Tropical Insert

So I just realized I never put up pictures from the beach at our resort! Shame shame!
I'll just stick them in now....right smack in the middle of the Alaska pictures!
Here they are!

It was an awesome beach!
Palm trees
Cabanas to lounge in everywhere
Tide Pools
 A pier (Caribbean style of course!)
Nice white sand
Beautiful.

Ariel View

To continue with the Alaska pictures....Ben's uncle has 2 planes so he took us flying!
It was so incredible, you can't go wrong with an ariel view of Alaska!


I got to take 2 trips up......these pictures are from the first one. The first trip was in his smaller plane, so only one passenger (me) fits besides the pilot. We were taken flying over the Knick river area

(Sorry for any window glare---couldn't help it sadly!)

These are the ones where I just couldn't avoid getting the plane in the picture....oh well!!! 

This is a horrible photo...but I couldn't resist putting it on anyway! See the moose??

Ha, and this is Ben giving his cousins crazy four wheeling rides while everyone waited for their turn in the air

Here's the second trip up...this was a different day and at a different place (I'm not sure the name of it). It wasn't  QUITE as scenic, but it was fun because it was the bigger plane. Two passengers could fit besides the pilot, so BOTH Ben and I got to go at the same time :)

This is Emily before her ride up

We watched Emily take off from inside the car

Here's my handsome hubby (although he wasn't my hubby when this was taken )

Here's a silly picture I took of myself 

And here's the best scenery picture I got from this trip up

The end :)

Duck Pond

So I decided tonight that I never properly showed my pictures from Alaska this summer....I only put probably 5 total pictures, which is a shame!! Alaska is such a beautiful place!! I'm going to work on posting more.

Here are a few from a duck pond that is in Ben's grandma's neighborhood in Anchorage :)

gorgeous. this was right by the pond. 

This is Ben's sister Nikki who came with us

The field right by the duck pond

The light and it's patterns on the  water were simply amazing! This image is SOOC (Straight out of camera, no editing) 

This is what it looks like in Alaska in the summer at 10:30 at night...this was just taken from the street into someones side yard on our way back from the duck pond.

Waves

My goodness, have you ever tried getting a decent picture of a wave? NOT easy!

At Chac Mool, it was just SO breathtaking to watch the waves break, I just HAD to get a picture of it, but dang it took a long time! I took hundreds of pictures trying to get ONE picture of a wave just before it broke. This was my favorite one: 

The rest of these are just wave pictures I really liked

 check out the clouds!

This last one from Chac Mool is of my handsome hubby  :) 

And then....here's one from Playa del Carmen that I just have to add just because it's so silly :)

So while I was working on building up the walls to protect our MARVELOUS sand castle , my hubby decided that he would just use himself as a wall to protect his little mound of dirt that he called a sand castle :)  (yes...i'm talking about that little pile 2 feet in front of him). It was hilarious :) Isn't he cute :) 

Beach!

So, as promised, here are some pictures from the beach at our resort. One day we were out there a storm was coming it, so the clouds were a pretty dark grey blue color and the light was overcast :)

With the weather here the last few days, I'm SO wishing we could go back right about now!

The Grand Mayan

Wowzers!
That is all I have to say.
Ben's parents had a timeshare they gave us for a wedding gift....so we got to spend our honeymoon in this crazy resort! It was beautiful....and so huge we kept getting lost :)
Anyway, on the last few days were were there, we got up early to catch our tour buses, and on two of those early mornings, there were incredible sunrises. These are probably my three favorite pictures that I took at the resort.

Plus....I just have to add this on. These guys just wandered around on the grass. Aren't they ugly??! I love their texture though

I'll try and get some pictures of the beach from the resort up in the next few days....it was my favorite part :)
Crystal clear aqua waters, palm trees, tide pools, lounge chairs.......ahhhhhhh :)

Xel-Ha

So Xel-Ha is incredible, in case you can't tell!! Xel-Ha is a natural inlet just over an hour south of Cancun that they've turned it into a Caribbean adventure park. It really is the coolest place, I would highly recommend it! Entrance is a little expensive, but totally worth it! It's all you can eat and drink (yay for virgin strawberry daiquiris and pina coladas!)  all day at the park's five restaurants, PLUS....you get to do so many cool activities ! They have  swimming with dolphins (which sadly we didn't do because it costs extra), snorkeling galore, cenotes to swim in, underwater caves, hammocks everywhere to just relax and enjoy how beautiful it is, a floating bridge so you can walk across the inlet right on the water, rope bridges you can climb across, places to cliff jump, tubes so you can float the river into the inlet, zip lining, a place to see/swim with matinees, etc. It's basically everything you could ever want! We spent an entire day there, and it was very probably our very favorite day of the trip.