girdwood

 Time to explore an old gold mining town!

We slept in a little because I think we're all starting to drag a little from the exertions of the past few days, then we headed back down the Seward Highway to Girdwood, an old-timey mining town. Our first stop was the Crow Creek Mine, where Liam wanted to pan for gold. It's a really really pretty place. We paid the good people and got our demonstration of gold panning techniques, then we hiked down the trail to the creek. I was a little put out because nobody told me there would be hiking (for me) on this excursion, but I got over it when we reached the creek, which was downright spectacular. There was one other group there when we arrived, but they left pretty quickly, and then we had the place to ourselves. More precisely, we shared it with a million Alaskan mosquitoes, which are freaking mutants. I had my hood pulled up and my sleeves all bunched up over my hands, but I still manage to collect a few bites. I can only imagine how badly the boys got eaten because they were all wearing shorts.

After much panning and one soaked tennis shoe (Henry), we came up with a grand total of 18 gold flakes in little vials of water. Not much physical reward for the monetary outlay, but hopefully the memory of panning for gold at an Alaskan mine will be worth it for them.

Once we were finished at the mine, we continued on to the main attraction for the day: Mount Alyeska. There's a ski resort at the base of the mountain, and in the summer the main draw is the tram up the mountain. Henry and I bought tram tickets and headed up, while Mike, Liam, and Max opted to get to the top the hard way: by climbing a very steep trail that zigzagged up the mountainside. Henry and I got to the top within 5 minutes, then bought some ridiculously overpriced lunch ($15 for four chicken nuggets! I never!) and waited an excessively long time for it to be ready, but at least we had a nice view. 

let's not even talk about how
expensive this root beer was

Shortly after we finished our lunch, Mike and the older boys made it to the top (about an hour and 45 minutes total for them). Max came skipping up without a care in the world, a little sweaty but totally exhilarated. Liam and Mike came staggering up after him, drenched in sweat and visibly exhausted. The boys ate some bison chili while Mike and I watched the cliff swallows diving and swooping, then we all got on the tram for the ride back down.

Max sent this from the trail

actually happy to be climbing a mountain

And that's when things started to go wrong for poor Liam, who got a migraine. We stopped right away and got him some Tylenol, but we weren't able to head it off, so he was pretty miserable. His normal protocol is to take the Tylenol, and if that doesn't work, to take his stronger prescription medicine an hour later. So while we waited for the medicine to work, we stopped along the drive home to witness one last amazing Alaskan site for the day: the bore tide coming in. This happens when the low tide is really low and the high tide is really high, and it all comes rushing in in one big wave. There were surfers waiting and people lined up all along all the pull-offs because this one was among the higher ones. Mike and I got out just as it was coming in and got to watch. Nature is so cool, y'all.

Anyway, we made it back to our rental house when Liam's hour was up, and he was noticeably worse. Luckily for him, I had brought his migraine medicine. It's been a good while since he had one, so it wasn't really on my radar, but as we were getting ready to walk out the door in Plymouth, I happened to open the drawer where we keep it, and it caught my eye so I grabbed it just in case. Which turned out to be a very good thing because he was in bad shape for a while until he managed to keep some of the medicine down and sleep it off a little.

While Liam slept, we got pizza (it was pretty good!) for dinner and just puttered around doing laundry and cleaning up for the night. There were no more earthquakes, and I went to bed sometime around 10. I woke up a few hours later and heard Liam out in the kitchen getting some pizza because he was feeling better. This morning, he is fully recovered, just in time for us to pack up and leave the rental house for more northerly locales.