First camping trip: Portage Valley

So Jeff and I had a few days off together so we decided to take the trailer out and give it a trial run and see what all we needed to fix or buy for more camping trips to come. I have heard so much about people camping in Portage, just 50 min from Anchorage, so we decided to head out early Friday morning. I knew the weather was going to be cooler and some rain, but it's ok... Jeff's saying is "If you wait for the weather to clear up in Alaska before you do something, you'll never end up doing anything." It is so true. You can't let anything stop you here. It has been 3 weeks of beautiful sunny warm skies here and of course the weekend we have off, it rains. So we get to Portage, drive around looking at a few camp sites and settled on Black Bear Campground. (Which has definately earned it's name). We set up camp and then our friends Kari and Ryan arrive and set up their motorhome. Before long, we were off exploring. We drove up the canyon only 2 miles or so to check our Portage Glacier and Portage Lake, it was beautiful. Then we headed back to town for firewood... duh a must for camping and neither party brought any. So then the fun began... fire, tin-foil dinner, smores, games, laughs, walks with the dogs.... all in TONS of rain!!!!
So quick story, now that it's summer here, it never gets dark. So it was around 11 pm after a few rounds of intense, bickering card games that we decided to take the dogs for a walk, the rain had subsided for just a wee moment. We started walking along a wood bridge that then ended with a paved trailer. the whole time I'm searching the brush and just being nervous as HECK about bears.... and guess what, all but 10 min from camp, Ryan stops us in our tracks and points to a baby black bear coming down from a tree not 40 feet in front of us. Well we all know that when baby bears are around, so are their mommas. the bear stopped, stared at us then ran off the opposite direction. And that's when we turned back... whew, luckily we didn't see momma bear but you can't mess around in Alaska... hence the reason we are off to buy me a gun in the near future :) We enjoyed the rest of the 30 min walk without any other encounters. (Of course, left the camera and bear mase at camp)
I love the beauty of Alaska. Here is pics of Portage Lake and the Glacier.




We had a very cozy camp site and the dogs sure loved being outside. It wasn't even terribly cold just very very wet and super windy, but that's why we enjoyed chilling in our trailer with the heat on :)





Here we are getting the Tin foil/Hobo dinners ready. We started them on the fire but the fire wasn't holding strong in the rain so we ended up finishing them on the grill, and enjoyed our smores off the stove :) Still camping, still fun.






Thanks Kari and Ryan for tagging along and making memories with us. Jeff and I are so excited to go again, we headed off to Walmart the second we got home and bought everything we would ever need to go camping again, and it will always stay in the trailer, so we can just up and leave anytime we want. Looking at our schedules, we plan on going again this next week and the week after, hopefully we will get our tags and come home with a black bear too!!! :)

Memorial Day

Jeff and I were invited to a family from our ward's home for a bbq and sunny weather for Memorial Day. It sure is nice to be in a great ward that includes us in their activities. The Schaffer's live on base, so it was fun to go hang out and get a tour of "base life". Meg and Terr were invited too so it was fun to have our best friends enjoying the day with us. After a great meal, we enjoyed playing catch, frisbee and just relaxing in the sun. Unfortunately, I only got one pic of Jeff and Terr playing catch.


After the bbq, Jeff and I drove down to Lake Hood to watch float planes take off and land. We have tickets to ride a float plane to a glacier and bear seeing in the next few weeks, and it scares me to death to think about getting in one of them, being planes crash all the time in the Alaska air. But I guess if I die, I will be with my best friend. (And yes mom, you can have the dogs... well Amanda and Scott can have Chewy:)





Alaska is just so beautiful, it amazes me everyday. If our families lived here, I could see us staying forever. The air is crisp and fresh, and there is so much to do and enjoy everyday. The dogs love it too :)

Let the camping begin :)

Alaska has the most beautiful outdoors and wildlife (Bears, Moose, Dall sheep, Eagles, Fish) and Jeff and I knew this the second we moved here. So we knew that come summer we wanted to get out as much as possible. We have been looking for a nice trailer to take out any time we want. Problem is, craigslist here is very baron on anything nice for a good deal. We miss KSL classifieds so so so bad. This trailer search as been a headache. Jeff has bid for so many online from Utah, Arizona, Oregon, and so on. We have considered flying to Utah to purchase one and haul it back up. We've also considered buying one and having it shipped to us on a barge... all of which was even more of a headache. So we turned to looking at pop-up trailers. I found one on craigslist one night and the second I told Jeff he told me it was a fraud, the add sounded too good. (My husband is always so skeptical, and loves turning in scammers) I emailed the lady and she told me I was number 5 on the list to come see... UGH!!! So when I got the phone call saying it was still available it made me nervous that 5 others turned it down.. not a good sign. So we ran over quickly and .... it was love at first site. Jeff has never seen a pop-up (aka Tent trailer) before. Me on the other hand, I have many fond memories and camping experiences growing up with our family tent trailer. The trailer needed a little TLC but we immediately gave over the deposit and considered ourselves proud owners of our new camp trailer. So enough talking, here it is...




Setting up... Jeff was so cute to try and figure out how to put this together. The dogs were way skeptical about getting in but eventually were jumping and running all over. I can't wait to take them out, they love love the outdoors (they hate being indoor dogs, believe it or not)





The smile on my man's face is priceless. We had a great day cleaning it up and getting the feel of it and sitting down discussing all the things we want to buy for our future camping adventures!!!

Orlando Vacation

Well, I've avoided this post long enough, tired of everyone harrassing me about updating our blog with pics and stories of our vacation to Orlando. Dont get me wrong, we had a BLAST and I really do wanna take the time to sit and write all about it, but it's the 300 pics that I have to go through and choose which ones to post... uhhhhhh!!!! So I'm actually only going to post a few pics and then make a seperate book of our Vacation, sorry for all those that were looking forward to seeing all 300 photos, guess you'll have to come visit to enjoy our book!!!
So after dropping our dogs off to our dear friends Kari and Ryan, Jeff and I headed for the airport. We had a 2 hr layover in Utah, which was nice cuz my mom and Kim and Jaxon came up to visit and chill with us in the airport and then we were off to Orlando.
This trip was our over due "HONEYMOON!!!" Haha, Jeff and I spent a few days in Park City after we got married and were planning cruise a month after but with deciding to move to Alaska and our crazy work schedules, we never got around to it. So it was fun to have this little trip together, just the 2 of us... in fact it was our first trip together since we've met! (guess that's what honeymoons are, huh:) When we landed I was immediately over joyed with the temps being 85-90 degrees... I felt like I was in heaven. The weather in Alaska is beautiful and we left when it was in the 60's, but I miss my heat and desperately needed a tan. We got our rental car, which was funny. On our itinerary said we were getting a Chevy Aveo... in other words a putt putt of a car... I jokingly said well what if they are all rented out and we are stuck with a mustang or something cool. Well Jeff went to get the keys and rental all squared away while I gathered luggage. As we were walking to the car stall I noticed a silver mustang in the stall... "Jeff, are you sure you read the stall number right, this is not an Aveo" Sure enough, my husband upgraded to a 2011 Mustang. It was soooo fun to drive around and we just loved it.... definately a good way to start a honeymoon :)

And let me start off by saying this was the perfect time to go to Orlando... the lines were only 5-20 min, only 1 or 2 were 60 minutes but they were worth the wait, so my advice to everyone is go the first week in May, weather amazing and very little traffic and congestion.
Day 1: Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World

I kept telling Jeff I couldn't wait to go to Disney World and was so excited to see Mickey Mouse and Cinderella and all the other characters you see at Disney Land. So as we were driving around getting lost trying to find actually Disney land, we asked a guy and he told us how to get there. So we found it, parked the car, and rode the trolley in... Well the guy lied to us and we were actually at Hollywood Studios, guess he thought we looked too old to go enjoy ourselves at Disney land and thought Hollywood Studios was more suitable for us. Well after a long day, we both realized this wasn't a very fun park... it was just all about making movies and ladada!!! We did see a few cool shows like Indiana Jones and an Extreme Stunt show and rode a roller coaster and the Tower of Terror but overall, we weren't impressed, especially for the money we spent just getting into the park and not to mention it rained for a bit so some things were shut down temporarily... hopefully day 2-6 turn out better.




Day 2: Universal Studios Florida

Jeff was so stoked to hit Universal Studios. He has been here a few times with friends and mission buddies so he couldn't wait to take me. We had so much fun here enjoying all the attractions and rides... Revenge of the Mummy roller coaster (loved it), Bettlejuice rock n' roll show, Jaws boat ride, Fear Factor live (just like the show but involved audience members doing stunts and eating bugs, cow intestines, larvae, etc... so gross), Men in Black ride, Simpsons Ride (made me super sick), Animal Actors show (included animals from Evan Almighty, Men in Black and more), E.T ride (loved it as well) and the Terminator show in 3D.


We also got to see the actual cars used in Fast Five (which by the way was a awesome movie and i would watch it over and over again to see Paul Walker :)






Wish I would've bought this hat so that Jeff would take me serious when I say my dream is to go to the Kentucky Derby...

Day 3: Cocoa Beach

Today we drove just over an hour to the beautiful Cocoa Beach. It was almost exactly a year ago since I was sitting on the Beach in Cabo, so it felt nice to relax, catch some sun, swim, and find sea shells (I know I'm a dork but ever since I was a kid I have a major hording issue when it comes to things like sea shells)
The water was so warm, it felt amazing. The sun was hot, the sand felt good, the skies were so blue, the breeze was blowing, and after 4 hours of lounging we both walked away FRIED!!!! What was suppose to be a nice relaxing day of catching a few sun rays ended up leaving us with purple blistering skin and a ruined vacation... kinda. We spent the rest of our time in Florida lathered up in Aloe Vera, dosed up on Tylenol and running from one shady spot to the next at the theme parks. We wanted to spend another day at the beach, but it didn't happen :(



Day 4: Islands of Adventure

Today we enjoyed the 2nd park at Universal Studios, Island of Adventure. This was our favorite park, all because of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter :) Jeff was in heaven, we came to this part of the park 3 different times and I wish we could've spent the whole day here. It was amazing to me how they made it feel like you were really in Hogsmead. We rode the most amazing ride into Hogswart, participated in Ollivanders wands class and even had a few butter beers. We definately will be returning to Orlando someday just to go the Harry Potter land again.












After our time at Hogsmead, we journeyed down to Seuss Landing, then to the Lost Continent featuring Sindbad stunt show and Posedidon's Fury, then we headed to Toon Lagoon and rode Popeye's barge (and got soaked) and then headed to Ripsaw Falls (similar to splash mt.) and got soaked again, but it felt so good in the 95 degrees.





Overall, minus our burns from the day before, we had a great day at Islands of Adventure and can't wait to go back.
Day 5: Epcot at Walt Disney World

This day is the day I took the most pictures cuz everything was just so beautiful with their Flower and Garden Festival going on. I loved this park, Jeff not so much, we walked and walked and walked and sweated and we were both feeling crummy from our burns, but it didn't stop me from enjoying the moment. We enjoyed going from country to country and learning of their cultures. I would recommend this park to anyone.










Day 6: Airboat ride

Today was the last day of our vacation. We didn't plan it too well though, we spent alot of time just driving around killing time before we had to head to the airport. My plan was to hit the pool and lounge, but 4 days after being burnt we still weren't ready for that much sun, which makes me sad... i wanted to come back to Alaska Florida kissed and all bronzed, not red and peeling! But we did schedule an Airboat ride through the everglades looking for alligators. We both had a great time and it was very relaxing.





We really had an incredible vacation. It's always hard to come back to reality but we are so thankful that we had this time together. I love that we have been able to share so many memories and trips together before we start a family, but I definately can't wait to start memories with our kids and grandkids. I love Jeff so much and time away together just solidified our marriage and reminded me why I married such an amazing, fun-loving, down-to-earth guy who loves me so much.