fourth of July fun

We had such a great time camping this past weekend with a great bunch of people. Our friends B&T and Bean! We drove out to Cantwell on Thursday night and spent the night at B&T's place. It was like a giant sleepover - staying up way too late talking, hanging out and discussing plans for the next day. We woke up to B cooking us breakfast and J jumped in to help! The girls got a break from cooking and the three of us sat around enjoying breakfast and coffee. We loaded up the truck with our gear and some logs and headed out for our big adventure.

If you haven't had a chance to trek across the Denali Hwy, I highly recommend it. It runs from Cantwell to Paxson and this year it was in great shape. Some years the washboard feel of the dirt road has been a little annoying, but its well worth the drive. This year we went in about an hour and then headed up a little mining road about 20 miles. All was well until...we got stuck in serious mud - over the hubs mud... I was so proud of J&B, they worked hard and steadily to get us out of the mud, using our logs and a jack to get the back tire out and then the girls gathered rocks to make a rock trail to back the truck out. It took about an hour - I have to say how impressed I was with my husband and B, they kept cool heads, never worried about getting the truck out, and never tried to hotshot anything. Way to Go!

Our camp site was beautiful. We had fun walking around a bit and taking in the scenery once we got there. I can't get over how Alaska is the most beautiful place I've been - the only way to describe it is extreme.

We headed up the nearest mountain and hiked around on Saturday. We had fun getting to the top and sweating it out. There were thunderstorms on the nearest mountains and we got rained on a little, but still had fun. There was plenty to see, including getting a godo look at Mt. McKinley from the top of our little mountain.On the way down we looked for Caribou sheddings and paid extra attention to the beautiful flowers. I've never seen so many forget-me-nots, no wonder they're our state flower!

So maybe more pictures to follow as they filter in and as I get better ones - these are so tiny!! Just thought EVERYONE would like to know about our fabulous weekend. Great people, decent weather, fun stuff...does it get any better?