Once upon a time, Brad and Mary Burton pedaled off into the Canadian sunset destined for Alaska. This is the tale of the young married couple quiting their jobs and riding bikes, from Maine to Alaska. Thanks for reading and please stay tuned.
Well, its the end of may in Alaska, which means we are back in biking season! We wanted to spend the summer in Alaska, since we earned it by lasting through the winter! So, even though we are aching to start another tour, we decided to stick around and save up some money, and check out the local scene. What we have discovered is that on the Kenai Peninsula we are blessed with some GREAT mountain biking. We have anything from short quick trails, to multi day rides.
Our buddy Jedd, Mary and B-rad riding along Kenai Lake
keeping the boys at a reasonable pace on resurrection pass
Friends Jedd and Katie at Juneau Falls- a nice destination on the resurrection trail
Cheesy pose with our arms up!
our biking crew- Jedd, Katie, Mary and Brad
This weekend we thought we would try a 22 mile singletrack ride with promises of glacier views, bears, and sweeping mountain vistas. But, upon arriving at the trailhead, we were thwarted by a foot and a half of snow! I guess that ride will have to wait a bit. On the bright side, we hit up part of another trail, Resurrection Pass, and biked to a gorgeous waterfall. Still sweeping mountain vistas and bears :) here are a few photos of our adventures.
Now that we are in Alaska, we are doing our best to immerse ourselves in this place. In order to keep all the locals sane during the winter, we celebrate the Iditarod Dogsled race and the Fur Rondy in Anchorage, so we traveled up to be a part of the festivities! The Fur Rondy is a two week fur festival, but they have all kinds of crazy fun events for the locals to take part in.We chose to do the Running of the Reindeer- where they block off the streets and let runners and reindeer loose! That was lots of fun, and we got to slap reindeer on the butts as they ran past us. Pretty crazy. We also got to watch the start of the Last Great Race- a 1000 mile doglsed race from Wasilla to Nome. Its an event I have always wanted to see, so it was pretty exciting.
This guy was really into the fur thing- we had to have a picture with the muskox man.
we dressed up for the running of the reindeer- sorry we didnt get any pictures of the actual reindeer- we were busy running from them!
Saturday was our ski day last week. After working all week and being busy with life, it was time to get out into the backcountry and cool off. We headed north into the mountains and after studying many slopes along the way, decided on a spot just north of Summit Lake. JUST what the doctor ordered :) Maybe 45 minutes of lung busting skiing through the snow covered forest and up, up, into the wild we went! Its so nice to have wilderness so close to us up here. Literally ten minutes of hiking away from a road and it feels like you are in the middle of nowhere. And we were blessed with one of those legendary perfect ski days- sunshine, no wind, and fresh pow! And the best part- it was all human powered and FREE! Hard to capture a day like that, but here are a few of our photographic efforts.
Well, its been about four months since our last post, and the end of our bike adventure. Lately, we have been doing a lot of reminiscing about our summer. What an adventure it was :) I think we talk or think about it every day, which may seem pathetic or like we are living in the past, but really, we just like thinking about it because it makes us happy.
Here in Soldotna, Alaska, we have been giving this 'normal life' thing a try. We both have jobs working with kids in elementary schools, working monday through friday. Its a pretty big change from what we have been used to, so its an adventure all in itself. But also makes us appreciate our summer memories so much more.
But no worries, it will not be the last of our bike travel adventures... in fact, i think it just fueled a fire for a lifelong obsession and passion. I mean, once you see the light, why live in darkness?
But overall, we are really LOVING Alaska. We love our tiny one room cabin (dream home!) and we still find time for micro adventures. Mary's parents literally live across the street (72 paces away). Which has been great because Momma Hall loves to make the most amazing homemade bread and then give it away. Here's a few pictures of what we have been up to the past few months:
playing with the skis near our cabin
we still love sleeping outside, even if its -27 F
Lots of friends up here in AK- still sharing the road....
Mary playing in the mountains
my what big teeth you have!
hiking up Turnagain pass to snowboard. Pretty AND free!
Learning the art of the redneck- snowmachining!
this is probably what we would look like if we biked much up here...
The end of trip slide show is complete. This was shown at our presentation we did at Wasatch Touring, the wonderful shop downtown Salt Lake that helped us out so much. We don't have the greatest slide show making skills but its a learn by doing thing for us just as bike touring was for us 4 months ago. It was so hard to take a summers worth of amazing photos and experiences, then whittle them down into the length of one song. Almost as hard as it is to answer the most commonly asked question that we have been getting since returning, "what was your favorite part?" I hope this slide show can show that there was just to much awesome to have one favorite.
In other news Mary's sister Cassie who attended our presentation was inspired to write down a few words expressing how she felt. We totally loved it and just couldn't not share it.
A good bye Poem for you guys!
Oh the places you've gone!
Labrador, Maine, Montana and Such,
Places these feet of mine might never touch!
Riding your bike,
You hauled all your gear!
Met new friends and spent part of your year...
You know what you learned,
And you learned what you know.
I bet you didn't expect just how much you would grow.
