Bird Ridge

This weekend Drew and I both had a few days off.  We had originally planned on doing Crow Creek Pass, but figuring out how to get a ride to Girdwood and leave your car Eagle River is kind of hard.  Not to mention we had other things going on this weekend.  So instead we decided to do a day hike with our friend Rich up Bird Ridge.  Neither Drew and I had had the chance to do this hike.  It is 5 miles out and back, or in this case, up and down.  The trail is pretty much straight up and straight down.  No level ground.  You travel along a ridge line that always overlooks the water so every time you stop you get a beautiful view like this:

We thought it would be really cold but once you got above the clouds it was really sunny and even a little hot. We didn't need all the layers we brought, but we were glad we brought some gaiters as the snow got pretty deep near the top.  Despite the fact that you couldn't see through the clouds, the view was still pretty good at the top.  Here's a lot of pretty pictures:

 The snow coming down was a lot easier than going up.  You could just kind of step down it and sink into soft powder.  It is definitely wetter than Utah powder though:

How pretty are these trees?

Other than that we got to see Fiddler on the Roof this week and spend some good time with our friends Rich and Kristy, who are fresh back from Hawaii and nice and tan.  Maybe Hawaii needs to be the next place we live. :)

Life to the Max!

Remember how I told you that a few times this summer Drew took camera crews out on the water at work?  Another one aired recently.  Check it out:

Maharlika

Drew and I got invited by a coworker of mine to attend a charity dinner this past weekend.  She is the president of Maharlika, Inc., a non-profit organization that gives scholarships to Philippine youth as well as provides aid to the Philippines during disasters such as the recent typhoon.  So once a year they have this big banquet with dinner and dancing and entertainment and a lot of people from my work go to support it.  So we went and had a great time! It was really fun to get all dressed up for such a fancy event.  Drew met a guy who's fiancee does make up and hair so she did that for me and then I got a cute little outfit pulled together with the help of Burlington Coat Factory!

Drew made me pose by the woodpile, which he is very
proud of.  My favorite is my glittery gold shoes... :)

I was so impressed she was able to make my
hair look so cute when it is so short right now!

She even put fake eyelashes on me which actually looked nice and didn't feel
weird.  The only other time I've worn fake lashes was when I wore huge
ones for a Lady Gaga concert...so not quite the same.

This is Beth, the coworker that invited me,
in her fourth outfit of the night!

After the dinner entertainment the members of Maharlika did two dances together.   I've watched Beth practice these dances in triage many times so it was fun to see the finished product.  She amazes me with all her moves!  She is old enough to be my mother but she was working it out there!

Beth dancing.

Jodi and I.

 Drew and I wanted to contribute to the charity but we never had a chance to buy raffle tickets so instead we decided to buy our centerpiece. It had a minimum bid on it, and then everyone at your table could bid up for it.  I think this was a new idea they had because it seemed like people had put a huge amount of work into making 50 of these centerpieces by hand, and I don't think they were that popular.  But we wanted to contribute, so now we have a miniature traditional Philippino house sitting on our table at home!

We especially like the tiny pig, chicken and tree that are
 on our property, and are not at all proportional to the house. :)

Our lights have since burnt out but for awhile there they made a nice night light.

Someone did an amazing job building these little tiny houses though, seriously they are so cute!

After dinner I had fun dancing but Drew was not that into it.  We have talked before about taking some dance classes this winter and before he was all gung ho about it.  Now that it's actually here he is denying he ever said he would go to dance lessons with me.  But we found something we thought we both could like that doesn't involve any commitment to show up every week, so we are going to try it out.  Wish us luck!

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!

Ice Climbing Festival!

Sorry I only post when I have sweet pictures to share, but really doesn't that make it a whole lot more interesting?  This weekend we were definitely sad to have to miss out on General Conference for church, but we were pretty pumped to participate in our first Mountaineering Club of Alaska event- Ice Festival 2011!  I was kind of on the fence about going but I am SO glad I went because it was so much more geared toward people like me than our last climbing club was.  There was a lot of instruction and people on my level and I was super pumped that the group we were in was almost all girls!  So we learned a lot, had a lot of fun, finally camped in Alaska (for the first time since we moved here!), and met a ton of cool people.  Oh....and we also hit a pretty big milestone just as we drove down the dirt road to Matanuska Glacier:

It's so weird to see 2 at the beginning of our odometer now!  But I'm glad we were in the car for it together.  We got pretty excited.  Good thing there were no cars around us since we were in the middle of nowhere Alaska!  The first day we did a lot of instruction and practicing techniques that got us more comfortable with trusting our crampons and technique and stuff.  At the campsite that night there was a huge bonfire that was a lot of fun too.  The next day we went back out on the glacier and spent the day trying out some real climbs.  The whole thing was a whole lot more positive than my first ice climbing experience (which many of you have heard detailed accounts of... :) ).  Here are some pictures:

Some parts of the glacier were covered in dirt or rocks so it just made the whole thing looked striped and beautiful.

Matanuska Glacier at sunrise.

Walking out to the glacier. Our group was the Crazy Eights!

Matanuska Glacier

Drew and some of the others in our group setting the anchors.

Me walking down after a successful climb.

Wearing tons of puffy layers is not very flattering....especially from behind.

I look kind of like a marshmallow, but I'm warm!

 Aside from the instructors, there were only 2 guys in the group.  Drew of course did a lot better than me but also is a lot more daring than me.  A few times he gave me little scares falling off the overhang.  I couldn't even look!

This was one of the times I was worried.  He ended up having to leave his tools in the ice and be lowered down.  He was doing such a hard route though, I'm so proud of him!

Like I said, one of the best parts was all the great people we met.  We have really found that people in Alaska are generally really friendly.  We suspect some of this is because there are so many transplants that everyone is always looking to meet new people.  Our group got along well and was a ton of fun.  Our 2 boys complained a little but everyone else seemed pretty jealous that they had managed to get in the group with all the twenty-something women.  Drew also found it really funny how when girls ice climb together they all cheer each other on and congratulate each other when they finish a climb and high five, whereas boys climb together and yell things like, "Just walk up it you wuss!" at each other the whole time.  It's funny but true. :)

I loved getting to know these girls!

Our group shot.  We ended up with only a busted knee and a scraped up forearm for injuries.

We are really enjoying our time in Alaska now that we've gotten in the swing of things and Drew isn't working 24/7.  This week we are moving to Anchorage so we'll see how that changes things.  I'll try and post pics of the new place soon!