 days during the entire trip! It was a blast! We need to thank Nate's parents for letting us borrow their truck. We were able to visit some of our favorite trails and places from when we lived in Colorado, plus find some new favorite trails. We also saw how much some places have changed - and others not so much. Fruita has become the new Moab; it's very busy on the weekends and very bicycle-centric. Moab has become the Disneyland of the desert; uber busy every day of the week and much more 'motor-head' centric. 

We chose to leave Alaska in April during break-up (when the snow and ice melts and things are muddy and wet). It was a good choice, and within just a few weeks of returning we were riding our bikes in Alaska too. The summer was a blur of work, riding bikes, working some more, riding bikes, paddleboarding, working, and riding bikes... 

We had a great ride on the Lost Lake trail, as usual!

This summer's weather was normal, which means it was a bit more wet and cool than the last few, so we didn't get out on paddleboards as much. But, we did get in one nice day on Eklutna Lake...

Nate got to do some field work near Juneau, which was his only field work of the summer. Here is shot of Lynn Canal on approach to JNU.

As we've said many times before, we love having visitors! This summer we were lucky enough to have Jennah's cousin, Christy, and her family (Bobby, Brayson, and Taylin) visit. It was a short trip, but lots of fun! Here they are along the Susitna River in Talkeetna - Denali is behind them, hiding in the clouds.

Jennah's parents also came to visit in mid-July and had more great weather! They are going to think Alaska always has good weather. Here they are hiking up to Hanging Valley with Jennah...

In August, Nate's parents also came for a visit. As usual, their weather was awful, they must think Alaska always has bad weather! We did a lot of blueberry picking and hiking in the rain. This picture was from a rare moment of sun up at Arctic Valley after picking a whole bunch of blueberries!

In early August we took a long-weekend getaway to Kachemak Bay State Park near Homer. We rented a cute little cabin and rode our bikes to Seldovia and around the one road out there. It was a great little weekend to celebrate our 8th (!) wedding anniversary.

We harvested a lot of blueberries this fall which gave us a good excuse to get into the mountains with the pups. Simi has learned to eat blueberries too.

We are very much enjoying our new home. It is very comfortable and we felt right at home soon after moving in. One treat is that we have an apple tree in our yard that had a pretty impressive harvest this year. As I write this blog we are making some applesauce and apple butter. 

So, that was most of 2017 for the Jones family in Alaska. But, still to come this fall we are excited to be embarking on a month-long trip to Nepal! We will do a two-week trek and a week-long mountain bike ride. We are ready for a little time off work and well overdue for some international travel. So, the next post on this blog will include some photos from that trip - stay tuned!

Early 2017

Hello again! What a crazy busy few months it has been! We've got some fun adventures and big changes to tell you about.

We began the new year in Hawaii. Our first stop was Maui. We stayed in a beach front condo just north of Kihei (near the wind farm, for those that have been there recently). We spent our time paddle boarding, beach lounging, hiking, and relaxing. Maui is very diverse, like most of the Hawaiian islands. There is a wet side, dry side, mountains, beaches, valleys, cities, country and lots of character. On the down side, we did find Maui to be quite windy and very crowded.

The following three pictures are from a rainy and windy, but beautiful hike up to the wind farm and back. There was a perpetual rainbow to the east.

This is the view from our condo. You can see it was windy, and there is that rainbow still!

This is the view from the beach in front of our condo at sunset.

We found non-windy places to paddle board. Maui is known as "the valley isle" and it was easy to see why.

Maui is also known for it's sunsets. Here is one from Big Beach.

We made the long round-trip drive to Hana in one day. Although we had planned to camp, the weather was not great so we decided to return to a real bed at our condo. We did check out the famous red sand beach in Hana.

As an example of the environmental diversity of Maui, we drove to the top of Haleakala, a volcano that reaches just over 10,000 feet.

On the return trip we stopped for dinner at this nice restaurant with a million dollar view.

On our last full day on Maui we went on a whale watching tour and saw (and heard) lots of humpback whales. The whales were down in these nice warm waters for the winter, and will return to Alaska in the summer. We wished we could do the same! This is Jennah on the whale watching boat with the north half of Maui in the background.

Our second island was Molokai which was worlds apart from Maui. Molokai is essentially undeveloped (i.e., no functioning resorts), very rural, and very laid back. As soon as you step off the plane you and walk 200 yards to the only car rental place, you realize this is going to be a different type of Hawaiin experience. There are no stop lights and only a few restaurants. There are two or three grocery stores that are very poorly stocked and have inconvenient hours. We stayed on the far west shore in an old, defunct resort. It was an eerie place as half of the units were boarded up and there were almost no people around. Despite this, once we realized we had massive, beautiful beaches to ourselves we began to really relax for the first time on the trip.

We took a small, commuter flight between islands and we were lucky that the weather was good and we took a route over the north shore of Molokai. The highest sea cliffs in the world are located along Molokai's remote north shore and there is no way to access them or view them except from the air (i.e., hundreds of dollars for a helicopter tour).

This was the view from our condo. Note how there are no people in this photo.

This is the beach just past the resort, which was empty.

A little further, but still close was this trio of beaches, all secluded.

We did a nice paddle board tour of the south shore one calm morning. The coral reefs along that shore are amazing and we wished we had brought snorkel gear on the boards.

We found another great place to spend a sunset.

We returned to severely cold temperatures in Alaska. But that is better than the opposite! And at least we had a winter! Nate got out for a bc ski with friends on a beautiful blue-bird day. 

Our good friends Rachel and Kyle got married on a Saturday in February. Not in a church or even indoors, but out on the top of a mountain during a ski day with friends. Nate was the designated photographer paid in beer.

This winter has been by far the best of the five. There was just enough snow and it stayed. The conditions for skiing and fat biking were superb most of the time. Both Nate and Jennah did the Tour of Anchorage, and Nate was able (finally) to do the 50k. He was pleased with a 29th place out of 154, and Jennah got 3rd in her age group in the 25k. The next weekend we both did a duathlon fat bike race and skate ski, we both took first in our respective races. Finally, a couple weekends ago Nate raced the Ooski classic and got 9th. It was a fun trip to Talkeetna, like always, and we did some fat biking in the area the following two days.

Last weekend we did a 30 mile round-trip bike ride out to Knik Glacier, up near Palmer. It is rare that conditions are suitable to bike out here. It was absolutely stunning! It is a very uniquely Alaskan thing to fat bike to a glacier on a Sunday morning. Not to mention, we had our choice of about half-a-dozen glaciers we could have visited. 

Okay, okay. Now for the big news. Given the above narrative, and given the past blog posts, you might agree with us that Alaska is a pretty special place. It can be rough at times, and at those times you get out, but mostly it is a raw, beautiful, wild, open, untouched, amazing place. We feel very lucky to live here and we have decided to stay quite a bit longer. We invested heavily in that decision by purchasing a home this February. It is everything we were looking for, and it is right next door to the biking, hiking, running, and skiing trails we use on an almost daily basis. We already feel very at home. We have plenty of space for guests so come visit!

Here are a few photos (yep, it even has a hot tub!). 

The following photos are from fat bike trips that are essentially in our back yard!

Well, we wanted to get this blog posted before our next big trip - to Colorado! Remember how when it gets rough in AK you get out, well April is break up (snow melts, everything is wet and muddy) so we are getting out! We will spend a week visiting family (which is very overdue!) in Buena Vista, and then spend a week mountain biking in Fruita, Moab, Durango, etc. We can't wait!