"Exploring the Blue" - Luka Bloom

Welcome to hotel living.

We were in a suite, which consisted of a bedroom separated from the living/kitchen area.  The couch in the living room is a pull out couch, but Caitlin was cool with sleeping on the couch instead of pulling the bed out and having to put it back together every day.  She liked her "little" bed.

Chad took the rest of our travel days (we drove faster than the Army anticipated us to) so we could start looking for a house instead of signing in to Post early.  Day 1 we drove the town and saw the sights.  I was pretty excited to finally see what Fairbanks had to offer - which is loads more than Leesville.

The first night I attempted to make dinner went okay.

As you can see, it was the easiest thing to make on a stove top - spaghetti!  This is the entire kitchen, the refrigerator is immediately to the left of the sink, a microwave above the stove top, a dishwasher you can see part of, two lower cupboards, and one upper cupboard.  And these are all the pots/pans I had.  Things got interesting as the meals got more creative. 

We were spending a lot of time in the downtown area where our realtor's office was, so we found a park close by that we could go to after breakfast before we met Chris.  It was a very nice park, a lot of open grassy space, a giant concrete tube that Caitlin could run through, and a pretty cool boat :)

JUNE 15th.
We put an offer on a house!!
There were three that we saw in the week before that we were torn between.  Each one had really distinct differences...like we were comparing apples to bananas.  But we decided on the big one :)  And by big one, I mean over 3,000 square feet...whew.

JUNE 16th.
The sellers countered on the house and we accepted!  Let the closing process begin :)

JUNE 22nd.
We drove about an hour north on our first weekend to explore a hiking trail.  It was one of the warmer days we have had since we have been here.  

Beautiful.

 The first 1.5miles was on this dirt road.

 This is how Cate did most of her hike.

 Not a bad view, eh?

 This was the next part of the hike, after going about 1.5miles...I had to put the kibosh on continuing on.  I didn't want to have a baby in the forest and Bug was having a hard time walking on the moss and not face planting and throwing a temper-tantrum about eating grass...

Oh, well.  We had a very good 3ish mile hike I'd say that is pretty good for a 2 year old, and a 34 week pregger.

And to top it off, on our way back we saw a moose!  This time Chad stopped and turned around, and as we were driving back with our eyes glued to the side of the road, they appeared right in front of us!  Caitlin was pretty impressed and continued to demand moose all the way back home (to the hotel).

JUNE 23rd.
The next day was the Festival of the Sun in Fairbanks and they had pony rides.  The best part about having a 2 year old is living vicariously through them...It was a long wait, but Caitlin did really well passing the time brushing all the ponies that weren't working.

And then it was her turn!!

She had her eye on this pony the whole time b/c this little one was also a Mommy.  The sweet little baby followed Mama's every step and Caitlin was infatuated with them.  So not only did she get to ride the Mama, the baby walked with her.  Best 7 min ever.

THE NEXT 2 WEEKS.
Chad signed in and started the In Processing process (yea, I know what I typed).  He only had to walk across the street so we had access to the car and Caitlin and I were able to explore Post a little bit on our own.

The library has a pretty awesome play room with puzzles and dinosaurs and blocks...oooohhh the blocks!

 We went to the park often.  See, it was warm here!

 

We discovered a play group on Post called Romp Stomp.  There are awesome hands on activities and then story time and then the stomping aspect...there is an indoor play structure!

And when we weren't out playing around, we took to skyping!  Which we are happy to do with anyone that wants to see our faces.  Keep in mind, you have to remind me via text to get on the computer b/c we are 4 hours behind most of you and I don't think to skype with anyone until y'all are in bed! :)

And when we weren't chatting with Grandparents or friends, we apparently raid Mom's closet. 

Oh, and we read a lot.  A lot.  Which is cool.  Especially having the library just across the street, we were getting about 4 new books ever 3 days :)

"On The Road Again" - Willie Nelson

For a split second of sitting in the car, my butt almost missed the seat.  Almost.  We still weren't sure as we pulled out of the Haines dock parking lot at 1pm if we were driving the 10-11 hours straight to Fairbanks or if we were going to stop in Tok for the evening.

Not everyone was happy that the car was back on the road and moving, but he was happy to attempt to make himself comfortable in the arms of a toddler.

 
Marvin couldn't seem to appreciate that we were surrounded by beautiful white capped mountains!

The temperature in Haines as we left was 56 degrees, and gas was a whopping $4.96 a gallon-ouch.

We were quickly approaching Canada which got me sifting through our "Important Docs" folder for proof we needed to traverse through the great land of Canada.  The border patrol asked for Chad's ID and if he had ever been to Canada before.  The answer was no, the guard stepped into his office, was back about 4 min later and told us to have a safe drive.  He didn't even ask our final destination...huh.  So glad I busted my butt to pack all of our "Important documents" so neatly.

Our scenery through British Columbia quickly turned ugly and really blah.

The scenery turned a little sour, so we turned to pondering odd topics.  Like, do prairie dogs live in Canada?  Or turtles?  Or any other cold-blooded animal for that matter.  Answers to come...

The Yukon Territory brought some prettier scenery than what BC had to offer.  Some sunnier weather as well.

It's time to add to the "Things That Amaze Me List", #5

Rest stops in Canada:

They are ultimately slightly glorified out houses...they're glorified by being a bit larger...but they lock with the little hook and eye latch, some didn't have lids, and toilet paper was optional I guess...I craved a gas station bathroom after using two of these...Oh Canada...

And now I'm just going to list some beautiful scenery pictures for your eyes to feast on.

We thought a manual for all the signs we passed would have been nice.  Some of them were obvious, and just silly - have you ever seen a sign warning you of rams?  But some of the signs weren't as clear.  See for yourself:

We were pretty elated when we saw the first sign for customs into Alaska, we were very ready to be done driving through Canada.  We were ready to be done driving period. 

Customs this time around was a bit more inquisitive as to why we wanted to cross into Alaska.  I felt a little more validated for having all of the documents neatly organized.  About 10 min later we were finally on our last stretch of the trip.  On this leg of the drive we saw...

A bear family!!!

A couple hours later, when we got closer to North Pole (about 30 miles from our final destination) we saw a moose on the side of the road but I wasn't quick enough to grab a picture...thanks Alaskan wildlife for giving us such a warm greeting on our first day in your state :)


We arrived in Tok, Ak around 11pm.  There was a restaurant that happened to be still serving food so we were able to get real food (we had been munching on cold hot dogs and gold fish crackers).  I called the hotel on Post to make sure if we showed up 12 hours prior to check-in if they would have a room for us, and they did, so we decided to keep on trucking.  This is how light it still was at midnight thirty.  Kinda cool, it actually made the drive a little easier. 

We arrived at North Lights Inn around 2:30am and promptly collapsed in the hotel.

One journey down, just in time for another one to start!  Welcome to Fairbanks, AK/ Fort Wainwright!