MY JUNE MINI TOUR OF ALASKA CONTINUED....A TRIP TO THE ALASKA ZOO!

If you are new to my blog, click here to go back to the beginning of this little tour I took a friend on when she visited Alaska back in June. 

My friend who visited, Tami, is a real trooper.  On her first day in Alaska, she left Minneapolis at 9 am (so you know she was up early getting ready to go), arrived in Anchorage at 11:30 am and was ready go sight seeing when she hit the ground!  I don't know about you, but flying wears me out. I would have been ready for a shower and a nap!  But not Tami!  She was ready to go!  That was the day we took an ultra-scenic drive down Turnagain arm on the way to Portage Glacier. 

The next day (after work of course, as she was here on business) we went to the Alaska Zoo!  I love to visit the zoo when I am travelling to places that have big or neat zoos.  To my delight, Tami feels the same way, so we made a night of it - at the zoo!  I always like to see the animals, but at the same time, it always breaks my heart a little bit to know that they never get to live a full life as God intended them to.

Bald Eagle

These were Tami's favorite:

  Wolves

Tiger  

Dall Sheep

Grizzly Bears.  They live wild in Anchorage ya'll.  I am not even kidding.  I have never seen one in the wild anywhere in Alaska in the 25 years I have lived here.  And I do take it for granted that one could be  sitting on my front porch any time I open the door....I shudder at the thought!  

Grizzly Bears strike fear into my heart like Great White Sharks and Polar Bears do.  Guess what?  I just saw on Shark Week that Great Whites travel into the waters of Alaska.  Yay, now all my biggest (wild animal) fears are together in one state! 

Ah.  That's better.  Llama.  Nice Llama.

Oh my goodness, this was the smelliest creature at the zoo!

Pretty flowers.  I wish I new what they are called.

Black Bears eating dinner.

They are not as scary to me as Grizzly, although, I recon they should be.  And I have had close encounters with these bears in the wild.  Click on the photography button at the top right side of my blog, or click here, to see pictures of one of them stealing bird seed off of my front porch. 

Two-humped (Bactrian) camel - most of the population left in the world of these kind of camels (1.4 million according to wikipedia) are all domesticated.  Fewer than 1000 wild remain.  Sad.

Red Fox - They are so cute, I wish they were domesticated.  I would have two of them if they were!

A pretty cactus.    I don't know what it is called either :-) 

OK, now, prepare yourself for a scary beast: 

 

Polar Bears. Oh my.

Seriously, they ARE scary.

Seems harmless enough right?

Dare I say cute, even?

Did you ever hear of Binky?  Binky was a bad bear that bit (mauled) a tourist at the Alaska Zoo back in 1994.   The tourist foolishly climbed over two fences to get close to Binky's enclosure.  You can click here to see the video footage - warning - it is pretty graphic.  The tourist lived, but sadly Binky died of an infection in 1995.  The infection was not related to the tourist, as far as I know. 

OK Binky wasn't bad, he was just being a bear, doing what bears do.  Especially Polar Bears, who happen to hunt humans.  To eat.  For Dinner.   

I'm sure these bears would bite you if they could.  As a matter of fact, this one is starting to look interested in me.

I think he was trying to catch my scent because he would like me to be on the menu for dinner! Yikes!  This concludes our trip to the zoo.  Thank goodness we were near the exit!

On a related note, about 3 years ago, I was blessed to get to travel to the "North Slope" - Alaska's North Coast, where the oil drilling operations are - for a tour.  Part of our tour included the Seawater Treatment Plant (STP), a facility that is located about a mile off the coast (yes, it is in the ocean). 

The Seawater Treatment Plant is a facility that brings seawater (salt water) inside to filter and treat it (by removing marine life among other things) so it can be piped over to the oil wells and pumped down a hole to the reservoir to displace the oil while it is sucked out, or something like that.  Basically, this keeps the pressure up which helps get the oil out. 

(Thank you to Cold Cliff for use of this photo!)

This is an aerial view of the STP.  They had to install a metal cage on the outside of the exit that you step into when you leave the building, because the Polar Bears will sit and wait for someone to come out so they can eat them.  In other words, they are hunting us.

The cages look like this:

That just freaks me out!

My Testimony: From Teen Mom to Jesus Freak!

(I will continue with our mini-tour of Alaska in the next post, I just had to take time to post my testimony for Kelly's Korner's "Show Us Your Life" tour. )
Here's a couple of pictures of what's ahead:

I'd like to start this post by saying that as I sit here and type this out, I am suffering with a terrible sinus infection {and my husband is too} so, if something doesn't make sense, it's due to my loopy head and I apologize in advance!

This is hard for me to admit, but I used to be the kind of person who made fun of "Jesus Freaks", or Christians in other words.  Seriously.  I am completely ashamed of myself and the only thing I can say is that I didn't know better.  I am so thankful that God's grace is so great that He willingly forgives my wretchedness and sins, in all its forms.

I am an only child who grew up mostly in Texas, in a home that did not go to Church.  Ever.  The only times I can recall either of my parents at a church was when a relative or friend was getting married.  It makes me sad now to think how different our lives could have been had we been involved in a church as a family.   

 

My mother's mom (my Nanny) however, was a Christian and she loved to take me to church.  I don't remember being too crazy about going at the time, but now I look back and have fond memories of being there with her.  And amazingly, in that short period of time, that is where I learned the foundations of God's Word.  

In my teen years, I had a tendency to be rebellious and as a result, found myself unmarried and pregnant at 17.  I went into labor the day after my 18th birthday and I graduated high school a week later!  It was a busy week, to say the least!


  I lost a lot of baby pictures due to a flood, but here is my son when he was about 9 months old:As I said, I grew up mostly in Texas.  When I was five, my mother married my step-father and we moved to Oklahoma when he took a job with an oil company.  I have often thought that oil company families are very similar to military families.  At least my family was.  We lived in Woodward, Oklahoma.  Then we moved to Burns Flat, Oklahoma.  Then Mineral Wells and Gainsville, Texas.  

Love that smile!

Here he is at age 2:

William and me:

Grandma, Grandpa William and Me:

Oh my gosh, my glasses were HUGE!


Age 5:

William and Grandpa camping:
(age 6)

William at Disneyland:
(age 7)

Graduation 2009:

I can't believe how time flies!  The old cliche is true; it really does seem like just yesterday that I was changing his diapers and rocking him to sleep!  Now he's a foot taller than me!

We lived in Gainsville, Texas the longest, and it was my favorite place. I was very sad when at age 11 I was told we were moving to Alaska. The word "devastated" comes to mind actually. Talk about culture shock. I didn't even know I had an accent until I moved to Alaska. The kids in 6th grade made fun of me relentlessly and the people in Texas now think I sound funny!  But I digress...

 

In my early twenties, I partied and went out to bars, slept around with different guys and basically was as far from being a Christian as you could get.  I decided at one point that I didn't even believe in God.  That decision made it easier for me to justify my immoral behavior and sin, but it left me empty inside because deep down, I knew that what I was doing was wrong. 

I attended church with a neighbor's family when I was 12 and 13 at a Christian Church in Anchorage.  It was at that point that I asked Jesus into my heart for the first time.  But, because my family didn't go to church and we soon moved to a different part of town (and I began hanging around with the wrong crowd), my spiritual life suffered.  I drifted far away from God and more into the world until my early to mid-twenties, when I met the man who would become my future husband.  If it wasn't for him, I likely would not have ever gone back to church.  (Thanks honey!)  

We have been married almost 5 years now and are one third of the way to our goal which is to distribute one Bible to every person in our town (hence the name of my blog)! 

Click here to read Part One of our wedding story, which was also my very first post on this blog.  I met my husband through a mutual friend who recommended me to him for bookkeeping.  That was the beginning of our friendship and the beginning of the end of my back-sliding ways.  

Click here to read Part 2 of our wedding story and find out how I was the first person to receive a Bible from my husband (who was just a friend at the time) when he began his mission of giving away Bibles and how that led to our first date: our wedding! 

(We have stacks of Bibles in the entryway of our business with a sign that says "Free, help yourself")

I love Jesus Christ with all my heart and I hope that my testimony will be an encouragement to anyone who struggles with their faith in Him.

Hillside Moose

If you remember from my last post, I was being a quasi-tour guide for a business associate/friend who was here on business from Minneapolis, Minnesota.  She mentioned a few times when we talked on the phone prior to her trip that she really wanted to see a glacier.  Ok, no problem.  The first day she was here, I took her straight to the closest glacier that her time frame would allow.  Beautiful, no?

That's not even the tip of the iceberg.  Pun intended! This is just a small glacier.  We have some HUGE glaciers in Alaska ya'll.  No joke.  Chunks as big as a semi-truck fall off on a regular basis on the big glaciers. 

Well, at some point after Tami gets here, she tells me that she really would like to see a moose. 

Ha! Is that all?  

I told her that I would try to spot one for her (but in my mind I knew the odds were slim).  On the way back into town after our trip to Portage, I took a little detour and drove her up one of the mountains to a very exclusive development where some of the most expensive real estate  in Anchorage is. 

As we were meandering around, we spotted a house for sale.  They happened to have a little flyer box on their For Sale sign and Tami suggested that I hop out and grab one.

So I, being the capricious tour-guide that I am, hopped myself right out of the car.  And was nearly trampled by this:

As soon as I hopped out of the car and shut the door, I was looking at this guy running like his feet were on fire straight at me. 

Thank you God, that the SUV was right behind me and Bullwinkle here diverted around to the passenger side and into the yard of the house that was for sale.

I don't know why, but that moose was spooked.  He wasn't charging me in particular.  He was just running from something and I happened to be in the way. 

I jumped back in the car as soon as he cleared the back bumper and told Tami to look out her window, just as he ran right next to her.  It was quite exciting for both of us and I really thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest.  Most ordinary Alaskan moose encounters are quite peaceful and benign, even boring after a while.  By the way, I took these pictures inside the vehicle with the windows up, although in hind-sight, I don't know why I was afraid to roll the windows down, it seems silly now!  I'm thankful that Tami did not request to see a grizzly bear!!!!!!

Check back soon to see moose # 2 and other adventures from the rest of Tami 's trip to Anchorage! 

A Mini-Tour of Alaska...Part One

Back in early June, the account manager from a finance company that my employer uses came to town for a few days to perform an audit.  We have worked together (over the phone) for probably nine or ten years.  Her name is Tami.  Here she is:

(Hi Tami!)

Tami has been to Alaska before, but always on business and always in the winter.  She was very excited to be able to come in the summer and wanted me to show her the sights! 

Her number one goal while she was here was to see a glacier.  We headed south of town along the scenic Seward Highway to Portage Glacier.

Along the way, we saw some Dall Sheep and Bald Eagles:

When we got to Portage Glacier, we went on a one hour boat tour to see the glacier.  Would you believe I've lived in Anchorage for 25 years and have never done this boat trip before?  As a matter of fact, the last time I visited Portage Glacier, you could still see the glacier from the shore of the lake.  You can't see it from the shore anymore because it melted!

After we cruised the glacier, we headed across the highway to the drive-thru wildlife park:

All in all, I'd say we had a pretty fantastic day.  We were fortunate to have beautiful weather and we saw lots of wildlife.  (A pretty rare combo in Alaska!) 

I have tons more photos to share, but I have to get them organized and processed first!  I'll be posting part 2 of our big adventure soon!