First Winter off to a good start!

The last few weekends have kept us busy and we have been having fun.

We spent Thanksgiving Day with our friends Mattea and Cynthia. We had a great meal and a relaxing day. We spent the weekend doing a little shopping and putting up the Christmas tree. We bought our ski pants and a few Christmas gifts too!

This week I bought the stuff and made a wreath for our front door. I ended up saving $5 by making it myself instead of buying a pre-made one at Wal-Mart.

This weekend we went sledding at a popular hill in Kincaid Park in west Anchorage. We had a blast. We also found a special deal on a Wii at Wal-Mart - purchase for $199 and receive a Wal-Mart gift card for $50! This is our Christmas gift to each other. Now we need to buy some accessories!

The view from the top of the sledding hill. Cynthia, Me and Mattea enjoying the day, complete with a thermos of hot chocolate. Me getting ready to go down the hill.

Kevin giving Mattea a push off. Me and Cynthia making snow angels.

Here's a video of us sledding. Mattea and her Aunt Cynthia are on the first sled and me on the second sled.

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

A night out on the town!

Our night out just consisted of us going to a hockey game. It was our first Alaska Aces game and it was a lot of fun. They beat the Condors 7 to 1. We hope to get to more games this season.

The snow is here!

It finally snowed yesterday evening and night. We ended up with about 2 inches of snow as of this morning. Kevin was not really excited about driving to work in the snow this morning however, he knew he would have to eventually. He is just glad it didn't do this his first week of work. Hope you enjoy the picture.

Backpack camping into the Park

Here are some pictures from our backpack camping trip in Denali National Park. Our friends Montana and Holly went with us. We rode the bus into the park to the end of the road. At the end of the road is the old gold mining camp called Kantishna. We found an old road that we hiked up 3 miles to a clearing that over looked the Alaska Range including Mt. McKinley. We pitched our tents and enjoyed being out in the wild where the four of us were the only people in the world that knew exactly where we were. It was a fantastic trip and one that we hope to do again someday. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Here are some of the pictures we took on the bus ride out to Kantishna:
Some bears A golden eagle a fox The four of us at one of the stopping points along the road. That's Mt. McKinley in the back ground.

These two pictures were taken when we made a stop at Eilson Visitors Center, there were some antlers laying on the ground so we took advantage for a picture moment.

Along the road we hiked up to the clearing.

The four of us on the clearing where we pitched our tents. Holly went further up the hill and took our picture before we pitched our tents.

Our tents!

We had to go at least 100 feet away from our camp site to eat. That is one of the rules that you learn in the safety class that you have to take in order to be able to overnight camp in the park.

This was a rock cliff that we climbed up and sat on for awhile. This is where we took the picture (above) of our tents.

After set up camp we went for a walk along the ridge line. We found a huge blueberry patch along the way, so we stopped and enjoyed them.

This was the view from the hill top clearing.

When we woke up the next morning it was raining and VERY foggy, so we had fun packing up!

New home, new job, new experiences

We moved into our new apartment over the weekend. We are renting a 2 bedroom at Deer Park Apartments. Which means we have room for visitors! We bought a mattress and a friend gave us a couch and a coffee table (which the TV is sitting on right now). We are waiting for more income before we start accumulating more furniture. Speaking of income. . . . Kevin started a new job today. He is working for JL Properties. They have the contract for maintaining military housing at Elmendorf Air Force Base. I however will be collecting unemployment until I find a good job. Until that time I am setting up our new home. I have decided that opposed to just being a housewife I am more of a Trophy Wife. HAHAHAHA!!!

So far we are really enjoying Alaska. We had a great summer and fall so far and we are looking forward to a great winter. We have a couple that we made fast friends with over the summer at the Chalets that is staying in Alaska for the winter. Another friend of ours from the summer will be staying in Alaska also and living with her Aunt. The 6 of us are planning on spending Thanksgiving together. Even though we will not be with family and enjoying our old traditions we are excited to start new traditions here in Alaska.

As of this posting we do not have any snow here in the city but there is plenty of snow on the mountains nearby. There is snow in the forecast toward the middle to end of the week. It is very different from last year when the first snow came at the beginning of the second week of October. Locals have been telling us that this fall has been very warm. Although I do believe that the cold is here now and here to stay for awhile. The temp this morning was 12 degrees at about 6:30AM. The high today is supposed to be in the mid 20's.

I have been having some technical difficulties with getting some of my pictures downloaded from my cameras that I am trying to get taken care of in the next couple of days. I know I have been saying I would post pictures soon for about 3 months (or more) but I really am going to try VERY hard to get some uploaded on here this week. I will just have to postpone unpacking some.

Have a great week everybody!

Here we are!

Well, we have made it to Anchorage. We arrived last Thursday, Oct. 1 and spent the night with a friend of ours and on Friday we moved into a temporary apartment. We still haven't decided where in Anchorage we want to live and there are so many apartments to choose from that we just choose a place that would do a 30 day lease to start from. We are starting the search today to find a place to move into by Nov. 2nd.

The summer finished up nicely at the Chalets. My last day of work was on Sept. 21 and Kevin's last day was Sept. 30. The maintenance team was able to shut the whole property down (28 guest buildings, the main lobby, gift shop, 2 restaurants, several employee housing buildings, the employee dining room and various other buildings) in record time. By shutting down the property I am referring to the fact that ALL water must be turned off and completely drained out of the pipes including no water can be left in the toilets, windows have to be boarded up and power has to be shut off. There were many many other things that they had to do as well but the details can be some what boring. The summer was very interesting and definitely a growing experience for both of us. It was a big step out of my comfort zone to live so close to so many people and have to share a bathroom with strangers, but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

Now, more about what is going on currently. The place we moved into temporarily is basically like a hotel room but with it being an apartment building tenants can sign a minimum of a 1 month lease at a time and not have to pay the bed tax. The building itself used to be a nursing home/assisted living facility. Floors 2, 3 and 4 used to be the nursing home rooms, they don't have kitchens in them, just the room with a bed and a huge bathroom with a roll in type shower. We live on the 4th floor. There is a community room that the rooms on these floors have access to that has a full kitchen and there is a laundry room. Floors 5 - 14 are what used to be the assisted living apartments. They are one bedroom apartments with full kitchens. It is a bit expensive (comparatively with TN) to live here for what you get but it is warm and dry and all the utilities are included in the rent - even cable! The building is in downtown so we definitely are not interested in staying here long term. We have a LONG list of apartments that we want to look at that are scattered all over town. As we drive around to look at them we will see what kind of areas they are in and decide if it looks like a "safe" or "good" area of town to live in. We are leaning more toward the south end of town though.

We will keep you posted as to the progress and how it goes. Have a great week everybody!

We are still alive and well

So a few weeks ago we went down to Wasilla/Palmer and spent a few days at the Alaska State Fair. It was a lot of fun to see all the gigantic vegetables and the variety of animals. I never knew there was so many kinds of chickens. It was fun getting to eat all the fair food, cotton candy, funnel cake, dippin' dots, candy apples, corn dogs and bbq. We definitely got to see so interesting things, the pig race was probably the most entertaining. We tried again to go skydiving but it was just too cloudy. We will eventually do this though!!!

The next week we drove up to the Arctic Circle via the Dalton Highway and continued on to Coldfoot, AK where we camped out for the night. It took about 7 hours to drive to Coldfoot from Denali but the scenery was well worth it. We didn't get to see any snow though, still a little too early. We ended up about 240 miles away from Deadhorse. We hope to one day drive all the way up to Deadhorse when we have more than just one night. We got to see the pipeline along the way too, so that was cool.

This past "weekend" we went out to Healy and camped out so we could watch for the Northern Lights and take pictures. They were out for about an hour and a half and we did get some pictures but they weren't very bright. Eventually I will get some of those pictures uploaded, but again, I am going to have to wait until I can get a stronger signal.

We are down to the last few days that the hotel is open so we are getting ready to wrap everything up. Kevin's last day of work will be October 1, so we will be leaving here on October 2. We still do not have jobs lined up nor a place to live but we do have a couple of prospects. We should know by next week where we are going to live at least temporarily until we decide on jobs and what part of town will be best for us.

Hope you are all doing well and thanks for staying up to date on what we are doing.

Pictures from the Chena Hot Springs camping trip

Sorry these are so late in getting posted. I guess the time to upload to the Internet is late at night. Hope you enjoy.
The group: Damian, Nija, Holly and myself, Kevin took the picture. Nija and Holly slept on way there.

Montana watching me roast a hotdog. Hanging out by the fire: Bill, me, Nija, Damian and Montana in the back. Hanging out at the campsite: Kelly, Holly, me and Nija

Walking across the airstrip. Me and Kevin in the hot spring pool. Kevin being lazy in the tent.

So what have we been up to lately?

Well lets start with a few weeks ago. Kevin and I went with our friends Holly and Montana into the park and backpack camped into the back country. It was a ton of fun. It was my first experience with packing everything you would need for an over night tent camping trip into a pack and then carrying that pack into the wilderness and camping. We rode the bus all the way into the park as far as possible which is Kantishna "the end of the road". It's 91 miles into the park. We took off up a mountain and hiked 3 miles up the mountain until we found a clearing that overlooked the Alaska range which includes Mt. McKinley. It was absolutely gorgeous. We set up camp and stayed for the night. We woke early the next morning to the rain coming down. We packed up and hiked back out to the road. We then came back home. We were all really sore from all the uphill hiking but it was so much fun that none of us really cared.

Last week Mom and Bryant came up for a visit. They were here for this past week and we enjoyed showing them around. We got to see some moose up close and personal while out driving around, it was pretty cool. Except for the part where we were almost run over by and moose then we almost ran into it while the truck behind us almost run over us. It was exciting after the fact when we realized we lived through it.

Yesterday we hiked up Mt. Healy which is right behind the hotel property. It was about 7 miles round trip. It was a fabulous view.

I hope to be able to upload some pictures soon from all our exciting adventures, so stayed tuned.

This week we are going down to Wasilla to spend a couple of days at the State Fair. We also hope the skydiving thing will work out this time. I will update when we get back.

Guess what? . . . . It's August!!!!!

Last week we took our "weekend" and went camping with some friends to Chena Hot Springs Resort, about 60 miles north of Fairbanks. The resort is really nice and the campground is nice too. They actually have an in ground pool and hot tubs in addition to the hot spring fed pool. We had a great time relaxing and visiting with some friends. They also have a museum at the resort that we visited. The inside is made completely out of ice. Even in the area where they make the carvings their "tool bench" and tables are made out of ice. They have a bar inside that even the stools are made out of ice. The only kind of drink they serve is an Appletini because any non-alcoholic drink would freeze before it could be served. It is even served in a martini glass made out of ice. There are four "bedrooms" inside the ice museum that you can rent for the night for only $600. They also have an alter where they hold wedding ceremonies.

We also went to North Pole, Alaska which is also near Fairbanks. We visited Santa's House while we were there and saw some of his reindeer. Santa was there and we had out picture made with him. We got to see where Santa keeps all the letters that boys and girls send to him each year. He keeps them posted all over the walls. It was really cool.

We had a great time and can't wait for our next adventure. We plan to go to Wasilla the first week of Sept. for the Alaska State Fair. While there we plan to fulfill our quest that we didn't get to do last time, skydiving!

I have tried twice to upload pictures and the connection keeps failing when I click upload. I will try again later, but if I can't get them pics on, I have several loaded on my facebook page so check it out. If we aren't "friends" just send me a friend request then you can see them.

Until next time. . . . .

IT'S JULY ALREADY!!!!!

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah I know, it's been awhile.

Well in the last few weeks I have officially become an Alaskan resident. I now have my driver's license and Kevin will have his in the next week or so. The truck has also been registered and has Alaska plates on it.

We spent a day in the park a couple of weeks ago and we saw the "Big 5" plus the mountain making it a Grand Slam. The Big 5 are: moose, grizzly bear, dall sheep, wolf and caribou. The morning we went out was completely clear and perfect blue skies. We were able to see the Mt. McKinley in all it glory. By the afternoon it started clouding up a bit and started hiding the mountain but we go a good hike in. In addition to the big 5 we saw a golden eagle, countless squirrels, snow shoe hares and mugulls (just like a seagull only inland) and a fox being chased by a grizzly. Of course that happened to quickly to get a picture of.

Tomorrow we are getting on the train and riding down to Anchorage and coming back on Friday. We have some cool plans but nothing will be for sure until Thursday evening so I will not fill you in on it until it happens. Anyway, we will be getting out of "the Canyon" (the area where the hotels and shops are located outside of the park) for a couple of days so it will be nice.

Hope you will be looking forward to the next post.

The latest and greatest

Well it was really a stroke of luck that we got on the flight. See, in order to go on all these exciting trips I have to have one of the managers at the front desk call the vendor and set everything up. When the manager called early in the afternoon on Tuesday they said there was a few seats open at that point and if we wanted to go on the flight we needed to be in the lobby and ready for pick up at 4:15 and if no more paying guests signed up for the flight then we would be able to go. Well, as you can tell no one else signed up. We were blessed with good weather even though it was overcast at the airport when we left we were able to get above the cloud cover and have spectacular views of the mountain. the day we went also happen to be summit day for a group of climbers that were on the mountain and they happen to be reaching the summit when we flew by. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

This is the plane we rode in.

Kevin anticipating takeoff.

Just after take off, that is the town of Healy.

As you can see we had some clouds.

But we were able to rise above them.

And when we did break through we were blessed to see Mt. McKinley towering above the clouds.

As we soared to above 15,000 feet we had to put on oxygen masks since the plane we were on was not pressurized.

We were able to see some of the glaciers coming off the mountain.

We were actually flying over the south peak and looking down at the north peak from about 21,000 feet.

Those black dots on the peak are actual people standing on top of the mountain.

There are a group of climbers huddled up with a string of climbers coming up to them.

The climbers walk in groups of 5 people that are tied off to each other. There was supposed to be around 10 or 12 groups climbing the mountain at this time.

This is a shot of the north side of the mountain with another mountain to the west of it in the back ground. We were flying away at this point.

We did finally go white water rafting the other day also. We did that on Thursday of last week. There happen to be a news crew there that day doing a story on activities to do in the Denali area. We happen to be flipping channels on the TV Monday night when we just caught the story being aired and there we were on the TV. It was pretty cool. The news station was the Anchorage ABC channel.

Hope all are well and we would love to hear from you.