and we're back!

Hello everyone! We now have internet in the apartment! whoo-hoo! So I will try to keep posting in the blog to keep everyone updated on our crazy life here in Alaska. It snowed here last night and the neighborhood looks so pretty in the snow. It was only about 2 inches and is already starting to melt but I bet by the time we get back from the wedding there will be a thick layer of snow on the ground. The locals here keep telling us that the winter is starting really late this year...maybe that's a good thing because we were able to move in and get settled with no snow. The apartment is almost all unpacked!! I have been doing nothing for the past 4 days but unpacking and cleaning. I wanted our home to be put together for when we come home from Texas. I am getting so excited we will be back home in 3 short days!! Its a little overwhelming thinking of all of the packing that needs to be done, but I'm sure we will get it all together.

This past weekend we went and watched the A&M game with the Anchorage Aggie club. It was a lot of fun. Games here are normally at 11 or even 8 in the morning, so it a completely different experience. We go to a sports bar and eat BREAKFAST and watch football! On Sunday we went to the Alaska Zoo. There were lots of neat animals  (too many owls for my preference..!!) and the zoo is set up more like a nature walk than a typical zoo, the paths aren't paved and there are trees everywhere. You are just walking along a path with big pine trees lining the way and then you turn a corner and you are face to face with a snow leopard! Its pretty neat!

That's all that is happening for now. I'm going to go finish up some things for the wedding! See everyone very very soon!!!!

Story time

Ross and I are finally settled in a TLF on post. We will stay here until we find a home, which I hope will be soon. I was able to hook up internet so I can post more often now.

OK, so let me tell y'all about the rest of our trip: Last time I posted we had made it to Whitehorse, Canada. The capital of the yukon. The day before that we were traveling to Dease Lake. A thriving city with a population of 250. Our drive was very pretty nice that day full of lots of bear sightings, 7 to be exact. At one point there was a bear standing in the middle of the road. I was so excited because I was able to get a good picture. We mostly saw small black bears, one baby cub that was so stinking cute. AND we saw a grizzly...it was huge compare to the black bears. I tried to get a picture but it is kind of far away. Night fell quickly on our drive because we were traveling much farther north than we had been. About an hour away from Dease Lake we got a flat tire on the trailer. Luckily we had a spare, but still it was nerve wracking that Ross was changing a tire, in the pitch black night, on a day where we had seen seven bears! I was on lookout but black bears, in black surrounding everything...needless to say the bear would be upon us before I could have spotted it. Praise the Lord, we had no bear run-ins! We got to Dease Lake around 11 pm. There were two hotels in the city of 250 so we figured getting a room would be no problem...we were wrong. We wound up stay in some rooms that were above a pub. The place was nice enough once we got the heater working.

We left the next morning bright and early. Our drive was about seven hours long to Whitehorse from Dease Lake, so we thought we would have an easy day. This was not so. About an hour into our drive we got another flat tire on the trailer. We used the only spare we had the night before, and we were about an hour  each way between Dease Lake and another town Watson Lake. The plan we came up with was to drop Jeff's trailer (Jeff is our roommate from Georgia who moved to Alaska with us too) and he and I went to Watson Lake to buy a tire. Ross wrote down all the specifications and we were off on the two hour journey there and back to get the tire. When we got to Watson Lake, the unfriendly tire shop owner told us we needed to know how many lug-nuts were on the tire...we had no idea. So we bought two tires, one with 5 and one with 6 spots for the lug-nuts. And we drove back to Ross. We get there all excited for the trip to continue on. We put the new tire on, we put Jeff's trailer back on the hitch and we are off. The plan being to take the tire we didn't need back to Watson Lake and get a spare with the right rim, AND to eat lunch because we hadn't eaten all day. But our plans rarely work out the initial time Ross and I try to do anything, 5 minutes after we started driving again...another flat!!! So Jeff and I take off again, and Ross gets the trailer set up for a quick tire change when we get back.  We buy two tires this time, change both of the remaining tires on the trailer and hit the road. We made it the rest of the way to Whitehorse with no hiccups. And it was actually a huge blessing in disguise that we had flat tires when we did. Tire shops in Canada are few and far between. We were very lucky to only be 50 minutes away from one. If we had just driven a little longer before the flat we could have easily been 3 hours away from the nearest tire shop. So God was looking out for us!

Prince George

Good Morning Everyone! We have made it to Prince George, BC. It is the last big city we will pass through until we hit Anchorage, which should be in about 4 more days if all goes as planned. The drive here was absolutely breath taking. I took 140 pictures on my phone...oops... We were driving up and down the rockies. At times it would be raining, then we would increase in altitude and it would be a full on snow storm. It was the first snow we actually saw falling and I was very excited! WE SAW A MOOSE! That was very neat, he kindly posed for our pictures before trotting off into the woods. When we got to Prince George we couldn't find a hotel, something we didn't think would be a problem here. We went to 5 hotels before finding a room! But I don't think we will have this problem anymore considering the town we are stopping in tonight has a population of 450 people. Ok, well I will leave yall with a bunch of pretty pictures! Miss everyone

Calgary

We made it to Calgary very late last night. We were held up for 2 hours at the Canadian border due to the amount of guns Ross was bring through with him. Luckily we left Billings really early so the two hour didn't make us stop at a hotel earlier than planned. We have no phone service here in Canada, so the blog won't be updated as often and if you call us, we might not get it. I'll try to blog at least once a day so we can keep y'all in the loop. Today we are heading to Prince George. It should be a beautiful drive so I will be sure to take a ton of pictures! Miss everyone a lot, and we are about half way through our journey today :)

Almost to Canada!

Hello! It's day four and we are well on our way out of the US. Only about another hour or so until we hit Canada. We left billings this morning around 9:30. We had a really good breakfast for a hotel continental. We drove across the southern part of Montana, which was a lot of ranches and not much else. We stopped in Great Falls for some supplies and lunch. I found a delicious sub shop!! We should get into Calgary about 7. Then plan is to go explore the city. So I'm sure I'll have more to post about after that. For now I'll leave you with some scenic pics.

Day 3- we have reached big sky country

We have been driving nonstop since my last post. We stopped to take some pictures at the state lines, I made the poor boys turn around because we passed the Wyoming sign. But they were sweet and knew it was something I really wanted a picture of. Wyoming was a surprisingly flat state the first 100 or so miles. It was all dead grass and yucca plants. Kinda looked like south Texas. Then we hit the rocky mountains and boy were they rocky! Just giant sprouts of rock emerged from the ground right next to the highway. At one point we drove by a bunch of snow on the ground. If we were not in a time crunch it would have been fun to have a snowball fight. Guess that will have to wait until Alaska. :)


We just crossed the Montana border. Of course we stopped for our Montana state sign. It was pretty chilly out of the car, and I just checked the temperature...51! Boy am I in trouble! We have another two hours of driving until we reach Billings, our stopping point for today. Then tomorrow we head for Canada!

Day 3 Montana bound and coors brewery

We are having a late start today because we made a little detour to Golden, CO. Golden is such a cute little town. We went to the Coors brewery and saw where Ross' favorite beer is made. The tour was really neat and informative. And at the end of the tour we were able to have three beers to taste the different brews they make at Coors. After the tour we went and walked around the town and grabbed a couple of burgers at a local bar. The had the best onion rings I've ever had!

I'll post some pictures of the drive a little later.