99 days

until this:

Yes, I’m excited.

the longest drive i’ve ever done, and the prettiest places i’ve ever seen

I am currently sitting in Maggie’s mostly empty apartment while she’s at her first class at APU tonight. I’ll be back in Provo tomorrow morning, but the battery on my camera was dead the entire trip and I lost my jump drive, so I’m posting now since Maggie has all the pictures on her computer and I don’t know when she’ll be able to upload them to Facebook.

This trip has been a lot of fun. It didn’t start out that way, since actually meeting up with Maggie was a total pain. On Friday, I flew from SLC to Denver and then got on a flight from Denver to Jackson and was going to meet her there. About 3/4 of the way through the flight, the plane did a 180 and flew back to Denver. The crew said there was an electrical issue with the right engine and that they couldn’t fix it in Jackson. But we were able to fly all the way back to Denver and land safely, so I don’t really think safety was the issue here…just convenience for them. So I was back in Denver at about 7 pm and raced everybody else on the plane to the customer service desk so we could figure out what to do. I was able to get a flight the next morning to Bozeman, Montana where I could meet Maggie after she drove about 4 hours from Jackson. They put me up in a pretty nice hotel for the night and gave me a $100 credit towards another flight (thanks, Frontier) and everything was really fine, it was just super frustrating to get almost there and then go back to almost where I started.

Anyway, I finally joined the drive about noon last Saturday, and we managed to make it to Nanton, Alberta where we camped for the night. They didn’t stamp my passport at the border. Sad face. The next day we drove through Calgary and Edmonton and camped near Fort St. John in British Columbia, at a place right on Beatton Lake. This campsite was gorgeous and secluded, and really made me thankful that there are still places like that in the world. Little did I know that was just the first of several gorgeous places we would pass through. The drive along the Alaska Highway is beautiful. On the third day, we drove through British Columbia (where we saw all kinds of animals pretty much just standing on the side of the road) and stopped at the Liard Hot Springs for a little relaxation/rejuvenation before going on to Watson Lake in the Yukon Territory. We slept in the car, and I’m glad we did because it poured that night and was really cold. The fourth day we drove to Tok, Alaska (but missed the sourdough pancake toss they do at the campground we stayed at…another sad face) and on the fifth day we made it to Anchorage and found Maggie’s apartment.

I’ve never seen so much wildlife (including moose, caribou, deer, bison, swans, and even a bear) just hanging out on the side of the road like that. It was amazing to see all those animals there…but a little bit dangerous too. We almost hit a deer and passed by a van that had hit and killed a bison and then went off the side of the road with most of its front bumper ripped off and the hood smashed in. Yikes.

We also stopped to see some pretty exciting things along the way, like the biggest beaver statue in the world, a sundial shaped like a grain elevator, the largest weathervane in the world (it’s an airplane), Sasquatch himself, the largest goldpan in the world, replicas of wooly mammoths, the sign post forest in Watson Lake (there was a Fallbrook sign there!), the sign for Suicide Hill, and a giant lumberjack without an axe, and parts of the original Alaska Highway from before they started renovating it. Fun.

Since it’s late August, the trees are already starting to change colors this far north. While going through the mountains in Canada and Alaska, the hillsides were covered in green spruce and aspen, some of the aspens already having started to change to yellow and a bright pinkish-orange. There was a kind of red flower plant that was prevalent on the hills as well, so the mountains were basically a rainbow of colors. Add to that the green grasses and white glaciers and snow-covered peaks and the sky that went between being vivid blue with puffs of white and then full of grey rainclouds…it was beautiful. And when the sun set over the lakes and streams and mountains in Canada, I pretty much thought I had died and gone to heaven. Gorgeous.

I love it here. I’ll be glad to get back to Provo, especially to be with Eric again, but I’ll miss how green and rainy and cool it is here. I want to live in a place like this.

silver and gold, silver and gold

Next Friday (the 22nd) I’m going to be embarking on a little adventure. I’m flying up to Jackson Hole to meet Maggie (my best friend from high school) who has been there all summer working at a day camp program. She’s going to be going to grad school in Anchorage in the fall and is going to be driving up there – and I’m going to be driving with her. The drive from Jackson to Anchorage is somewhere around 2,800 miles and a few days. I’m actually pretty excited for this drive, since I’ve never been to Alaska or anywhere in Canada. We’re planning to get to Anchorage on Tuesday night after we leave (so the 25th of August) and then I’ll fly back to Salt Lake and get back on Friday morning.

I’m looking up some interesting things to see along the way, since it’s such a long drive. Maggie’s mom got her a copy of the Milepost, which is apparently the bible of North Country travel, so she’s bookmarking lots of things in there. Hopefully we’ll get to see some weird stuff we obviously wouldn’t be able to see otherwise. She mentioned the world’s largest goldpan as an example. Oh boy.

Anyway, I’m excited for the trip, although Eric is sad I’ll be leaving him for a week. But it will be good to spend some time with Maggie, who I haven’t really seen very much in the last few years, and it will be fun to go places I haven’t been before.

finally, a new post.

I promise not that much has been going on for me to post about. Plus my computer has been out of commission lately due to a now-defunct power cord (I really need to hop on eBay and get myself a new one…) and I didn’t know where my camera was for a couple of weeks. Turns out Shannon put it in the back pocket of my bag that I never remember about. Anyway, I guess we did do a couple of things over the last couple of weeks that are possibly worth mentioning in a blog.

Eric and I went camping with Shannon and Ian over Pioneer Day weekend (I know, old news by now) up at Flaming Gorge in northeastern Utah. It was really pretty up there, and I had a good time – minus the fact that it rained more or less consistently while we were there. Boo. We stayed at the Canyon Rim campground, which is just that. It’s right at the edge of some cliffs that overlook the Flaming Gorge Reservoir. Seriously gorgeous. That was probably one of the highlights of the trip for me.

The picture doesn’t really do it justice, and the lighting was much better when Shannon and I went out to look at it around 8:30 am instead of closer to midday, when I took this picture. But it was so pretty. We went on a hike that started at our campground that we thought would be much cooler than it actually was. For some reason, we were under the impression that we were hiking to another canyon overlook. We sure weren’t. We ended up at some pasture overlook thing with cows eating grass under trees. It was nice, but not really worth hiking 7 miles to see. And then it started raining. We went down to the dam and sat on the dock for a while and decided that we wanted to do another activity while we were there (like horseback riding or kayaking on the lake) but didn’t end up doing anything because of the rain. We ended up just leaving after our second night of camping and driving back to Vernal to try and find dinosaur tracks, but that didn’t work out either. So we didn’t get to do much, but it was still a fun weekend in a pretty place.

Other than that, not a lot has been going on. Working and getting ourselves just so excited for school to start again. Oh boy.

Oh, and because I know you all were just dying to know: Paris is staring at an ant on the kitchen floor. Best part of this post, I know.

a whole month??

I kind of can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve posted on this blog! We’ve had a lot of fun the past month, in between being busy working and Eric taking a class this summer.  We got to go on a camping trip down to Moab with Mark and Lindsay a few weeks ago, and Eric and I were able to take a short trip out to California for Katie’s wedding about two weeks ago.  We drove out to San Francisco first for a day to get a little vacation in, and then drove back to Elk Grove for the wedding, which was, of course, awesome.  I loved the outdoor reception.  Congratulations to Katie and Shaun!

And as far as summer movies have gone, we’ve seen Star Trek and Angels and Demons and are well into our list.  We LOVED Star Trek and highly recommend it.  I like Angels and Demons better than the Da Vinci Code, and it had great shots of Rome throughout.

What else…Eric’s brother Kelly got home from his mission to Milan, Italy on Friday so we spent the entire weekend with his family catching up and hanging out.

Work is going well for both Eric and me. And that’s about it.

I’m posting a Facebook album of our little jaunt California, so you all can check that out.

Hopefully it won’t be another month until I post again…

on the golden gate bridge...windy!!

things i am excited about

Right now things are going pretty well. Good things have been happening the last few days, and good things are going to be happening in the near future.

Good Thing #1:  Eric got a promotion at work! He’s been working there for about a year and a half, and he was just promoted to Customer Support manager. Eric will be focusing more on trying to improve the customer support website and writing articles for people who can use the website as a first resource instead of calling support right away. He’s also going to be interviewing someone to become another support agent. Eventually, his boss wants him to start learning more about programming software for the company and start working less in customer support and more with the developer/programmer. We’re both excited about the opportunity this will give Eric to learn more about something that will actually be relevant to his future career.

Good Thing #2:  This Friday is convocations for graduation. Although I graduated back in December, I decided to walk in April instead of August so that I could go with more people that I know. I’m excited to be officially officially done with my undergraduate degree (and have the pictures to prove it)! Tomorrow Lindsay and I are going to go up to BYU campus to take some pictures to celebrate having gone through 5 years of college together, graduating together, and becoming such good friends through all of it. I can’t even imagine what my college experience would have been like without her. I’m so glad we both procrastinated signing up for dorms before our freshman year and ended up roommates at DT!

Good Thing #3: Next Tuesday, I am going to Washington DC and Philadelphia for a week! I am going with some other people I work with to the AAM annual conference in Philadelphia, and we are stopping to meet up with another friend first in DC to do a little sightseeing. I haven’t been back east since I was 12 years old for a school trip, and I think the experience will be much different this time now that I actually have an understanding an appreciation for culture, history, and art – which I can’t say I had the first time around. Or at least not as much. I’ve also never been to Philadelphia and love going pretty much any new place I can. And I love flying.

Good Thing #4: Today was my birthday, so to celebrate we went with my parents, Eric’s parents, and Shannon to PF Chang’s for a delicious and huge dinner. For my birthday, I bought myself (really it’s my present from Eric) a new pair of earbuds for my iPod and other listening purposes! They aren’t anything expensive or spectacular, but they are infinitely better than the ones I have had for 3 years that came with the iPod, and they are so much more comfortable because they have a little ball thing on the end instead of that flat thing you stick in your ear. Yeah. I like them. And the earbuds are green. Cute.

Good Thing #5: It’s almost summer. That doesn’t just mean working a lot and making more money, it also means camping and actually being able to go outside and enjoy it!! We’re planning on being outdoors a lot this summer.

Oh, I also just posted another photo album on Facebook with a bunch of pictures from the last little while, including our trip to Arches/Goblin Valley and the Britney Spears concert Lindsay and I went to.  Hopefully this link will work and you can check it out here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2255514&id=17800720