Alaska {Part 2}

I'm back today with another Alaska post. If you missed the first one, you can read it here.

Day 3 - Thursday, June 19 - Denali, AK

We woke up early Thursday morning to leave Fairbanks and head to Denali. We took a glass top train called the Wilderness Express, and it was so neat! It was about a 4 hour train ride, but you could look out in any direction and just see the wilderness stretch on for miles. I had never been on a train before, so I really enjoyed it!

The scenery was really pretty!

They also had a dining car down below, so we ate breakfast on the train.

I ordered the blueberry pancakes (which were SO good) with a side of reindeer sausage. Yeah, I ate reindeer. And it was actually pretty good. Sorry Rudolph ;)

Then we got to Denali and went straight into the park. We decided to upgrade our tour to the Tundra Wilderness Tour, which was a 7-8 hour tour through the park. One of the unique things about Denali National Park is that there is only one road that dead ends 90 miles into the park. Commercial vehicles can only drive the first 15 miles or so before they get turned around. If you want to drive deeper into the park, you have to take one of their buses. I thought that was kind of different, but it also made the park seem much more like you were just out in the middle of the mountains. The roads weren't paved and there wasn't any electricity, so it was much more secluded and rustic than pretty much every other national park I've ever gone to.

Unfortunately, it rained the entire day we were there. As in the entire 8 hour bus tour. We were a little bummed that we couldn't see Mount McKinley, but apparently only about 30% of people who visit actually get to see it. It's so crazy to me that a piece of land can spend most of its time above the clouds!

Even though it rained all day, we did still get to see a lot.

We saw a lot of animals too. This is a grizzly bear....

....caribou....

....and moose!

Can you see the moose in the middle of the grass out there? I loved getting to see all of the wildlife, especially since I had never seen a moose before in real life. They say that on the tour that we did you can usually see "the big four" (dall sheep, caribou, grizzly bear, and moose), and we got to see all of them!

We got back to our hotel super late that night and just had a little bit of time to eat dinner and explore. I wish we would have had more time in Denali!

We stayed at the McKinley Village Lodge, and it was so cute!

Standing around this bonfire was perfect after a long, cold, and wet day.

That was our day in Denali! I'll be back with more Alaska posts soon.

Alaska {Part 1}

I have finally loaded all of my Alaska pictures onto my computer, and oh my gosh - there are a ton of good ones! I have so many pictures and we were gone for so long, that there are going to be a lot of Alaska posts over the next few weeks!

Day 1 - Tuesday, June 17 - Fairbanks, AK

Our first day was just a lot of traveling! We had to travel about 3750 miles to Fairbanks.

Here my mom and I are getting ready to take off!

All of Alaska is on the same time zone, which is 4 hours behind EST. We ended up landing in Fairbanks around 10:30 PM their time, which was really late for us. We were so excited though that we didn't want to just go to bed, so we walked around our hotel, Pike's Waterfront Lodge, for a little bit.

This picture was probably taken around 11:30 PM, and look how light it is! That was one of the weird things about Alaska - it was almost 24 hours of daylight. It was kind of neat to see that, but it was so crazy to go to bed late when it was light out, and then wake up early and it was still light out.

Day 2 - Wednesday, June 18 - Fairbanks, AK
The next morning we had breakfast in our hotel before heading out on a tour of the Gold Dredge 8. We thought the tour was going to be kind of lame, but we ended up having fun! We booked our whole land portion through Royal Caribbean, so most of the day was kind of planned out for us already.

We got to see the Alaskan Pipeline as well. Not super pretty or anything but one of those things unique to Alaska.

It rained pretty much constantly while we were on the land portion, but that didn't stop us from doing a lot!

This is the actual gold dredge that they used back in the day to separate the gold out of the dirt.

Then we got to pan for gold ourselves, which was actually really neat.

 

I even found and got to keep my gold flecks!


We then got dropped in downtown Fairbanks, which really wasn't a whole lot. We had enough time to grab lunch and walk around a little bit, but the town is so small that there wasn't really much to look at. I thought this was funny though - it gets super cold in Fairbanks during the winter that the people who live there have to plug their cars in so they don't get too cold that they won't start. They also have these pipes around the city that shoot off steam to defrost your windshields in the winter while you're driving. Can you imagine living somewhere that cold?!

Fairbanks is one of the top places to see the Northern Lights too. The prime viewing for that is in the winter though when it's pretty much constantly dark. That is one thing I would LOVE to see someday, but I'm not too sure whether I would want to brave the cold Alaskan winter.

We had the rest of the afternoon to choose what we wanted to do. They had a couple of optional excursions we could have done, but none of them seemed all that interesting, so we just headed back to the hotel. We took naps and then did a little more exploring around our hotel.

Our hotel had been the starting point for the Iditarod in 2003, so they had a little garden commemorating that. I quickly learned that Alaskans love the Iditarod and all things dog sledding. Just another thing kind of unique to Alaska!

Our hotel had a restaurant right next door, so we ate dinner there. I tried chicken & waffles, and I am now obsessed! It does seem kind of funny that I went about as far north in the US as you can go and ordered chicken & waffles when that's more of a Southern thing ;) It was so good though!

We went to bed early that night because we had to be up to head out to Denali the next day, which I'll save for another post.

Hope you all have a great 4th of July weekend!

What I've Been Up To....

I just got back Saturday night (well technically Sunday morning since we got in after midnight!) from a fabulous vacation. As in, quite possibly the best vacation ever. It was also the longest trip (12 days!) and the farthest away I've ever been from home (3750 miles!).

I spent the past two weeks in Alaska!

I love to travel, and for being only 19 years old, I think I've seen a lot of places. I haven't even come close to seeing a lot of the US though. I've never seen the Rocky Mountains, the volcanoes of Hawaii, or Yellowstone National Park. BUT, I have visited about half of the states. I have seen the white sand beaches of Florida, Arcadia National Park in Maine, and the cliffs of the Pacific Ocean in California. All of those places (and many more!) were gorgeous. But Alaska? At least in comparison to all of the states I've been to so far, I think Alaska is my favorite for being the most beautiful.

I wasn't expecting to be that blown away by the breathtaking mountains. Almost everywhere you looked, you were surrounded by rugged, snow covered mountains. And even though it was cold and rainy - a far cry from the sun of Florida that I associate with vacation - Alaska was so amazing.

I saw glaciers, mountains, whales, moose, caribou, sheep, bald eagles, and whales. I traveled on planes, trains, cars, buses, and boats. It was, quite simply, a once-in-a-lifetime type of trip.

I have SO many things to blog about and 1,000+ pictures to go through, so it may take me a little while to post about it. And even though the pictures are pretty, they fail in comparison to actually seeing the sights in person.

If visiting Alaska isn't already on your bucket list, you need to add it right now ;)

I made this little video on the plane ride home, so I thought I'd share it now.....

Look out for many more pictures and stories to come!

Themed Playlists

I am the queen of playlists, especially themed playlists. I counted all up all of the playlists on my iPod, and I currently have 35. THIRTY FIVE. That seems like a lot, but I love me a good playlist.

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My specialty is themed playlists.

Take this summer one for example. It has all of my favorite summer songs on it. I can't listen to this playlist and not feel like it's summer. I also listen to this one all year round. Sometimes you just need a little taste of summer in February, am I right?

But I don't just have a summer playlist, because that's pretty easy to put together. Kind of a no brainer - everyone needs a summer playlist.

One of my other favorite playlists is my Road Trip playlist, filled with all driving themed songs. Life Is A Highway? Check! Highway Don't Care? Of course! Shut Up and Drive? Duh! There is nothing better than driving down the highway listening to this playlist.

Another one of my favorite themed playlists is called Home. I made this at the end of April when I was going on my Montreal trip. I started thinking about all of the songs that have to do with being home, and I realized that they would make a pretty awesome playlist. This is the perfect one to listen to on your way home from a trip!

Even though I absolutely love my summer, driving, home, and many other playlists, my all time favorite ones to put together are for a trip or vacation. Pretty much every single trip I go on has to have an accompanying playlist. I love to make trip themed ones because I always listen to them while on vacation, but then I'll continue to listen to them afterwards and every time I do, it reminds me a fabulous trip!

I usually try to find songs that have to do with the place I'm going. That was super easy for my California playlist because there are a TON of songs about California! (Funny story about this playlist - I made it right before I was going to book a flight out there, and then the trip fell through. So I don't listen to this one a ton because I'm still a little bitter about not going to Cali - ha!).

When I went to the Dominican Republic last year, I made this playlist. I can't think of a song that has anything to do with the Dominican, so I went for a summer/flying theme since we were obviously flying there. This is probably my most favorite playlist because I listen to it all the time - it turned out so good!

I also really like this playlist from my New York trip. Again, it was super easy to find songs about New York, but I also went in December, so I included some Christmas songs as well.

I do have a couple of more random playlists, but my themed ones are my favorite. And not to brag, but I think I'm pretty good at coming up with a themed playlist ;)

Here's some of my tips to come up with a themed playlist of your own:

1. Come up with a theme. It can be broad or more detailed, but think about events in your life that other people tend to write songs about as well.

2. Start looking through your iTunes library for songs that fit the theme. You may be able to just think of some off the top of your head. Otherwise, think of some keywords that you can use to search for related songs. For example, when I was creating my "Road Trip" playlist, I searched "road", "car", "highway", etc. I have a big enough library that I can usually find a couple good songs that I hadn't initially thought of.

3. Do a search on Google for "songs about ________". Google is always a good place to start if you're having a hard time coming up with some ideas.

4. Search iTunes! For pretty much all of my themed playlists, I usually end up buying a few songs off of iTunes if they seem perfect.

5. If you need some filler songs to make your playlist a little longer, I usually download a few songs off the iTunes Top 100 list and add those in as well.

And that's it! Like I said before, I love making my vacation themed playlists because even if I listen to them years later, they always take me right back to my trip.

A Few Favorites

I've been meaning to do a post on some of my new favorite things, and I'm just now getting around to it!

Here are some recent things that I have been LOVING lately.....

My new favorite lipgloss is the Buxom Full-On Lip Polish in Celeste. I just bought it a few weeks ago, and I've been using it like every day. It stays on forever, is super shimmery in a really flattering way, and smells so yummy!

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A few months ago I bought the Too Faced Chocolate Bar Palette, and I have been absolutely obsessed with it. It's pretty much the only eyeshadow palette I've been reaching for. The colors are all gorgeous and the entire palette smells like chocolate since they use cocoa powder as one of the ingredients.

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Last summer I bought a really cute Michael Kors shirt on sale, and I ended up falling in love with it. They brought it back this year, and I found it on sale again, so I scooped it up in another color. I now have it in hot pink and navy blue. This shirt is the absolute best!

About a month ago, my dad went to the dentist and they recommended that he use the Arm & Hammer Whitening Booster. Now I use it too! You just apply a little bit of the gel on top of your toothpaste and brush like normal. It's supposed to whiten your teeth (and I think it has a little), but it also just makes your mouth feel a lot cleaner!

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I have been absolutely obsessed with this J.Crew Factory necklace since I bought it last month. It's a great statement necklace that goes with pretty much everything. I've been wearing it with both t-shirts and sundresses. I love the way it just makes an outfit feel put together. Plus it's on sale for under $20 - you should totally buy it!

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I can't talk about necklaces without mentioning my hands down favorite necklace of all time. I probably wear this necklace 5-6 days each week. During the school year, I wear it every single day to class. It's my Return to Tiffany heart pendant. I love it because it's classic and goes with everything. It was also a Christmas present from my grandpa several years ago, so it has some sentimental value too. I have the matching earrings too, and I love those as well!

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And finally, I can't do a favorites post without mentioning my favorite pair of shoes - my Hunter wellies! I went back and forth on these for a long time before I bought them. They're more expensive than I would usually spend on a pair of shoes, and would I really wear them that often since you only wear them when it rains? I ended up reading a ton of positive reviews on them, so I decided to go for it, and I got the pink ones (which I don't think they have anymore - I literally bought the last pink ones from Bloomingdales). And I LOVE them. They were totally worth every penny because I wear them all the time. If there's a chance of rain, my Hunters are probably on my feet. I've been wearing them even in the summer sometimes if it's cool enough. I also think they are the single piece of my wardrobe that has received the most compliments. I get compliments on them pretty much every time I wear them. Plus they just make me so happy every time I slip them on. I also have the special lining socks for them, so I wear them to class in the snow too! They're actually super versatile!

Those are just some of my favorite things!