Movin to the city!

We still exist!  I finally had a few days of downtime to sit and blog.  We moved into Anchorage about 2 weeks ago now.  Our friend Meghan was nice enough to let us borrow her truck while she was out of town so we were able to move all our stuff, including the motorcycle, in one trip.  Now that we have furniture and dishes and stuff, we're shocked at how much space we have!  Coming from a studio we have all these closets and a second bedroom we don't know what to do with.  Things are definitely more accessible and easy to find, but we are not used to it.   Someone can be in the kitchen and the other person in the bedroom and we can't hear each other!  That never used to happen in our old place.  But we like it, and we have a garage for the winter, which I think is going to be so nice.  And we have what Drew has always wanted in an apartment: a wood burning fireplace.  He went and picked up half a cord of spruce and birch mixed firewood from a guy in Anchorage and stacked it in our hearth.  It makes the whole house smell so good!  We are also close enough to our jobs that we can both walk or bike to work, and we have some really pretty bike paths right in our neighborhood.  We went out on a walk one Sunday afternoon and enjoyed what is sure to be one of our last sunny afternoons.  Here's some pictures:

This tree is probably dying or diseased, but we thought it looked cool.

Kicking through piles of leaves will always remind me of our street  growing up in Massachusetts.

 We also drove down along the Turnagain arm to get some pretty fall pictures.  We have had the chance to see some of the most spectacular sunsets over the water while the tide is almost all out and the tide pools and mud flats just go out so far.  We've also seen the moon rise over the mountains and the water and it's been absolutely gorgeous as well.  So we thought we might try to actually get this on film, but we were really too early and too cold to stick around for sunset on the side of the highway. However, we did turn inland to Potter's Marsh to see the swans up close.  Before we were living in Anchorage I drove by them everyday on the way to work, and there are always people out taking pictures of them.  The swans have just come this fall and last I saw there were just one or two left, so I guess they have come and gone.  But it is still neat to see them in the wild.  More often than not it seems they aren't gliding around all elegant looking, but instead have their butts straight up in the air as they dig for whatever it is they eat on the bottom of the marshes.

This picture looks like it could make a really good puzzle to me. :)

 We had to take pictures of all the amateur photographers that are out there all the time too.  I guess they are all local but there are so many of them there all the time!  It's kind of funny to see them all lined up getting that perfect picture of the swans:

Unfortunately I think these golden fall days are all but over for us now.  When you go outside it doesn't smell like fall anymore, it smells like winter.  And we've had a few flurries or "wintry mix" kind of weather the last few days.  We still have plenty of light during the day though, so we don't have to worry about that yet.  More to come with my next post!  Hope your autumn is just as beautiful!