Day Two

Yesterday was day two of our trip. We spent the morning enjoying the continental breakfast and free internet access in our hotel room until Craig and Joy came to show us their house. They live about one hour outside the city of Fairbanks. It's out there. Far. The dirt road to their house was full of potholes and fun to ride on-like a rollercoaster. They're building their own house which I'm very impressed by. These people are amazing. They've lived here for five years with AN OUTHOUSE. If you know me, you know I CANNOT handle not having a real bathroom. I just can't. I'm way too citified. And I'm not sure that's actually a word. It was very peaceful up at their place although the wind got a little out of control.
Craig drove us up the mountain near where they live in his (cute) Jeep Wrangler to see the amazing view. Four-wheel drive is awesome. The funniest part? His dog, Grimm, RAN the entire way up the mountain with us, just galloping behind the Jeep the whole way. He is an adorable dog and so willing to please. He's just a puppy, about seven months old but he is very well trained. They don't even have to put a leash on him, he just stays nearby them. When we were visiting the Pipeline, some people walked over to him and while they were petting him and commenting on how cute he was, they asked what kind of dog he was. When Joy told them he was a pitbull, they made some stupid comment like, "Oh, really?" like they were disappointed that such a well-behaved dog could also be a pitbull. Arg. Grimm's excellent behavior and willingness to learn makes me hopeful that when we get a dog we'll be able to train him/her too.
Our drive back to Anchorage was smoky for the first 45 minutes or so, the smoke from the forest fires nearby had blown into town and created the most bizarre haze I'd ever seen. It was really thick, like something you'd see in a movie. We got back in six hours (two cops sighted during entire 360 mile trip) and ate copious amounts of snacks along the way. At one point we had to stop and get gas and I realized I'd been sitting for over 4 hours. You know what that does to a person's butt? Kills it. Makes it fall asleep. We listened to more of Harry Potter 4 and some music too. You know you've married the right person when he lets you sing (loudly and poorly) along with dorky songs like Blister in the Sun.
This morning I met up with my childhood best friend, Britt. She's the greatest-so sweet and the kind of friend that I can go a year without seeing and it's never awkward between us. This is the friend that I use to play "kitties" with-we sat in laundry baskets and made her little red-headed sister put Cheerios in tupperware containers for us to eat. Needless to say, we were cool. Just today we were talking about how kids today (yes we think we are so old) are growing up so much faster than we did in the 80s. We played with dolls until an embarrassing age (no I'm not telling) and designed our dream houses with pictures we cut out of the JCPenny catalogs. We played on a soccer team and discussed what life would be like when we lived next door to each other, our kids playing with each other. We had that round necklace that said, "Best Friends" that had a crack down the middle and we each wore half. I think my half was Be Fri. I guess I'm feeling all reminiscent. Being in Anchorage does that to me.
Now that I've done my babbling for the day, I'm off to go help my mom buy a new dryer and start cooking for the BBQ on Wednesday. Wednesday's forecast? Rain. God Bless Alaska.