ALASKA

Alaska is absolutely gorgeous! Its been a nice getaway and its also been nice to be able to see Mike for more than 5 minutes at a time since ROTC thinks they are the world. To start our trip off we flew to Seattle and had a layover for about 2 hours and our "cruise parents" who live there came and saw us in the air port. It's always fun to catch up!

Then as we landed in Fairbanks, Aaska, we went down to the one little baggage claim conveyor belt and we got our bags pretty fast. So then Mike had me believing that we landed fairly early and pretended to go outside and call the Tippetts to tell them that we had landed early. He came back inside and told me they'd be there in a few minutes. So, after a couple of minutes he went back out to "flag them down" if he saw them...actually he was looking for something else. He came back inside for a few minutes and then said "k, let's go" and led me outside where he proceeded to load the suitcases into a shuttle. I still had no idea what was going on, maybe we were going to take a shuttle to their house...I was totally at a loss. The we pulled up to this hotel/lodge place and got our bags and went inside. Mike suprized me with a two night stay at Pike's. We had a room with a king size bed and a fireplace (unfortunately we couldn't get a room with a jacuzzi because they are off limits for a couple more months). Mike had arranged to have a bottle of "champagne" in the room on ice, rose petals and chocolates on the bed and the lady he was working with also had put a really cute teddy bear on the bed for me. It was a pleasant suprise. He's been feeling bad about not being able to spend time together and wanted to have a little bit of a romantic escape.

The first actual day we were there in Fairbanks, we just went downtown and walked around a bit. It was a bit nippy...especially since I can't zip anything up anymore and my belly just sticks out, however, everytime we'd go into a store or anything I would start to die from the heat and I'd have to start stripping off layers. It was sorta annoying. The cool air felt great though. After about 30 minutes we'd seen most of downtown and also discovered that Fairbanks is similar to Vegas and Europe in that everyone and their dog smokes. Very disgusting!

The next day after Sam came and picked us up at the hotel, she took us to North Pole, Alaska to the Santa Claus House. It is FULL of Christmas decorations to buy and that's pretty much it. It was way fun to walk through. Outside they have a huge pole that says "NORTH POLE" and also some reindeer. As you can see, I got tired of wearing my coat again cause I was too hot inside.