Cheers to Kyle's 29th — Stuck in North Idaho

We may have the back seat, but there's still plenty of good views.

So far, Kyle’s 29th year is off to a amazing start and I hope the momentum continues. In the six short weeks since his birthday, he’s flown a small Cessna, completed a half Ironman, biked the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier, and is now completing a motorcycle trip to Alaska and back.Not bad, eh?For Kyle’s birthday this year, I wanted to do something special because 29 can sometimes be one of those “Meh” birthdays for people. But the way I see it, it’s your last year in your 20’s, an age when you can get away with taking an 18-day vacation to ride bikes and camp with your buddies, an age when showing up to work with a functional hangover is just something to laugh at later, an age when you can remember watching new episodes of Friends on TV every Thursday night, and it’s still an age when you can choose your method of working out based on what brewery you’ll end up at after. So instead of keeping things simple for Kyle’s birthday this year (because, why do that?) I hit up a friend for a favor and we took him up for a sweet plane ride around the lake.

This was only my second time going up in a small plane, and I forgot how much more you can feel the ride in comparison to the larger planes most people are used to flying in. Butterflies filled my stomach as we turned and bobbed above the small towns formed around Lake Coeur d’Alene. This was my first time flying over our hometown, and even though we’ve explored all over, the vastness of our forests and the connectedness of our waterways took my breath away. Within minutes, we saw not just Coeur d’Alene, but also Harrison, St. Maries, Black Rock, and off in the distance, the start of the golden, rolling hills of the Palouse.

We saw a lot of amazing things over the past week, while we explored the Denali-Anchorage area. But right now, as I sit on the couch, with Juneau snoring beside me, I can’t help but feel so thankful for the beautiful place we live, and miss one extremely important member of our little family.

I’m really excited to share photos and stories from our trip to Alaska with you, but I know the guys have some sweet video footage to accompany it, so it may be a little bit. On Monday I bid Kyle a teary-eyed bon voyage from Anchorage and I am so looking forward to having him, Tom and Greg safely back home. Cheers to year 29, may it be full of adventure and love.