Alaska

The last thing I wanted to post about today was or trip to Alaska. We just got back from the trip on Sunday, so I feel really caught up posting about this:) We left July 26th and were in Juneau until August 2nd. It was quite the trip with a lot of unexpected happenings. First, John decided that since he had two weeks off from work he would try letting his beard grow out to see how he felt about it. After about a week and a half, it went from a full beard to a goutee (spelling?) and then a couple of days before we came home he decided to get rid of it because his lips were getting chapped from playing with the hair with his tongue.

The first day we walked around and looked in some of the shops which is where this lovely pic of Jordan, Ashley and John was taken. It was raining most of the time that we were there so we bought some new rain jackets and I bought a cute little hat.

Also on that first day, the USS Juneau was at port because it was being retired. It was cool to go look at it.

On Sunday, we went to the Mendenhall Glacier. It was really cool to see how big it is, but how it is still moving. We were able to see the glacier with Grandma and Grandpa Mangum because their cruise ship docked in Juneau for the day. The glacier is the big blue and white thing in between the mountains. Of the right side of John's head in the picture is this really cool waterfall that was just gushing out of the mountain. It was beautiful.

Tuesday we went salmon fishing on a charter boat. I was worried a lot about the charters because of how I get sea sick, but I went to the doctor beforehand and he gave me some sea sick patches. The patch really seemed to work because I didn't get sea sick, but I did get incredibly tired. It seemed like every time I sat down it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. I fell asleep a lot that day.

Wednesday we went on another charter to go halibut fishing. We caught so many fish. It was so tiring on my arms. The fish we were catching were between 20-40 LBS. each. Just to explain a little of how to halibut fish, we were fishing off the bottom of the ocean which was anywhere from 150-250 feet below us. The halibut stay on the bottom so we would put the bait down by them and then when one would bite, we would have to real the fish up all the way from the bottom BY HAND!!! holy crap it was a lot of work. They would fight and even if they weren't fighting, you would still have to bring them all the way up. The crazy part was that it seemed like everytime I put my pole in the water I would inevitably end up with another fish on my pull and I would have to just reel it right back up. My arms were exhausted and I was almost praying that I wouldn't catch any more fish by the end of the day simply because I didn't want to have to real it in. :) At the end of the day, we were only allowed to keep two halibuts each. Also, I was able to catch a really rare fish apparantly. It is called a yellow rock fish. I brought it out of the water and they guys asked me if I wanted to keep it because if I didn't want it, they would take it. They said that it was really a good tasting fish and that they are really old. My fish wasn't huge, it was only about 15 inches long, but they said that it was probably 65 years old. They also said that the biggest one they had ever seen of this type of fish was about 4 feet long and was 200 YEARS OLD!!!! it was crazy

On Friday we went on a zipline tour. It was so much fun. There were times that we were 150 feet up in the air and there were runs that were 800 feet long and we would get up to 50 MPH. It was crazy!