Outdoors/Adventure

Photos: Paddling around Alaska's Cook Inlet with 2 young children

The Higmans -- Hig, Erin and the two small children -- paddled into Anchorage last week in their tiny inflatable boats via Turnagain Arm, and they made it alive. This would not be newsworthy except for the fact that so many in the state's largest city consider the Arm so dangerous.

As a result, Turnagain Arm has become a body of water largely reserved for advocates of extremes sports -- windsurfers, kite boarders, and those kayakers and surfers brave enough to ride the bore tides that sometimes roll a big wave of water east up Turnagain Arm from Cook Inlet.

The Higmans -- Brentwood or Hig as he is usually known, wife Erin McKittrick, 4-year-old Katmai and 2-year-old Lituya -- are none of those things. Hig is a PhD-toting geologist who once studied the Arm's bore tides to see what they might teach us all about how tsunamis work. Erin is, or was, a molecular biologist. They live across Kachemak Bay from Homer.

And the kids are, well, kids, which makes them among the most adaptable animals on the planet. The Higman kids have lived a life of adventure without really knowing it because in their world, with parents who regularly pull off epic treks, adventure is the norm.

Full story: Paddle adventure around Alaska's Cook Inlet with 2 children in tow

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