Alaska: Denali National Park

Our trip started off REALLY rocky thanks to some crazy weather in Chicago that delayed our flight from Philly for about 4.5 hours... Which meant that we missed our connection flight to Anchorage.  It was a HUGE mess for about 24 hours and super stressful/exhausting, but we ended up FINALLY making it to Anchorage about 28 hours later than we were expecting (and I won't bore you with all the details, but I'll just say that United Airlines really sucks and I don't ever want to fly with them again, and Alaska Airlines has amazing customer service and I love them).  But, thanks to that huge flight mess, we missed our train from Anchorage to Denali National Park, and if we waited for the next available bus/train then we'd have to miss Denali altogether.  So... that meant we started hunting around for other options, and we determined that we could rent a car in Anchorage as soon as we landed, and then we could drive to a hotel on the outskirts of Anchorage (in the direction of Denali, to make the trip shorter the next day... but we badly needed some sleep first).  If we got an early start the next morning, by the time we drove to Denali the next day we could still have about 8 hours to try to see as much of the National Park as we could.  So, that's what we did!!  And my goodness we had an amazing 8 hours in Denali.  We were SO excited that we were still going to get to see it, because for a little while at the airport it was looking like we might even miss our cruise!

This was our drive from our Anchorage hotel to Denali!  So dang pretty the whole way.  We were exhausted but soooo incredibly happy and excited. 

Kevin at the beginning of our big hike in Denali!  Parts of it were SO snowy, and other parts were so muddy!  Made for a challenging hike!! 

Amazing views from the hike! 

 

Ok you guys, this is moose poop.  And it was ALL OVER the trail!  We must have seen about 50 piles of moose poop throughout the whole hike.  We were keeping a close eye out for moose, because apparently they are VERY active around there and they will charge you if you get too close.

When we finally reached the viewpoint at the top of the mountain, this was the view!!  We spent about 20 minutes just sitting up there enjoying some water and a snack and the AMAZING views!!  Plus, we were all alone!!  There was no one else up there for the full 20 minutes or so we were there.  It was so awesome.  Here's some more pics from the viewpoint: 

 After we got back down the mountain (in total it was about 4 hours), we went for a drive into the park!  Usually cars are only allowed to go about 15 miles into the park (in order to protect the wildlife), but because it was so early in the season the rangers said we were able to drive about 30 miles into the park!  That evening we saw a bunch of caribou and about a million rabbits.  We also saw this sign which was kinda funny:

Here are some caribou!!  I hope you can see them ok (I just took this pic with my phone).  I think there are 6 caribou in this picture

There's a bunny rabbit!!  They were all soooo fluffy.  We seriously saw like a million rabbits.

After the drive we headed to the hotel!  We were soooo exhausted. We had a really lovely dinner 

And our much-deserved beers after the exciting adventures we'd already had on our trip!  

We went to bed pretty early, because we both decided that we'd like to wake up really early to drive into the park one more time to try to see some wildlife before we had to hit the road!  We were driving to Seward that day, so we wanted to make sure we made it there at a good time.  Here's some pics from the early morning drive into Denali!  We saw a LOT more wildlife that morning!  We saw one fox, 4 moose, and we even saw a grizzly bear!! It was crazy awesome. 

 

A bear!!!  

It stood up to check us out. 

This is with the amazing zoom feature on Kevin's camera! 

A moose!!  They are so much bigger in person than I'd even imagined.  They're seriously AMAZING creatures.  I love them. 

I got to watch this one run down a snowy hill!  They can run super fast. 

 That was Denali National Park!!!  We loved it so much, and we absolutely want to go back.  It's just so amazing, and pictures really can't do it justice.  I've heard it gets really busy in the summer months, so when we go back I'll want to go in mid-May again before the crowds show up.  It was so peaceful and it still felt so wild.   Our next stop on our trip was Seward!  I'll be working on these Alaska posts all week, but I'll try to finish the Seward post tonight or tomorrow!!   

Spring, and St. Michaels!

Spring is DEFINITELY here!!  The weather has been amazing, and our neighborhood is in bloom!  The trees are getting beautiful and green, and flowers are popping up everywhere. I took a few pictures of our neighborhood, but I haven't taken many pics of our yard yet this Spring!  I will definitely remedy that.  We worked on our yard a LOT this weekend, and we did a lot of weeding and we also had a delivery of a ton of dirt, and we shoveled and wheel-barrowed the dirt to our backyard to try to get control of some of the erosion!  We put down a lot of grass seed on our new dirt, so we will see how that goes!!  Keep your fingers crossed that we're able to grow some grass in our backyard!

Kevin took a picture of this fox in our neighborhood!!  Isn't it adorable? 

Kevin and Guinness jogging! Guinness was trying to peek back at me to make sure I was coming. 

A whole ton of daffodils in our neighborhood! 

Some beautiful pink-blossomed trees in our neighbor's yard! 

 A few weekends ago Kevin and I went to St. Michaels, MD for a weekend!  It was SO nice to get away for a few days, and the weather was absolutely perfect.  Kevin's parents had given us a gift certificate to an inn that they stay at whenever they're in St. Michaels, so we knew we wanted to use that gift certificate before the busy season started in St. Michaels!  It was nice and quiet when we were there, which was PERFECT.  We drove there Friday right after work, and then we went out to dinner and also hit up a few bars that evening. It was a lovely way to wind-down from the week!  The next morning we were in search of a coffee shop, and we were so happy to find one!  But, it ended up being awkward because I accidentally insulted and pissed off the coffee shop employees.  We walked in, and I was super tired and out of it, and I just asked them for a latte, because I figured everywhere has a latte, right?  And that's my favorite coffee drink.  Well, it turns out this wasn't that kind of coffee shop.  They didn't do espresso-based drinks, but they had about 20 types of coffee beans that they wanted us to choose from for our coffee. We didn't feel like sniffing that many beans, but we tried to be good sports and we sniffed a few and just picked the 3rd one. They were NOT fans of us, but they still made us some amazing french press coffee that we took outside to enjoy away from their judgement.

We were sooo sleepy, but the coffee was really great and woke us right up! 

This was the little cottage we stayed in!  The inn had a main house and like 4 cottages to choose from, so we chose this one.  It was sooo tiny and adorable. We loved it :) 

A cool driftwood horse sculpture! 

The inn had a lovely lawn area with lots of chairs looking out at the water!  We spent a lot of time sitting out here just watching all of the boats and relaxing. 

An adorable duck couple!  We watched them for awhile too.  

We've been working on our house a LOT, and our yard!  I'll have pictures soon.  And we're also getting ready for our trip to Alaska!!  It's coming up so soon, and we're so excited!!  I will definitely have a ton of pictures to share from that trip, so don't you worry :) 

I hope you're all doing really well, and I hope everything is going great for you!! 

House Projects and Never-Ending Winter

Wow, I have not posted in over a month!  I'm so sorry!  It's been really crazy and busy.  We have been keeping busy with lots of weekend plans, and we've also been working on a few house projects.  We are currently working on fixing the ceiling/walls in our master bedroom and also painting the ceiling and walls, so we've been sleeping in our guest room for a few weeks. As a result of this, we have been TIRED because neither of us is sleeping as well as we normally do in our own room! We're getting used to it, but it's just different. We're also working on re-doing our downstairs den area.  The new drywall ceiling is up (it was a drop-ceiling with acoustic tiles) and the new recessed lighting is installed (it was some awesome 80s tracklighting), but now the spackle needs sanding and we have to prime/paint everything.  We're hoping to finish the master bedroom and then den within the next few weeks so that we can have those two rooms back!  The downstairs den stays nice and cool in the warmer months, so it'll be good to have that as an option again soon.  I think those are the last two rooms we have to paint and fix-up in our house!!  Then we just have some outdoor stuff to do.

Kevin spoiled me for my birthday.  We went out to a lovely dinner ON my birthday (it was a Wednesday), and then the weekend after my birthday we spent so much time hanging out and having fun.  We went into the city that Saturday, and we went to the zoo and had a great time (it was SO cold that morning though!), and then after that we went to Yards Brewery to enjoy some beers and hang out.  After that, we drove to Ardmore and went to Tired Hands Brewery to have some lunch and enjoy another beer.  Ardmore is such a cute little town!  It was such a fun and relaxing day.  I was kinda awful about taking pictures that day (we were too busy having fun!), but I did take a few.

Kevin got me daffodils!!  I love daffodils. 

This was at the zoo! There was a Massey Ferguson, so I knew I had to take a picture for my dad (his tractor is a Massey Ferguson). 

Tired Hands! They specialize in saisons, and I love saisons! 

The weather has been SOOOO weird. We've had snow, freezing rain, crazy winds, freezing temperatures, 85 degree weather... You name it, and we've experienced it over the past two weeks. I think/hope Spring is finally here though... I've got some pictures of our snow from about a week ago, as well as a picture of some of the flowers around our yard today. 

Guinness saw his first snowmen!  He did NOT like them.  So now we know that Guinness is afraid of snowmen!  He was growling at them and barking.  Kevin and I were totally cracking up. 

The other morning when I was getting ready to head to work, there was a deer wandering through our yard!  I decided to take a few minutes and just watch it.  It walked through our yard and then crossed the street to the neighbor's yard. 

I took this picture today!  We have flowers!!  

This is our plum tree in our front yard!  Such pretty pink blossoms. 

And I don't know what this bush is called, but it is blooming all over our neighborhood!  This one is right at the corner of our yard (that's our house in the background). 

I'm sorry I've been so awful about posting!  I am going to be better now that I've caught up.  I hope everything is going really well for all of you!!