It’s 11am on Saturday, July 6th, and the mini-vacation recovery begins.  After “roughing it” since Wednesday night, the joints and body start their rebuilding to make me feel less like I am 50 and more like I am 41 (or maybe even 38).  Well, I have to watch myself when I say recovery, because my version of “roughing it” wasn’t even “roughing it compared to the rest of my part let alone many other Alaskans.

On Wednesday, the pup and I hopped into a Class 1 35 foot RV borrowed from a co-worker (accurately described by that co-work as “Holy Moly it’s Old”), and headed out for Seward to meet up with the Glerums & Morses in Seward, AK for a few days of camping and sightseeing.  Some of us broke camp last night and made the 130 mile run back to Anchorage in the RV, the rest coming home today.  The plan was to spend another day in Seward, but the weather broke our spirits somewhat — surprisingly, those who stuck it out were in tents, and us that slept on soft warm beds wimped out (I broke camp because the dog was miserable – but to be fair it didn’t take me much to go along with the dog).

This is one of those trips that will turn into a number of blog posts complete with details that will help y’all to get the full feel of what took place, and I am committed to give you that over the next few days.  So consider this the summary, and teaser, of posts to come.

Seward on the 4th seemed to be the right choice for the holiday.  THE Fourth of July Event in Alaska took place there, the “Mount Marathon Race”.  It isn’t a Marathon, that’s actually the name of the mountain, but it is a foot race that only has a 5km (3.1 mile) distance; simple enough if you don’t look at the course elevation.  The race starts in downtown Seward (elevation 0 ft), ends in downtown Seward (elevation 0 ft), and has a half-way point at the top of Marathon Mountain (3,022 feet).  It’s a monster of a race, and routinely a source of injuries (Olympic skiers usually place high, but took the year off this year to not threaten their Olympic hopes).  Last year, there was a runner who disappeared near the top and has yet to be found assumed to have fatally fell.  As interesting as that race was, we didn’t spend much time watching it.

We went salmon fishing out at sea.

We went to Exit Glacier.

We watched fireworks at midnight.

We cooked out, we camped out, we ran dogs around the ocean front.

And we got RAIN!!!  Lots and Lots of Rain.

So, I’ll will kick y’all a post on the Salmon Fishing – which is in the top 3 experinces I’ve had since moving to Alaskan, and a bit about the glacier, and of course I will be sure to go off about driving that RV.

But that is in days to come, right now, we have to clean up the RV, take pain killers, dry out, and figure out what to do with all this left over beer.