New Camera, New Updates

Well it's been a bit since I've posted.  Sorry about that.  We've actually been kind of busy if you can believe it!  Drew has been less busy than I if you can believe it because it has been stormy for quite awhile now so he hasn't been able to work.  Apparently it is monsoon season in Alaska.  I'll try to give you a bit of an update on everything:

• We managed to break my camera somehow while were in New Jersey.  We probably got sand in it somehow.  I did send it in to try and get it fixed, but we also decided it was time to buy another camera anyways.  We have had our eyes on the Olympus Tough cameras for awhile so we decided to treat ourselves.  It's one of those cameras that you can throw, dunk in water, use in freezing weather, etc and it won't break.  And it takes pretty good pictures!  All the pictures from this post are from the new camera.  Enjoy!
• We celebrated our first anniversary!  It's crazy that we've been married a whole year.  We ate the top of our wedding cake from our Philly reception at my parents house when we were visiting.  It was actually still pretty good.  Apart from buying the new camera for ourselves, we also celebrated by eating at the fancy restaurant at the top of the mountain at Alyeska ski resort.  It is called Seven Glaciers since you can see 7 glaciers while from it.  You take a tram up the north face and then you get a pretty awesome view of the whole valley.  We were lucky it cleared up and stopped raining for just that evening so we could enjoy the view.  And the food was amazing!  Eating really good food at fancy restaurants is probably one of the few things that both Drew and I love equally.  It was the best steak I've had in my whole life.  
• We finished the service project I was organizing in church.  We made school bags for kids with school supplies so they would be ready for the school year since there parents weren't able to do it for them.

• We hit up the Alaska State Fair.  Mostly we just took advantage of eating fair food.  Drew had chocolate covered bacon and a donut burger. (Instead of a bun it is a glazed donut.)  Things only a southerner could truly appreciate.
• Drew has been able to spend some time with our good friend Amos and try out the new camera on Glacier creek.  They took me back down there and showed me how they make videos of the spawning salmon swimming in the creek by strapping the camera to a stick and dipping it in the water by the fish. They love it.  I think the camera's cool but I wasn't crazy about hanging out on a stinky beach with a bunch of rotting salmon lying all over the place.  Boys will be boys. 

• We saw beluga whales swimming in the turnagain arm!  There were about 9 or 10 of them.
• Drew bought a motorcycle.  He is super pumped about it.  Like wakes up every morning and goes to the sliding door and peeks out at it excited.  Amos knows a lot about motorcycles and helped him pick it out.  Then because the weather was bad he didn't work all this weekend and was able to take a motorcycle class that gets him his license automatically.  He also went out and bought a helmet and a jacket and put in some orders for some parts that definitely need replacing.  So he's all ready to go now!

• Alaska seems to be really into festivals and such.  This month there was the Fungi Festival, which is a 4 day long festival devoted to mushrooms.  We checked out the movie night and got a "bonus" hour long lecture on mushrooms complete with a slide show presentation.  I did fall asleep at one point, but parts of it were fairly entertaining.  It was taught by this guy with a funny Austrian accent and a large portion of his presentation was on psychedelic mushrooms and his experiences with them.  It did inspire Drew to keep an eye out for more mushrooms on a hike we took with Amos and his girlfriend Leslee:

 The hike we went on was the hand tram hike.  We only went as far as the hand tram and then Leslee and I went out as far as she was willing to go over the creek below.  It definitely is a little nerve wracking to be high above the rushing creek water in a little metal basket you are pulling yourself along a rope with.  At least they fixed the lock on the door of the basket since we last did this hike.

• While Drew was taking his motorcycle class Amos, Leslee, and I saw the movie Super 8.  I had seen the previews and it didn't look all that interesting, but it was actually really good!  It is scary at some points (I thought) but all the main characters are these young awkward kids that are actually really funny sometimes.  You should definitely netflix it.
• We also had a party Drew has been wanting to have for a long time.  He just never could convince enough people they wanted to come to it.  We had a Spice World party this past weekend!  In case you aren't up on your late 90s pop culture, Spice World is a film the spice girls made when they were popular.  There is absolutely no point to it and it's not even mildly interesting, but somehow we were able to laugh about it enough to watch the whole thing.  Some people even showed up in Spice Girls outfits!  It was still fun and served as kind of a last hurrah with all the kayak guides as many of them are finishing up and taking off for their next adventure.
• Last but not least, Drew and I have found some friends that aren't Drew's coworkers.  The girl I posted about here and her boyfriend came over last night and we got along real well with them.  It's always fun to meet new people!

Well that's about it for me.  I hope everyone has been enjoying their last fleeting moments of summer!