Relaxing Weekend

After our grand adventures last weekend, Andy and I voted to take it easy this weekend.  It felt really nice to relax, but still get to explore a little bit of Anchorage.

Saturday morning we got up and headed out to the nearest dog park.  Sadly, this place is no Minto Brown (the BEST thing about Salem, especially if you have a dog), and we were a little disappointed to see there were no other dogs there and that the off leash area was really small.  The one big upgrade?  LAKE!  This suited Ripley and his little webbed paws just fine.  The extra bonus for him was that there were ducks in the lake.  He was in heaven.  Here's a little video of him taking one of his many swims towards the ducks.  Note how he tries to be so sneaky...

According to the city's website, there are a couple of other dog parks in town.  I hope they are somewhat better than this one, though the lake is pretty fun.

After the park we did some grocery shopping (thrilling!) and went to a local butcher in search of a pork shoulder.  Two of my coworkers are off to Kansas City for a different training and I was jealous of their BBQ options.  I decided we needed to try pulled pork at home, and we chose a recipe that was road tested and approved by Lauren and thought up by the Pioneer Woman, who I absolutely love. Oh, and it involves Dr. Pepper which I drank approximately 500 gallons of when I worked at OAH. (Marni got me addicted).  Here's a link to the recipe: Spicy Dr. Pepper Shredded Pork

Word of warning - when she says spicy, she means spicy.  The recipe called for an 11oz can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce.  We only could find a 12 oz can and we wish we'd used half the can (or less). The pork almost burned our faces off with spice but was delicious.  The cooking method was perfect, we just need to change the recipe a little for next time.  Also we went for pulled pork sandwiches last night - hoping that tonight with the tacos the cheese and the sour cream help to tame the spice a little, along with adding some much-needed calories that you just don't get with a giant slab of fat-covered pork butt.

While the pork cooked (for 8 hours) we watched the olympics and a couple of movies.  Andy requested "Miracle" in spirit of the olympics, even though it's about hockey.  If you haven't seen the movie, I recommend it - if only for Kurt Russell's hair.  

While we watched movies, Fro cuddled in her new favorite spot: 

And Zeus curled himself in a ball:

Sunday we went to Flattop for some more outdoor exploring and we had a wildlife encounter! more on that later...