Day One

Little did I know our hotel here in Fairbanks would have FREE wi-fi! We are loving it-it's much faster than the stuff my parents have back in Anchortown.

We left later this morning than we had planned but still made it here by 2:30pm. Other than being stuck in construction for 45 minutes, our 6 1/2 hour drive was just fine and dandy. I took lots of pictures that I promise I will post when we get back to Anchorage since we left the cable to hook the camera to the computer at home. Unfortunately we haven't seen any wildlife yet but we have seen beautiful scenery. Alaska is so amazingly gorgeous it's sometimes unbelievable it's real. I only slept for about 30 minutes the whole ride, which is not much for me. T likes to be the driver so I gladly ride along passenger style. We enjoyed the ride together, listening to the first 12 chapters of Harry Potter 4 (I haven't read it or #5 so I'm trying to catch up) along with listening to music loud enough to do some serious damage to our ears and singing so horribly that we would get booed off the stage if we had been playing Karaoke Revolution. A ridiculous amount of Hot Tamales were also consumed.

We visited with our friends who live here and met their new puppy. He's a pitbull and he's the most well behaved seven-month old puppy I've ever met! We had dinner with them, then went to see the Pipeline, visited PioneerPark (formally known as AlaskaLand) and listened to and watched lightning and thunder while we ran for cover from the POURING rain. I am talking crazy rain here, not just rain but a torrential downpour.

Tomorrow we're visiting our friends' property and checking out how much they've built of their new house. Sometime in the afternoon/evening we will make the trip home. Yet another great thing about the constant sunshine here-we can drive late at night and not be in the dark!

Our trip up today made me think of the road trip we did Spring 2003-visiting friends and family in Utah, Colorado, California and seeing the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas for the first time. Let's just say we're much more Grand Canyon people than Las Vegas people. Slight difference between our trip today and our trip two years ago-the earlier one was over 3,000 miles, today's was only 360 or so. If I have to be in any car for 300 or 3,000 miles, the person I want to be with is T.