An Awesome Week in Anchorage

We flew down to Anchorage on Tuesday morning, retrieved our Jeep from storage and ran all over town celebrating our anniversary, visiting friends, shopping for houses and stocking up on supplies to bring back to Barrow. By the time we got to the weekend, we were completely exhausted, but couldn't help ourselves. We headed into the hills for some crazy off-roading, hunting, berry gathering and camping.

Now for the weekend confession: I cheated quite a bit on my program with tons of great dinners. I did stick to the (mostly lean) and green meals, but got a little reckless with the fats and even had 1/2 a piece of bread with my anniversary dinner. I snacked on cheese sticks twice and didn't get all of my medifast meals in... I also got so dehydrated my lips almost fell right off my face. The kick is that I was able to stick to my weight-loss program reasonably well staying under my calorie limit and staying in ketosis. Now that I am fully hydrated again, I actually lost 3.5 lbs last week! That is 15.5 total since starting Medifast 3 weeks ago, and 89 lbs from my heaviest. I still can't believe I survived all of this chaos and still kept on target. I think the mountains are my new addiction... well, they have always been my addiction, but now they are even more so.

Now I'm back in Barrow, with no mountains for hundreds of miles and heading into a weekend of 3 parties. If I can make it through this weekend, I will be temptation free till Halloween. Wish me luck!

Here are some great pics of all the fun in the beautiful Alaskan autumn:
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The sun kisses the mountain tops in Hatcher's Pass, just north of Anchorage. You can see another rig winding up the dirt road to the left. This is an amazing trip you must take if you are ever in Anchorage. A stock, rental car could make it over the dirt road, but I wouldn't take it off on any trails. *****
Kaia got a kick out of the rugged ride. She only got scared a couple of times with the crazy articulation of the jeep and one deep river crossing. It was hillarious to see her get such a kick out of Ben's aggressive driving, but I did feel bad when she sat forward in her seat with eyes as big as pumpkins and mouth as tiny as a pea saying "oooh, oh, WO, WAH, WOAHHH!" as we headed into the rushing water up over our 35" wheels... I guess that would be pretty scarry as she is only about 28" tall.

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A great picture of our good-friend Brian crossing the river in his suburban he so lovingly calls 'Big Sub' ... hummm, wonder how he came up with that one. He'll try to cross anything and I've seen him swamp it once and come really close 2 other times!
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Here is an awesome picture of our new friends Dean and Jesse on the rocky trail we played on for 8 hours. Check out the vibrant fireweed and the amazing contrast in the fall foliage! I. LOVE. MOUNTAINS!!!
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Here are the boys and their toys. Jesse, Brian, Hubby, Dean and Justin. I'm a little biased, but I think our Jeep ROCKS! It's by far the best looking and has the creature comforts that most off-road buddies don't get to enjoy as they are rattlin' along the highway or bumpin' through the woods.
On a tastier note, all the red you see in the mountain carpet are low bush blueberry leaves. We had a great time helping ourselves to hundreds of the billions just chilling in the crisp fall air.
SO TASTY SWEET!!!*****
Hubby (on the right) shot his first Ptarmagain with one shot. That is Brian (on the left) with his feathered prize. I am proud to say that we had Carribbean-Style, Dutch-Oven Ptarmagain for Dinner that night and it was super yum... hummm, I wonder what ptarmagain ranks on my weight-loss program? Tastes like chicken, but I'm guessing LOTS leaner and definitely organic!

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Here's the campsite our last day out. It rained all night and snowed on the tops of the mountains we had just been up trecking around and picking berries in.*****