Mom in the Mtns

Hi everyone!  Greetings from sunny (literally, it’s 10:30 pm and still kind of light out) Seward, AK!

I know in my last post I was like “Oh we finally made it, the road trip is over, yay for only good times ahead” but I was pretty wrong about that.  Ugh.  Sunday’s “easy” 5 hour road trip from Tok to Anchorage turned into 9 hours of stress and tears when Andrew got us a flat tire in the middle of nowhere from driving too fast on the gravel “highway”.  Seriously, never complain to me about bad road surfaces!  You can read all about it here as well as some info on what Anchorage is like.  We stayed there for 2 nights so that we could unpack the trailer into storage (lots of things got destroyed so there were more tears), get our oil changed at Jiffy Lube (it’s over twice as expensive as it is in Philly), and set up a bank account (literally the only good thing about yesterday, mostly because our banker told us stories about how awesome Anchorage is and how great it is to live here).  We were exhausted and still kind of stressed out as we left Anchorage this morning for Seward.  But we arrived without any road issues and we are so happy to finally be done for real this time!  We loved Seward when we were here last year on our honeymoon, and it’s just as awesome as we remembered!  We are so excited to live in such a beautiful, calm, quiet, and unique place for the summer!

The harbor – I’ll have this view from my office!

You can read all about today’s drive, first day at work, and our new living situation here!  Currently that blog is getting more lovin from me since all of our friends and family are reading it on a daily basis, and we want to let them know that we finally made it and make sure that they see what our new home looks like!  Once we get settled in I’ll probably stop sending you over there  🙂

On a running-related note, today we drove all over Seward and the immediate surrounding areas and Andrew helped me scope out possible running routes!  Seward has a walking trail that winds all over the town, plus the downtown area has sidewalks so I know I can make at least a 3 mile route out of that.  That will be my go-to running route for most of my runs, and I’m excited that they’re going to be safe and beautiful!  We also drove out to Lowell Point, which is down a dirt road along the bay.  It’s a few miles out and back, but there’s no sidewalk so I’ll have to wear reflective gear and be much more cautious while running along there.  Cars can’t go fast since it’s gravel and there’s lots of visibility from far away (and it’s not like it gets dark here in the summer), plus we saw people running and biking on the road so we know it’s totally doable.  We also drove out to Exit Glacier to see how many miles that would be.  We found out that while I probably can’t run out to the glacier viewing point on the road (9 miles one way!) I can definitely use that road for my long runs.  Once again there’s no real sidewalk, but the road is not busy at all and as I said before I’ll be extra cautious while running on it and stay as far away from the road lanes as possible.  We actually passed a runner on the road tonight and I was kind of jealous that he was out running!  It’s nice to know that I have options and that other people are out running on them too!

Tomorrow our manager is not able to come into the office so she’s sending us on a glacier boat tour instead of training us!  While the tour is technically part of our training, we are still kind of amazed that we are getting paid to spend tomorrow on a free boat tour in the fjords!  Let’s hope we see some whales and puffins!  And I plan on doing my first run since the Hershey 10k tomorrow after work so wish me luck!

Have you ever gotten a flat tire in the middle of nowhere?  Have you ever had to run on roads without sidewalks and what did you do to stay safe?