Alaskan adventures sound awesome but they don’t sound “exotic” to me as a born and raised Alaskan. I’m awed by the mountains every time I see them but I also take them for granted that Of COURSE they’re beautiful and always will be.

Above are a few Alaskan adventures we’ve had over the years. Below was a girl’s trip, one year ago today (got to love Facebook’s feature of bringing up fun past memories).

 

So when we decided to go to Alaska for 4th of July (no, you can’t see the fireworks very well with the midnight sun but we know how to have fun) and my dad mentioned we could go to Kantishna, since I’ve never been there. We agreed, and because going to AK is no big deal we didn’t even do a google, just started looking at plane tickets.

Kaya, our four month old, HATES being strapped into a car seat. I know I know, parents use the car to lull their kids to sleep, but not OUR baby (though she did fall asleep in a Kayak).I thought we’d be taking the train to Denali and riding a bus into the park. Unfortunately under 3 year olds aren’t allowed on the bus, and the timing for the train didn’t work on the way there.

So here we are, flying out this weekend with plans to drive 15 hours one day and 8 hours another day. Because Kantishna, it turns out, is all the way down the road into Denali, a very beautiful drive that is also very very slow (25mph is the speed limit but you usually don’t even go that fast because you’re looking for animals).

Here’s a fun video my cousin took in Denali Park (sorry for the screaming from another cousin):

For always being up for adventure I was almost in tears calling my parents to confirm that in fact there is no other Kantishna and his business partner couldn’t just fly us there? (We’ve gone on his float plane before for fun, a very cool experience, but for now I just care about A to B).

After all, our normally happy baby who rarely cries has taken to occasionally screeching in pain while teething (her first tooth just poked through, ironically while I was getting my teeth cleaned at the dentist).

My parents (who raised three kids in Alaska) were not very sympathetic to my freak-out and in a loving way pretty much said to get on the plane and we’re going to have a lot of fun.

The rest of the evening I continued to imagine being on the side of a desolate Alaskan road with a screaming baby and five hours of road ahead of us.

Today I’ve just decided to focus on the packing list (including downloading a variety of music, from Mozart and Caspar Babypants to Hamilton and Phantom of the Opera and buying a couple small toys on amazon) and deal with what comes as the adventure unfolds.