The 4th of July weekend was a very busy, but extremely awesome weekend. Airica, Mikey, Kelsey and I drove out to the Kenai Peninsula and camped in Hope. It's a very small town with a population of less than 150 people. It's great for camping and has several good hiking trails and is only an hour and a half out of Anchorage. We arrived in Hope at about 10 o'clock Friday night and set up camp. We had two, two person tents that were perfect for the four of us. Mikey turned them into 'Hotel Eureka Glacier' by folding the tarp over the top of them to keep them dry in case of the rain; the weather didn't look like it would hold for us.
We barbecued lots of hot dogs, and roasted many marshmallows that we put into smores. The weather held for us all night, it only sprinkled for a little bit after camp was set up. After dinner we invited the neighboring campers over to join us for a while. We had a lot of fun. One of the guys was a graduate from UAA with a Justice major... it was interesting to talk about the professors and share some of the same kinds of stories.
In the morning we had a wonderful breakfast of poppy seed muffins and cherry strudels. We sat around the bonfire for a few hours before taking camp down and checking out by noon. On the way back to town we stopped by Portage Glacier to check it out and walk Airica's dog Jake on the beach. We hung out for about 20 minutes checking out the glacier and walking around.
Sunday morning Kelsey and I woke up early and drove downtown to check out the 4th of July Parade, and all of the festivities taking place in the park strip. There were many good floats in the parade, and Kelsey would probably like to mention that she really got a kick out of the man walking the reindeer on a leash ("Only in Alaska").
We went to the Anchorage Pilots/Bucs game the same night for some college baseball and fireworks. The Pilots and the Bucs are teams that recruit college students to come play for during the off season. The games were fun, and we ended up being part of a whole cheering section with some people we met that night. The four us are pretty loud, and we were recruited by another group also cheering for the Pilots. It was a double header - so we ended up sitting with the other group for the second game so we could be as loud as possible. It was a very good time. Their were also fireworks that followed the games. They were pretty good as well.
We had a very exciting and eventful weekend. We were pretty exhausted by the end, but it was well worth the great time we all had.
