So they countered, we countered, they accepted! Woohoo! That's the easy part. So it's a 2 bedroom, 2 bath condo, with a loft that could easily serve as a 3rd bedroom. Our unit is on the top floor of the building and "it has great light." Apparently that's how people in Juneau describe the areas that people can live in. Our driveway looks out onto a stunning view, we are in a back unit and so unfortunately don't get the spectacular views. However, while we are in the back of a building we are also in the last building. Our view looks out onto nature. We get to look at the bottom of the mountain behind us, filled with gorgeous tall trees and rocks. They say there are tons of hummingbirds and birds that fly around back there. Plus, I secretly hope we'll see a bear back there... From the master bedroom and our entry way, we do have a view of the top of the mountain we're on. It's gorgeous! :) Oh and the best part, for Eric, is it's less than 2 miles away from his hospital - 4 min. to drive there. Can't really ask for anything better. It's very centrally located, we would be close to the airport (without any noise), right on a bike trail, close to Costco and other grocery stores. It's about 15 minutes from downtown and the glacier and about 25 minutes to the top of the ski lodge.

We were fortunate enough that the current owners and their realtor were aware of our timeline and so got back to us pretty quickly. Next was the inspection. We had that yesterday at noon. That turned out good, just a few minor things that we are asking the owners to fix - nothing major which is great! :) Now, we have 5 days to review the laws of the condo association. If all looks good there, it's pretty much ours! So, that will be our in-flight reading materials.

Yesterday, we finally got to stop in to the hospital that Eric will be working for. Everyone there seems really nice and everyone there seems to be transplanted from somewhere else too. California, Arizona, Pennsylvania, even Glenview. :) His Pharmacy has a spectacular view of 3 peaks across Gastineau Channel. He's pretty excited about that. We also went for dinner with his boss and her husband, plus 2 other pharmacists who also work in the Pharmacy. Dinner was a little awkward.. but it was good talking to some people who just recently moved here and what their thoughts on the town were.

Our biggest dilemma it seems is 2-wheel drive vs. 4-wheel drive. Everyone seems to be 4-wheel drive, hands down, but when we ask why they say because of all the snow and ice. Well, we have snow and ice in Chicago and my 2-wheel drive car seems to work just fine. However, there are a lot more hills here compared to our none in Chicago. But in order to get to the top of the ski hill, you need 4-wheel drive. We rode up there yesterday and gosh it was stunning! I can't wait to get up there and ski. And when we asked where the car dealerships are here (because we haven't seen them), the response was: "I have no idea, I haven't seen them." Hmm...haha... ok. To be fair, the person we asked has only lived here 5 months. But still.

Well, we leave tonight. We fly to Seattle and then spend the night there, before flying back to Chicago in the morning. Since we had another great, sunny day yesterday I was able to take some great mountain pictures. I've posted one for you guys to enjoy! :)

It's Getting Exciting!

Well, we made our first offer on a home today! The current owners have 24 hours to accept or counter, so we hope to have good news tomorrow! :)

Yesterday we spent the day visiting open houses, making sure that we get a good look at what is all available. We found another option yesterday and we were blown away by the kitchen. However, our favorite still remained our favorite. So we met with our realtor and starting getting the papers together to make an offer. After that, we made sure to call all our parents - as they are more expertise than we are on this front - to make sure we weren't overlooking anything. All of our parents seemed to really like the place and we are really excited about it! I can't wait to show it off, but I have to remember it's not ours yet and so I won't jinx anything either. :)

We also explored downtown Juneau for the first time yesterday. We saw the Governor's Mansion, the federal building and ate lunch on the water at a really cute restaurant called Hanger on the Wharf. We are going there again for dinner tonight because we've been told that they have great fresh fish - just not for lunch. Downtown Juneau, while it looks built for tourists, also has some San Francisco-esque streets - steep, steep hills and tight curves. It was fun driving through them.

Today we didn't have much going on, other than an offer being sent to the seller. So we tried to tackle some of the things we need to get done for the wedding, school, freelance and I applied for a job with Alaska Airlines too. :) But we also needed to get out of our room. The weather started out pretty ugly this morning, there was a big storm last night and today was just really gray. Fortunately in the afternoon it started to light up. We headed out to Auke Bay to explore another area of Juneau. This is rich man land. The houses and the views out here - WOW. One day... one day...

Day 3! - Friday, March 26, 2010

Finally, I am starting to feel significantly better! Today we have more house hunting on the schedule, plus meeting with a mortgage agent at a local bank to get pre-approved. We were only looking at a few houses today - ones we couldn't see yesterday. We now have a top 3 list. We've seen just about everything that is available in our price range, so now we need to try to decide which of our top 3 will be the winner. This is hard. After looking at the new houses, Eric and I headed for lunch with a notebook and wrote up the pros and cons of our top 3. We wound up knocking out our #2 house, as there were too many cons. So we are back to having 2 favorites again. The only thing holding us back from making a decision is there is a significant price range between the 2 houses - but they are both within our budget. Tough decisions...

We'll talk it over more, but now it's time to explore. :) We headed to Mendenhall glacier on Mendenhall Lake to hike around a little. This is an amazingly beautiful area. I've never seen a glacier before, so this was something new for me! I'll try to post some pictures if I figure out how to. We got to walk around along the beach and saw a waterfall created by the snow melting from the mountain tops. The lake is almost frozen, it was just beautiful. Seems like this area would be even more stunning in the summer time. Apparently there's a river that goes into the lake that usually just has salmon swimming down it. Sometimes you can see bears there - even though it might be too close for comfort.

Learned something sad today - no moose here. They are all over Anchorage I guess, but few and far between here. But all the other wildlife we thought was here is, plus goats. I wouldn't have guessed wild goats. And porcupines! He said they are like possums in the midwest - so I look forward to seeing those too! :)

Well, now it's time for our first real meal outside our hotel, since I'm feeling better. Today was a fun day, and I can officially say that I do really like it here. It's so beautiful and different. Oh and we hit rush hour yesterday. Rush hour here = 10 more cars on the road. Haha. No back-up, the roads are just a little more crowded. I'm excited now. :)

House Hunting!

Day 2 of Juneau is house-hunting day. I'm still super sick and was really hoping I'd be better by today, but let's see how it goes. We've been in contact with our realtor, Marty, for about a month now and are excited to meet him. For some reason he keeps calling Eric, Greg. It's now an inside joke between us, but we still don't know where it originated. Anyways, Marty was gracious enough to also be our tour guide for the morning. While driving around, he explained the different areas to live in, showed us Mendenhall Glacier, shopping malls, etc. We visited about 8 places and really liked 2 of them. We'll look at more tomorrow, so we're still keeping an open mind. However, we really like those 2.

After our mini-tour and house hunting, we set up a game plan for tomorrow, then headed back to the hotel for me to rest. I was feeling a little better than the day before, but still pretty terrible. We didn't do much else today, but rest and research what grocery stores we have. We went to Costco, which is a mini-Costco - not nearly as big as the ones we're used to back home. It's kind of funny walking up to how small it is, but it seems to have just about everything we would need. Maybe a slightly limited version, but not too bad. We also went to Walmart. Through our research before coming out here, we were told that food would all be more expensive since everything was shipped up here. We wanted to do our research while up here to see how much we needed to stock up on canned goods before we left Chicago. :) Grocery prices aren't that much higher than our prices back home. However, when Eric first saw how much beef cost in the grocery store he turned around and said "We're not eating cow anymore." But at Costco the prices seem to be pretty much on par with what we're used to. Dairy isn't even as bad as we thought. Nor is gas - cheaper than Chicago so we can't complain. :)

Other notes, we've seen about 10 bald eagles already! And an aura rainbow - where the rainbow circles the sun. That was pretty awesome. I keep telling Eric I don't feel like I'm in Alaska, but everywhere you turn is a different snow-capped mountain so I don't really know why. It is absolutely gorgeous here. Eric keeps saying how he wants to climb to the top of all these mountains, or at least hike on all of them, and my response is "Bring me to a couch." Today was also a beautiful sunny and clear day. We are convinced that today will be the nicest on our trip. I can't really say that I like it just yet, because of how terrible I feel. But I could definitely see myself liking it more. :)

We made it! - Wednesday March, 24, 2010

Well, the adventure has officially started. So, it is the end of March and we have come out to Juneau to look for a place to live and check out the town.

Flying to Juneau is no easy task - especially when you are deathly sick like I was. I started getting sick on Sunday and was popping pills and Vitamin C all over the place trying to fight it off. But it didn't work. Wednesday came and, of course, that was the sickest I felt. Spending 10 hours flying is NO fun when you are so sick. And while I can usually fall asleep anywhere... I could not sleep on these planes to save my life. So flying out to Juneau officially became the longest and worst day of my life. We flew from Chicago to Seattle. Seattle to Ketchikan, Alaska. Ketchikan to Juneau. Each time we started descending, my ears started hurting so much that it felt like my ear drums were going to explode. Ok, so maybe that's exaggerating a bit, but it hurt like hell and since we landed 3 times it was 3 times the pain.

Landing in Ketchikan is like landing in the middle of nowhere. Since it was nighttime, we saw nothing but darkness until we hit the ground. I would also like to point out that everyone who flew to Ketchikan, seemed to know everyone who was flying to Ketchikan. Population - 8k.

We finally made it to Juneau and I could not have been more excited to get to bed. We picked up our rental car and headed to our hotel so I could go to bed.