Everyone’s favorite time-waster is back, fantasy football.  I am in three different leagues (two for money) along with a few pick’ems, one survival, and one salary cap league.  I’ve played pick’ems before, so nothing new there, but both survival and salary cap are new to me.  Survival is pretty simple: pick one team to win and if they do you are still in the game.  The challenge becomes that you can’t pick the same winner more than once all season.  So far I picked New Orleans to beat Detroit.  That worked, so maybe I’ll keep picking Detroit’s opponents each week.  I really don’t know what I’m doing in the survival league, thought I’m trying to buy players when their stats are down, hoping that they will have a good week and their value will rise.  This will definitely be a learning experience.

In my standard head-to-head leagues, I won one game and lost two.  The one that I won was in one of the money leagues, though the jackpot isn’t as high as the league that I lost in.  I’m playing one league on Yahoo!, one on ESPN, and one on Fox Sports.  I still think I like Yahoo! the best.  They make it very easy to get all the statistics you need to manipulate your team easily.  And go figure, that was the one game I won.  Hopefully I can figure out the other two sites to get some winning teams going there.

On our second full day in Alaska we rode on a Denali Park shuttle bus for many hours throughout the park. As I mentioned in the day 1 recap, you are not allowed to drive throughout most of the park and you have to use the shuttle bus system to get around. With our camping reservation at Teklanika we were able to get a special bus pass that would allow us to have unlimited rides. Most of the time we were on a space available basis (which never was a problem), but we were able to make one guaranteed seat reservation for the first full day we had in the park. So on this day we caught our reserved shuttle around 7:15am for the ride all the way out to Wonder Lake.

We wouldn’t arrive at Wonder Lake until 12:30, meaning that we would be on this bus for over five hours. It isn’t that far of a drive, but the speed limit is 35 MPH and there are many planned an unplanned stops along the way. The unplanned stops happen when anyone on the bus spots some wildlife. These sightings and the beautiful scenery helped to pass the time very easily. In order of appearance, we saw a grizzly bear, dall sheep, caribou, a fox, and a pack of wolves. Also there were numbers of golden eagles, northern harrier, ptarmigan, and other birds.

In addition to all the wildlife, we also continued to see amazing colors throughout the park. Fall was really in full swing and the red, yellow, and orange colors were amazing. On top of it all, we got to see most of Mt. McKinley. The mountain, as it’s called inside the park, is often hidden in clouds.  But when we made it out to Stony Hill we had a nearly a cloud-free view. According to the bus driver 80% of the mountain was visible, which was good enough to count as a day when the mountain could be viewed.  He also said that the mountain is only visible 20% of the time, so we were pretty lucky.

By the time we made it out to Wonder Lake, more clouds had rolled in and hid much more of the mountain. I had planned to take a hike for good viewing of the mountain out near Wonder Lake, but since it was hidden we decided to continue on our original bus back to the Eielson Visitor Center for some hiking there. We hiked down to the McKinley River bed from the visitor center, which proved to offer some great views of the entire valley along with the Alaska Range. Once we were finished with the hike we caught another bus back to the campground to wind down the night.  It was an amazing day!

Alaska on Dwellable

Over the weekend, Kim and I took a quick trip to New York City.  One of my good friends and college roommate, Fighty, is in a cover band and this weekend was time for their annual booze cruise concert.  We flew in late on Friday night, and after meeting up with Fighty for a couple of late night drinks, we were back to the hotel to rest up for the following day.  Before the big cruise on Saturday, Kim and I took a walk throughout Manhattan and finally ended up at the World Trade Center site.  It has been years since my last trip to NYC and it was nice to see some progress being made, as well as some of the tributes around the site.  It wasn’t the best day for a walk, but it never really rained hard enough to completely soak us.

The cruise was later Saturday night, and it was awesome! 150+ party-goers paid $50 for an all you can drink cruise around NYC.  After the band started playing the hits, we first made our way out to the Statue of Liberty.  We were able to get pretty close to it, definitely the closest I have ever been.  After ten minutes or so there, we headed back toward where we came, and ended up sailing all the way up toward the Empire State Building.  But the best part of it all was the three entertaining hours  of great music.  The crowd was fully into it and the boat was successfully trashed when it was all over.

Two nights ago, I headed down to Coors Field to watch the third game of the Rockies and Reds series. At that time, the Rockies had won both of the previous games, though at slim margins. Well, the Rockies did it again on Wednesday night, taking the lead back from the Reds in the bottom of the ninth to end the game. It was an another unfortunate the loss, but the good thing for us in Denver is that the Rockies continue to climb the ranks in their own division and should likely make the playoffs again. And, you could have probably guessed that the Rockies won yet again last night, sweeping the four game series.

With baseball season winding down, I’m glad to see football season coming into full swing. In another Denver/Cincinnati showdown, the Broncos will travel to Cincinnati to take on the Bengals on Sunday. I think the Bengals are slightly favored, but with our team that doesn’t ever mean much. Fortunately the other football team in Cincinnati, the UC Bearcats crushed Rutgers in their season opener Monday afternoon. The Bearcats have often been more fun to watch than the Bengals, so I’m hoping that their winning streak continues. It’s also nice to see them back in the AP Rankings. Go CATS!

Here is the first in a series of photos from our Alaska trip. These were all taken on our first full day in Alaska. We arrived late on Sunday evening, and after spending the night inside our RV sitting in the company’s lot, we were on our way north the following morning. We first stopped for groceries for the week, and then drove up to Wasilla. Wasilla is famous for two things, Sarah Palin and the Iditarod Headquarters. Having always been a huge fan of sled dogs and the Iditarod race, we stopped by the headquarters for a quick visit. It wasn’t terribly exciting, but I just love those dogs.

From there we continued north on the George Parks Highway, eventually taking a small detour to the town of Talkeetna. This tiny place is famous for their flightseeing plane trips up to Denali and also for dropping off many of the climbers up Mt. McKinely. We didn’t take one of these trips, as neither one of us are too found of those small planes. However we did stop for some lunch at a great little restaurant called Mountain High Pizza Pie.

From there we continued up the highway toward Denali National Park. Once we arrived, and after our first shockingly high gas fill-up, we quickly checked in and picked up all of our tickets from the headquarters. From there we were allowed to drive about thirty miles into the park in our RV to the Teklanika campground. Normally you can only drive private vehicles the first fifteen miles, but we had a special pass to get into the campground we reserved. Once at the campsite, we would have to rely on the parks shuttle system to get around, just as every other visitor has to.

Before we could even make it the first fifteen miles, we spotted a group of moose just off the side of the road. The group consisted of one male bull moose and five females. We stopped the RV and walked down the road toward them to get many great shots of these surprisingly large animals. We’ve seen a couple of moose in Rocky Mountain National Park before, but never this close. It was a great start to wildlife sightseeing that would occur over the next couple of days.

The rest of the drive was uneventful. We eventually made it to the campground an hour after entering the park, as the speed limit is 35 mph. Once we setup our camp, we quickly got some rest as we had reservations on the first shuttle bus further into the park for the next morning.

Talkeetna on Dwellable

I had over four hours of meetings today at the office. I’m hoping that tomorrow I can settle back into my normal routine and hopefully get some real photos of our trip posted. Below are a few photos I took on the iPhone throughout the trip.

Cool mountains as seen from the plane.

Kim on the cold but awesome tour of Kenai Fjords National Park.

Tasting all of the brews at St. Elias Brewing Company.

Kim chilling at our campsite on the Homer Spit.

As I’ve mentioned multiple times before, Kim and I traveled to Alaska over the past week or so. This marks the 41st state I’ve visited. Originally I planned to visit all 50 stats before turning 30, but I don’t think that will happen as I’m running out of time. I may have to borrow another year to hit the remaining nine states, though some will be visited in already planned trips next year. Since returning to Denver early yesterday I’ve been playing catchup with work, emails, blogs, etc. Many of you may have expected pictures to be posted today, but that will have to wait as I’ve only started to look through the 1,000+ photos from our trip. I will likely post them in a series of posts, making it more manageable, just as I did with all of our honeymoon pictures. I will say that I’ve seen some great pictures in what I’ve flipped through so far, so please stay tuned. I’ll also recap all of our adventures from the trip with the pictures.