Photo of the Day: Week 32

Spent all day packing, flew to Anchorage, went grocery shopping, and did our final at-home pack for our Denali trip.  My hiking boots started falling apart on my last training hike the day before.  Recommended glue #1 came unstuck on my way to the airport.  Anchorage grocery store glue was the last thing I did before going to bed at 3 a.m.  It required ten minutes of oxygen exposure to pre-cure the bonding agent.

The tallest mountain in North America – Denali herself!  And only visible 30% of the time, so we were pretty damn lucky to get to see her on our drive up to the park.

First full day of hiking, which started with a great yoga session followed by passing way too close (25 feet!) to a mama and her cubs in the narrow valley home to Tattler Creek.  (And later, we would discover, also home many grizzly sightings.)  We summited three peaks this day and bushwhacked over 11 miles.

We took a break from our backcountry adventures and hopped on a park bus up to Wonder Lake – a divet (called a “kettle”) carved out by ancient glaciers.  To our pleasant surprise, the water was tolerable enough for a 15+ minute swim!  The shuttle scheduler who made it easy for us to get here said it’s been too cold all summer.

On our way to celebration beers, we could resist the classic snap.

At the end of a long day on a new farm and the beginnings of the weekend’s yoga retreat all evening, I almost missed my POTD.  This is the community space at the farm, and the room that accommodates we yogis.

There was one dude at the retreat… someone’s wife.  But it was great getting to know all these awesome Alaska women!  Also, I look very much like my late maternal grandfather in this photo – a comparison no one in my family has ever made.  However I blame him and his father for my wanderlust, and supposedly curiosity and restlessness is genetic.  If that’s true, his genes popping up in my features would make sense.  (More on the adventure gene here.)