The Girls Head to Anchorage

The week before Easter, Anya had some appointments scheduled in Anchorage. Around that time gas went up to 15.99 in town. Yep. That's not a typo. $15.99/gallon. Gas is still $5.50/gal in Kotzebue, so we decided we could drive to Kotz and the girls would hop on the jet while the boys filled drums of gas and drove back to town. Our friend is a trooper in Kotzebue so we were able to stop in there to warm up and regroup. Brett went out to get gas and NONE of the pumps were working! It was such a bummer. He didn't even have enough gas to get home, but thankfully we have such kind generous friends that had some jerry jugs he used to fill the machines. Of course Oren ended up driving my machine back and was an absolute champ. It took us about 3 1/2 hours to get down there and about that for them to get home too.
The Borough was working on making an ice road from Kotz to Noatak. We heard they didn't make it past this tricky spot and stopped to check it out. (The operator made it out safely!)
Anya wasn't super impressed that we were driving. "A plane would be way faster."
Brandy and Caleb VanAmburg with Marjaana (Caleb's mom, Doris, was our childcare provider for many many years and they have become family!)
The big girl was excited for her trip even if it was full of appointments. We got in at about 10:00 PM and after she got her suitcase asked if we could "shop before we do anything else." She is something else! It turns out the place she was most excited for was Cabelas.
It was a couple days before she got her Cabelas shopping in, but she made it. First stop was the aquarium of course. "WOOOOOOOW!! Look! A whitefish!"
We got some great friend time in while we were in town.
And then it was time to go home.
We were blessed to have visitors coming back with us. I was happy we were able to charter a small plane with them to give them a full experience.
We made it back to town in time for the community Easter egg hunt. They had a hunt for every age group!

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