Our Great Alaskan Adventure

This last week Damon and I were able to go up to Alaska for five days and visit my best friend from growing up. It has always been Damon's dream to go to Alaska so he was giddy with excitement, I on the other hand was excited to see Melissa. We drove down to Lakeview on Wednesday and dropped the girls off with my parents where they got to stay for the week. We then headed down to Reno, were we flew out the next morning. Thursday evening we went out to dinner at a really nice restaurant(like seriously the best calamari I have ever had, yumm!) and then we walked around downtown Anchorage. This is when I also got to experience how it never gets dark there. It is the craziest thing!

Friday Melissa had to work so Matt was our tour guide. He took us to this wildlife conservation center and we saw so many cute animals. This is also where I saw bears, the only bears I saw while in Alaska, phew!!

Full grown Mux Ox

Baby Mux Ox, don't they just look so soft, I really wanted to pet one!

Bear, luckily behind a fence!

This is my favorite photo I took this trip!! Love this little guy!

More baby moose, these guys were twins!!

Two days of our trip though we were going to go camping with Melissa and her husband Matt at a cabin outside of Fairbanks. They live in Anchorage and what we thought was going to be a 4 hour drive ended up being a 7, Melissa had been misinformed on just how long the drive was. Oh well we had great conversations on the way up and it was fun to just catch up. Camping was okay, I'm not a huge camper, this was my second time actually going camping, so it was a bit outside my comfort zone. I just wish the cabin we stayed in had running water or a toilet, but I guess that isn't really camping then. I was pretty terrified of seeing a bear, so much that I made Damon walk me to the outhouse every time I needed to use it. It didn't help that Matt kept on freaking me out acting like there was a bear behind me all the time. I survived though, which was my number one goal. We saw quite a few moose, which was cool. One we saw was about 25 yards away from us, drinking some water out of a pond. Melissa and Matt took us to this amazing hot springs, the coolest one I have ever been too, it was so big. Damon also got to do some fishing while we were camping which he enjoyed, but unfortunately he did not catch anything.

Our cabin

Action shot of Damon splitting some wood

This moose was about 25 yards away from us!

Damon having fun fishing

The view from our cabin

A moose we saw in the wild, with antlers!

Me enjoying my camping experience!

 Okay this last picture I took just to show how light it was at 11pm.  No joke this is the darkest it got! I couldn't believe it!!

After we got back from camping we had one more evening in Anchorage before we left the next morning. So we went back to that yummy restaurant and ordered the same thing. I had the halibut, SO delicious and Damon had the fresh catch of the day which was salmon, the best salmon he has ever had he said. We also ordered the calamari again, because it was so yummy. It was such a wonderful vacation!!! Damon and I are so glad that we got to do this, it was the first vacation we have taken just the two of us since we had Olivia, so six years. It was much needed!! Can't wait till we can do it again!