Well, I wanted to put on some of my favorite pics, but I don't know what the deal is. The internet connection we're using isn't cooperating now.

There was a crazy rain storm Friday night. I've never heard rain like it before. You know the quick, fierce summer rainstorms we get in Utah? Well it was about 10 times worse and lasted hours. We had a 5 gallon bucket outside, and it got completely filled up in about 3 hours. I wanted to take a video of it. It began at 3 am. Of course, it's daylight here at 3 am, so I wanted to video the trees swaying and the sound of the rain. It would have been cool, but I was too lazy to get out of bed.
Other than Bryce seeing that one black bear a couple weeks ago, we haven't seen much wildlife. A couple porcupines, squirrels, nothing too exciting. We see dozens of bald eagles everyday, but up here, they're as common as sea gulls in Utah. I do have to say, if I go the whole summer without seeing a bear, I won't be too disappointed. I'm a tad scared of them. I bought a can of bear spray (basically concentrated pepper spray). Usually it's just me and Drake, so if I saw one then, I'd freak.

I did realize the other day that I'm already starting to take Alaska's beautiful scenery for granted. I drive down the road, and there's countless waterfalls coming down sheer cliffs between lush, green, forested, towering mountains. But when I drive by it everyday, I am in awe less and less. Stupid humans and our stupid short attention spans. We live at the base of the glacier for crying out loud, and I see it and think "Oh yeah, there's the glacier again." I have to remind myself this may be the only time in my life I get a chance to be in Alaska.

We've met a lot of cool people from all over the world. An older couple from Holland have been hanging out with us. They say if their children knew they had to hang their food in trees to keep it from bears, they'd be worried sick. There's also a couple from Germany here now. They have a 5 year old son that Drake's been playing with. They just moved to America a couple years ago. They've taken their son backpacking all over SE Alaska for weeks. Pretty adventurous! There's a lot of great people here, but they come and go. The tree-chopping, glass-smashing, chain-smoking parties come every weekend. I can't get over how ironic it is that Bryce and I have to go bust parties and ask them to quiet down. I giggle every time I do it, with my green "Forest Service Volunteer" hat on. We'll have to get our Volunteer outfits on and take a pic. It's so funny.