On Saturday night we found our favorite spot to camp at mile 28.6 of Chena Hot Springs Road.  The river was quiet and it only took a few hours to relax and unwind.  We didn’t catch much but admittedly, we didn’t end up fishing much either.

It’s hard to believe that we drive out in one month.  There is still so much to do but it’s hard to focus on anything other than having fun with friends.  Plus, with loooooong days that are warm and sunny, one tends to find any excuse to go outside.  On Sunday I hiked around the UAF campus for three hours with Josh, Kate, and Susanna (and Pooch!) setting up a geo-caching exercise for the RAHI (Rural Alaskan Honors Institute) geology students.  The list of things that I did not do at that time that I should have been doing is staggering.  Truly.

Of course the wedding looms and no duties fall further to the wayside than wedding duties (sorry, Mom!)  I really am excited about it and I can’t wait to be home and doing things for it but…I’m so far away from where the wedding is that it remains very sort of abstract and conceptual for me.  It got real for me quick today, though, when I had to ship my wedding dress from Alaska to New York.  In case you’ve never seen a box that’s been shipped from Alaska to New York (or vice-versa) let me assure you – I have a lot to worry about. 

I am thinking a lot lately about what “being married” means.  By the time Josh and I get married we’ll have been together for eight years and engaged three.  What will change after a short, civil ceremony?  Probably everything and nothing, just like when I moved to Fairbanks.  I still feel like me, but I feel more like me than I ever did before.  I think that if you are marrying the right person it probably feels a lot like that.

If living on our own in Alaska for 2+ years wasn’t a prenuptial test I am confident that three weeks on the road, car camping through Canada and the Lower 48 will be.  Talk about pushing the boundaries of pre-wedding jitters.  If Josh is still willing to marry me after living out of a car with me for three weeks, I am a lucky, lucky woman indeed.

Do you have any sage advice for the two of us before we get hitched?  Register an account at FL1 and leave me some pearls of wisdom in comments.