My Family

I just wanted to share my wonderful family with you. We are proud parents of our son, Matthew Shane Zirkle, and he is married to a wonderful woman named Tosha. She has a 12 year old son, Tiger, and her sister, Toya also lives close by with her 6 year old daughter, Asya. We live in Eagle River in a beautiful split level home at the base of the Chugach mountains. We will soon be doing major construction adding on a second level addition enlarging the home another 1400 square feet and completing the in-law quarters which will be our new 1-bedroom apartment. Take a look at the photos of my beautiful family and home.

Winter in Alaska

For those of you who read my blogs and enjoy winter, you really should think about visiting Alaska in the winter. There are so many wonderful outdoor activities and trails for skiing, skijoring, snowshoeing, etc. The snowmachines are out in full force on the mountainsides and the ice climbers enjoy the massive amount of ice to climb along the cliffs. We have about 2 feet of snow at this writing and, yes, we had a white Christmas which is normal in this part of the world. Enjoy my photos and I appreciate your comments.

Southwest Utah

Our Elderhostel tour of Bryce, Zion and Grand Canyon (north rim) was absolutely fabulous. Elderhostel is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing exceptional learning opportunities at a remarkable value. This is our first Elderhostel tour and it will NOT be our last. The lodging, food, fun and fellowship and instruction was outstanding. We began our tour in St George, Utah where we stayed at College Inn for the night and then boarded a large bus (15 in our group) for Zion Canyon. Zion is comprised cliffs and towers, canyons and waterfalls providing a scene that is absolutely beautiful. When the sun rises or sets the red cliffs glow with oranges and firey reds creating a dramatic lighting effect. Photographers LOVE this type of lighting with shadows falling down the rock walls creating more of a dramatic effect.

Southwest Utah is a Fabulous place to visit

Ken and I just returned from our Elderhostel photo tour of southwestern Utah and, my oh my, what beautiful artwork in the form of rainbow hues of rock. I will post a blog and some photos this week so keep checking this blog for those images and story.

Homer AK

Where in the heck is Homer, AK you ask? Well it sits at the end of the 4 1/2 mile spit off the southern coast of Alaska and is as far south as you can drive in AK. It is an artsy community with galleries encompassing all sorts of locally made crafts. There are wonderful restaurants and lots of different types of lodging to accommodate any type of traveler. We just spent 5 days there at the Homer Spit Campground where we walked the beach several times finding all sorts of interesting creatures, foliage, rocks, and shells.
Our trip to Katmai to photograph the brown bears was canceled due to high gale force winds and rain and, in fact, the daily trips were canceled all week because of the weather. Hopefully we can reschedule for next summer with Emerald Air. Take a look at the photos posted with this blog and see what we saw.

Alaska has so much wilderness, over 3 million acres, to be exact. Wildlife abounds around every corner in the form of bear, moose, caribou, mountain goat, whales, puffins, eagles, otters, porcupine, and many other wonderful animals. There is so much opportunity to connect to wildlife and the rugged wilderness unlike many other areas in the lower 48. Everyone we have encountered have thoroughly enjoyed their visit and will return again to explore more wilderness. If you are a camper, you can stake out your tent anywhere you wish or park your RV along a bubbling brook or river and watch the world go by. If you enjoy water activities and boats, you can take a variety of cruises to view glaciers up close and personal and wildlife as it appears along the way. Bush pilots will take you to see bears and to remote fishing camps. Many bus trips are offered as well as train rides to various parts of the largest state in the USA. The State of Alaska is often shown as a very small area on weather maps and more often than not in the wrong area of the world. I had one person ask me how I liked living on a postage size piece of land and after I explained to her how big the state actually is she was shocked. Alaska is 1/5 the size of the USA. Certain glaciers are bigger than the State of Delaware. Millions of acres are preserved by the state and federal governments as park land. In fact, Denali offers hikers and backpackers the whole park to explore. There are NO trails and NO fences and they encourage you to explore anywhere in the park. What a great way to explore nature.

Have you ever thought about visiting Alaska? Seen videos or photos of the last frontier and wish you were there? Well, I just moved up to Alaska in April 2007 followed by my husband in Sept of 2007 and we are thoroughly enjoying our new home state. We live with our son and his wife and her 12 year old son in their rec room right now until our in-law quarters are completed. I work for DHL in Anchorage and hubby is semi-retired working as a manager of a campground 5 days a week in the summer and for the Anchorage school district as a substitute teacher's assistant during the school year. We just recently visited Denali National Park and enjoyed the trip so much we intend to make it a yearly event taking friends from the lower 48 with us. We both highly recommend the 90 mile bus trip and the flight seeing tour of Mt McKinley and the flight out to the Denali Natl Park airstrip. What a glorious flight we had and were able to capture the beauty of the mountain and surrounding peaks, the braided rivers and some wildlife during this trip. Look for the slideshow on this blog and take a look at what we saw.