AK on the GO

Welcome to Wednesday, AKontheGO’ers. We’ve made it halfway through our first post-Spring Break week and the switch to Daylight Savings Time. Is it the weekend, yet? Yikes.

For those who may have missed yesterday’s Alaska Travelgram Show (mercy, why would you do that?), here are a few links to important resources discussed by Mr. Scott McMurren and Moi. First, great airline deals can be found at Jet Blue for summertime flights to SoCal. AK Fam will be hopping aboard the inaugural flight on May 23rd, bound for Long Beach and a little Disneyland (shhhh, it’s a surprise for AK Kid) to celebrate his successful Kindergarten year at the German Halls of Higher Learning.

Speaking of German, Scott also spoke of Condor Air’s uber-great deal to Frankfurt beginning May 7. A seasonal steal, that what this is, so if you’ve been pondering a trip to Europe, this might be the ticket for you. Das ist gut!

We also chatted with Sarah Mueller from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson about the wonderful outdoor recreation opportunities awaiting our service members and their families. Check out their bounty of family fun and get outdoors this summer with your crew, maybe even down to Seward and the beautiful Seward Military Resort, located a stone’s throw away from tons of great fishing, hiking, and sightseeing.

Did you enjoy your Spring Break? Here’s our favorite teen blogger, Sydney Jane Armstrong, with her impressions of a spring vacation (we use the term “spring” loosely around here) with her family. Alaska teens are a busy bunch, I’m finding out, and Sydney gives us a taste of Alaskan adventure while up in the small community of Willow, about 1.5 hours north of Anchorage:

Alaska teenagers know how to have wild fun while on vacation

Spring Break, the last big vacation before school lets out for summer. While a lot of people go outside Alaska to enjoy their time off, some decide to stay and enjoy what our great state has to offer. This year’s spring break in Alaska was particularly fantastic due to amazing sunshine.

I, like many others, spent my week doing what Alaskans do best, enjoying the great outdoors. With seven days off and so much to do, I didn’t know where to begin. I spent the first weekend like most teenage girls would, hanging out with friends, driving around town to favorite spots to take pictures; Flattop, Potter Marsh, and even Beluga Point. Tuesday, my cousin and I headed out on a road trip to her cabin in Willow, a beautiful drive. I think my favorite part of growing up so far is the long road trips I get to take with my closest friends: just us, some good music, and a lot of laughter.

Once we arrived, the first thing we did was lace up our skates and play on an ice rink my uncle made on Willow Lake. It was a blast. I even learned how to play hockey.

The rest of the week was spent in my other favorite activity, riding the snowmachine. I grew up on the sleds, but I’ve never been on quite the trip like this one with my cousin Lindsey when we left Willow Lake early and followed trails leading to adjacent Long and Crystal lakes, then took off into the woods.

As we rounded a corner some distance away, we came upon my favorite summertime campground, Little Willow. As we carefully crossed the frozen river with our machines, we followed the area’s road all the way back to the highway’s bridge. I know this campground like the back of my own hand, spending at least a month total of summer fishing and swimming in the river with my family, but I had never seen it in the winter.

With darkness falling, we decided to head back. I assumed we would be returning the way we came, but Lindsey had a different idea. She waved for me to follow her and, driving towards the highway, we saw a build-up of snow had caused our normal route to be level with a bridge safety railing that, with one wrong turn, could have taken the machine right off the bridge. We headed back to the cabin following the trail using the road instead of the trail, something I’ve never done in all my years of riding.

Once at the cabin, we curled up to watch a movie. The perfect way to spend the last night of vacation, right? Wrong.  Around 11p.m., I decided to check Facebook on my phone and quickly saw that everyone’s status updates were about how beautiful the Northern Lights were. Lindsey and I grabbed our coats (I couldn’t find mine so I threw on a fur coat I found hanging up) and our cameras and headed down to the lake in the dark. From the lake’s edge we saw beautiful Northern Lights “dancing” in the sky. It was only the second time I could remember seeing them in person, and they were incredible. We hopped on the ice rink, grabbed a hockey net and flipped it over to make a type of hammock. We lay there for an hour in the freezing cold, taking pictures, talking, and enjoying the gorgeous green lights. Now if that’s not a true Alaskan night, I don’t know what is.

Vacation rocks.

Note: Considering a winter/spring vacation to Alaska next year with your ‘tween or teen? Our friends at Salmon Berry tours offer snowmachine tours for just this generation, so give Candice and her crew a call to arrange a wild Alaskan adventure!

It’s never easy to move from one place to another, AK Fam knows. Pulling up roots, however temporary, is painful, and for kids it can be doubly so. Just ask AK Dad. The product of a Navy and Red Cross Field Manager father, he was transported from one state or foreign country so often during his younger years that today he must stop and think about the answer to “Where are you from?”

But for all the difficulty the transient lifestyle of today’s military family faces, one thing remains constant; the ability to see, taste, listen, and touch the essence of whatever community said family resides within. Even though deployments and temporary assignments often take away moms and dads and spouses, families of our military, Department of Defense, and others are offered the chance to recreate together within Mother Nature’s gentle embrace. Memories of tough days and even tougher nights tend to melt away, at least for the moment, to the gentle lap of waves against a canoe’s gunwale, to the sound of children tearing down a ski slope, or at the taste of a self-caught fish grilled over an open campfire. Military families, especially, know how to cherish moments to be captured for a lifetime, and right here in Anchorage our Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER) is assisting with those buckets of memories by filling them up, right to the top.

It’s a topic close to AK Fam’s heart, how best to support our military men and women and their children; after all, AK Dad is a civilian Federal Employee and we have done our share of moving around. Most of our friends are either active duty or reservists, and we’ve watched all of them struggle with keeping a semblance of family balance and harmony alive when one parent is missing from the overall collage of daily activity.

Last Friday, AK Kid and I paid a visit to Hillberg ski area on the fringe of JBER for a little day-off fun at this tiny but action-packed ski and tubing park. Open every weekend and on most holidays, Hillberg boasts (and rightly so) to be the “Little Hill with big Fun” for families. We soon found out why as the list of outdoor wintertime activities seemed to go on and on and on; alpine skiing, Nordic trails, tubing and terrain parks, sledding, ice skating, a ski team, ice fishing, even dog sled rides.

Mountain Manager Trevor Bird, in his first season at Hillberg, says that from an alpine skiing perspective, the facility offers families a great sense of exposure to simple skiing without the angst many first-timers (especially if adults) feel at larger resorts. “We have access and low-key skiing,” Bird said. “It’s perfect for anyone wanting a more relaxed atmosphere and a great learning environment.”

Rentals complete the picture with sizes running the gamut from small kiddos to adults, and lessons for the same are a super way to familiarize oneself with skiing, the mountain, and confidence. Plus, Bird adds, they’re a bargain. A one-hour lesson for a child age 4-7 costs $45 with rentals, lift, and lesson all included. Whoa. Adults are $50 for the same package, and for anyone thinking this mountain will bore you after an hour going up and down the same hill, think again. Bird’s background as a ski instructor insures interesting, engaging, and dedicated instructors.

Another fun aspect of Hillberg is its commitment to youth development. A ski team travels to other Alaskan bases and privately owned resorts, but Hillberg also offers a Junior Ski Patrol program for kids 10-18 who show leadership skills and want to give back to their ski hill. Checking helmets on lesson-takers, reminding of rules, helping control lift lines; these kids know their stuff. Grab an adult Ski Patrol if your ‘tween/teen is interested.

Our Fam, on this day, however, stuck to the tubing hill, a perennial favorite of my AK Kid. Finally deemed tall and “grownup” enough to tube by himself, AK Kid secured his tube from the metal storage containers at the bottom of the tow, hauled it up to the always kind operators (seriously, these guys are always nice), and took off for the top. Finding the perfect groomed lane, he slapped his little body down on the tube and came whooping and hollering down the slope with a beyond-awesome, ear-to-ear grin. $10 gets a kid or adult two hours of tubing, plenty of time to make enough slides before coming in for lunch. Bird says the tubing hill can handle up to 120 participants at one time, so get there early to ensure a spot, or plan to take a snowshoe, hike, or ski while waiting for spots to open up. AND, kids must be 47″ tall to tube.

A small cafeteria is available for family-friendly snacks, but we usually bring our own yummies after we establish a beachhead inside the lodge. Hillberg also has a pro shop for gear, tech help for gear, and access to the dog sledding fun. Hillberg will be hosting a “Spring Meltdown” the last weekend of March to celebrate winter’s (hopeful) end, so look for flyers soon.

The Outdoor  Rec office on JBER (off 13th) offers snowshoes, Nordic skis, and ice fishing equipment, too. We’ll be talking with Sarah Mueller, Director, a little later when spring and summer make their first appearances.

But for now, know that Hillberg will provide our military families with bang for their almighty dollar, fun for their bodies, and goodness for their souls. It’s what matters.