Tender Mercies

Two months ago we planned a weekend get-away to the Arctic Circle. Less than 72 hours before we were planning on leaving, Marshall told me that he would be leaving that weekend for a two week field exercise with his platoon.  "Well darn!" was my thought, as this trip was the one  thing I had wanted to do since before I arrived in Alaska. I wanted to experience 24 hours of daylight where the sun never dips below the horizon. Trying to be optimistic, I sent my husband off on his trip with a kiss, and looked forward to the weekend we would be able to go--because I wasn't letting another summer go by without making the trip. The Yukon River Fast forward to the weekend of July 25th. We had just spent the past month moving and traveling down south to see family, and we had finally gotten settled into our new place. Marshall had the weekend free from work and though it may have been nice to have a quiet weekend at home, we decided to drive up north. Friday was a long...

Ahh, isn't traveling fun?! It was super great to be traveling with my husband though. I have never done that before this trip, and sitting next to your sweetheart on the plane and having someone to laugh and talk with and a hand to hold or shoulder to lay your head on during the long traveling days makes everything SO much better. Seriously. Because we booked the cheap tickets, we were blessed to enjoy a 14-hour layover in Seattle after a 3.5 hour flight from Kansas City, Missouri. We arrived in Seattle at 5pm and since our next flight didn't take off until the next morning, we decided to spend the night out on the town! I love public transportation: avoiding traffic, not having to worry about parking, and being able to multi-task while you're getting to where you need to be.  Maybe my appreciation for subways and lightrails is because I grew up riding the subways in Tokyo.  Marshall and I walked 10 minutes to the light rail at the airport and rode 30 minutes to downtow...

I can now officially say that I have mountain biked. We had a free morning on Monday before our evening flight out of Anchorage, so we spent it on our bikes in the Chugach State Forest. We drove to Eklutna Lake and biked 14 km around the lake to a campground, for a round-trip of 28 km, roughly 17.5 miles. I suppose it was a legit bike trip because I had one small "crash-and-burn" experience. Seriously, where is the video camera when needed? Luckily I had a handsome husband come pick me up after I fell and did a somersault, too tangled and shaken up to do it myself! He held me on his lap on a fallen down tree for about 10 minutes as I regained composure and confidence. "Growing pains hurt," I said as I laughed through the tears. Trying new things is not always easy, but the results are so worth it! This bike ride really pushed me beyond my comfort zone, but I really feel like I can tackle more mountain bike trails in the future! The second half of the ride was a ...