Meeting Internet friends IRL

Chances are if you're a millennial and reading this, you have a few friends who exist strictly in the realm of the world wide web. Internet friends are a wonderful people you can spill your heart too without fear of judgement or bias, and are always there when you need them(especially when you're a teenager in Alaska stranded at your house 85% of the time). They're technically the strangers your parents warn you not to talk to, but you do it anyway because you've got your wits about you and you can tell who's a creep and who's a real gal your age.
In 2006 I was logging into a My Chemical Romance based forum to talk to fellow fans about anything the band was up to, and build friendships with strangers. Two of which named Victoria and Michelle stuck around like glue and transcended from the board, to all my other planes of social media. We would chat daily on msn, and I'd spill my guts to them about boys and other pains of youth. As we've gotten older, I've gotten bad at keeping in touch, but we still remained pretty close. In July, they planned a trip to come and stay with me for a week! I wasn't able to take a full week off of work unfortunately, but we made the best of it and had an absolute blast. Here's some of the photos of our time together.

Victoria arrived first because Michelle's flight got delayed due to storms earlier in the day. So we went out for burritos!

Delicious Mexican food!

We went down to Kentucky to explore the Red River Gorge.

Riding the sky lift was pretty friggin terrifying.

Victoria took this picture of me and we were expecting it to blow up and be internet famous haha!

We had such a great time, and I'm so grateful that the traveled all that way just to see me :)

Red River Gorge

Sometime over the summer Jared came home and said his coworkers recommended we go hiking and camping at a place called Red River Gorge. Little did he know, my coworkers had also told me similar. It was decided that as soon as the weather cooled down(so we could bring Bufford) and we both had a day off together, we'd go down and check it out. Originally we planned to camp, but it ended up being a day trip(which is fine with me because I'm more of a sleep in my bed at the end of the day kinda gal anyway). Boy, did it blow my mind!

 The first stop off we checked out was the suspension bridge. There were a lot of nice friendly people out hiking.

Jared tried to climb this rock but lost his footing and slid all the way down and skinned his knee.

Bufford being the center of attention and the apple of everyone's eye as usual.

Some lion king dinguses.

Then we stopped at an area labled "Whistling Arch" which peaked my curiosity. When we first hiked out we were led to a rocky area and a neat arch and hole in the rock. That was fine and dandy until we noticed a little trail under the arch. Behind it was a small cliff that a family was scaling down. We patiently waited for them to descend and then we headed up. Boof was like a little mountain goat, he did most of the climbing himself! When we got to the top I pretty much fell to my knees in terror. We suddenly up on a huge cliff, and Bufford and Jared waltzed right up to the edge like it was no big deal. I was in the fetal position. I thought for sure my dog was gonna walk right off the edge and take Jared down with him. I'm convinced he has no depth perception, how else could he be that bold?!

Miles and miles...

Can you see the fear in my eyes?

This guy thinks he's a goat.

Majestix

We stopped off at one last place because we knew the sun would go down after that. It was called Angel's Windows or something like that. No more cliffs, but lots of arches, and little overhang formations. Very very pretty.

I'm sure we didn't even see half of what's there, and I already can't wait to go back! I would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes the outdoors and isn't afraid of heights :)