I heard a wise man once say, you haven't truly been to Alaska unless you've eaten sour dough pancakes, peed in the Ukon River and made love to an Eskimo. This man happened to be one of my closest friend's fathers. Although we only managed to cross the sourdough pancakes off of this list on our recent trip to visit Juneau, Alaska, I was able to cross a few amazing things off of the bucket list. Things I didn't even know were on my list in the first place.

First off I would like to say that this was one of the most random trips I have ever been on. Learning vacation planning from watching my parents plan a year in advance for excursions to Europe, I have always been one to enjoy planning ahead. But with this most recent adventure, we sealed the deal on the night of the Fourth of July. In and among the light brigade of fire works, we purchased three tickets for a plane set to leave at the end of August.

Finally, after two flights and a layover in Seattle, we arrived in Juneau; our duffel bags stuffed to the brim and ready for three days packed full of adventure. Now, given that we had very minimal time to achieve everything we desired, we had to hit the ground running. Not so long after our arrival, we found our selves sea kayaking on the pacific ocean at sunset.

We joked about how we had brought the Colorado sunshine with us, because until that day there hadn't been a ray of sun, over the town in weeks. After thoroughly exhausting our arms and soaking our pant legs, we headed to bed to get some rest in preparation for what I have to say was one of the best days of my life.

Waking up the next day to a bit of fog and a slow, constant drizzle, we drank our coffee snuggled by the stone fireplace in our friends home, waiting for our adventures to begin. Carmen, who had lived in Alaska all her life before coming to Colorado for college, was providing our lodging for the next few days. With Carmen's homeland digs, we were able to have some pretty wonderful opportunities throughout the trip. Her dad and uncles owned two planes, which we were scheduled to ride in at 10:00am that day.

The plane ride was incredible. The views were unbelievable, and I truthfully never thought I would have an opportunity such as this. We flew to Admiralty Island, which has one of the largest populations of bears in North America. Although we weren't lucky enough to catch a sign of them, we did get to see the salmon making their way up the river. Again, we were blessed with another ever so rare day of sunshine.

The day didn't end here. After a few hours of relaxing at the Warf downtown, we headed back to the airport to take off on another outing. We were set to take a Helicopter tour of the Glacier that rested in the mountains above Juneau.

After a series of rundowns and safety videos, we were packed in a helicopter and soaring above the heavenly Alaskan landscape. In what seemed like just a few short minutes, we had arrived at the glacier, and may I just say I was shocked, in every sense of the word.

The temperature felt as though it had dropped 20 degrees. The blue ice was darting out all around us and the freezing glacier water cascaded across the top layer of the massive ice field below our feet. I truly couldn't believe my eyes.

I took a step back at that moment, realizing that past few hours had gone by much too fast. I could hardly comprehend how quickly our trip was slipping away from us. But I realized that these are the things in life that are so incredibly worth it, and time should never stop you from taking on an adventure such as this one. I realized that we had taken advantage of every moment that we had and made sure as to not to waste a single second of it. This is such an important lesson I think we all need to learn, and I definitely got a little taste of it throughout the course of our Alaskan adventure.

There truly is so much that can be accomplished even in the shortest amount of time, but only if you make the decision, to go out and do it.