"TREEEEES!!!"

So this dated in October because I wrote it a while ago and forgot to post. Anyway....

Never have I been so excited to see trees than when I stopped off the plane in Anchorage at the end of October. We spent about 5 days in the CITY as part of our JVC Alaska retreat. The houses from Sitka, Juneau, Bethel and Anchorage all met in Sara Palin's stomping ground, Wasilla. Now that I think about it, there was a woman hawking books on a street corner that looked very similar to her. Hmmm........

One of the coolest parts of my weekend in the Anchorage area was a hike that I went on with my roomates John and Joe and our friend Greg from the Sitka house. Anchorage is beautiful. It sits right on the water and is surrounded by mountains in nearly all directions...basically the complete opposite of Bethel. Our adventure-starved crew rented a car and headed off to the nearest mountain trail. We ended up on a pretty amazing hike and experiencing our first Alaska snow. It was about 50 degrees at the base of the mountain but up near the summit it was snowing.




Just when we thought we had finally made it back to the base, we got word that there was a herd of moose just a short walk away. We certainly weren't about to let a real, in the wild, moose sighting pass us by. We hustled down the path until we discovered the perfect "National Geographic-like" scene. 16 moose were grazing just a 100 yards away! Bethelites would have been in moose heaven!