NEW YORK AND BACK...

Wow, what a whirlwhind. Arrived via plane to NY on June 7th, spend 3 weeks or so packing and cleaning up the house, loading the FJ, fixing doorknobs, painting the hallway, etc. - all in between heavy drinking and bbq-ing with my friends who I am going to miss dearly- to get ready for the journey back to Juneau via auto. The house is rented, and me, Sade & the dog, rosie, officially hit the road yesterday. Forgot to zip the rooftop cargo carrier so lost a few items on I88 within 20 mintues of leaving - that's ok, had too much stuff anyway and we were both teary-eyed and didn't care. Now Sunday night in Ohio visiting mom and the sister - caught my nephew in between heading back to Germanny. Tomorrow a.m early, we're heading west. Decided to take the northern route - via Chicago St Paul North Dakota Montana Idaho And Washington. So sorry my friends in the Denver area - Diane in Ft Collins, Jim in Boulder, and Dean in Littleton... I was planning on stopping by to see each of you but the northen route appears to be the quickest and I MUST be on the Friday Ferry at 3:00! So, wish me Bon Voyage!! (Bought Homer's Iliad on CD - actually 14 of 'em, 14 hours worth - to listen to in the car. Should be interesting... wonder how Rosie will like it.)

BLOG COMMENTS

OK Bennett, Eli, Jamie Rose, Jenna, Alena, Joshua, Laurabean, Olivia, Alex, et al., why aren't you commenting on my blog posts. I'm bored out of my mind. Sitting in the USO lounge at the Seattle Airport. Free wifi, coffee, cookies, hot dogs and fruit loops. Sade's using our laptop and I'm on the USO one. But i have nuthin to do on-line except add to my blog journal. You know what the USO lounge is? Well, it's a lounge for Active Duty military people to use. There's an xbox, movie room, bunks, guitars, computers etc. Am I active military? No, but I showed my non-active/civilian ID at the front and the nice guy said to me "Your husband's active right?" So, I say "Uh yeah"... and we're in! Cool. But we've been in here past 2 hours now and I'm bored - rather go shopping in the gift shops and wander the airport. I think I'll try to convince Sade to abandon ship... cya later! <:))))~ that's an armadillo.

Still More Craigs List stuff..

I unpacked these great moving boxes and just couldn't take them to the dump. I put an ad in Craigs List: "Free Moving Boxes or will trade for salmon". An elementary school teacher came and got the boxes and gave me a piece of king salmon her husband caught. We just ate it - delicious!
I sold Rusty for $200 more than what I paid for it. So now I am car-less once again. But I'm going home to retrieve my car in a few days. And I ran into Rusty at the home depot a couple days later and said hello to its new owner.
And, someone I know gave me an old smelly Zodiac inflatable, I put in on Craigs List Sunday and sold it within 20 minutes for $150! AND best of all the guy who bought it works at a helicopter place - he's a mechanic there (I won't mention company name) , and he's gonna set me up with a FREE helicoptor tour!
He told me people in Juneau scour Craigs List for goodies.

I love this town - the barter system is back and stronger than ever thanks to the internet!

"The Watering Hole"

As with anywhere, I suppose, the local highschool kids are the experts at knowing all the secret cool places to go. Here is the local "watering hole" where they jump from the cliffs into this deep cold pool of water! This photo of the waterfall with the tree logs leaning against it is actually the outflow from the pool! It pretty spectacular and a bit scary.

...and more.

More Soup Pics...

Flight to Anchorage and Primordial Soup?!

I flew to Anchorage yesterday and back today and the flight was incredible-gorgeous clear days. These photos don't capture anywhere near the visuals! The Glaciers (I am sure we flew over Glacier Bay National Park), mountains, deep snows, cliffs, and pockets of gray water (from the silts that the glacier's deposit), and turquoise blue - just amazing. You could see where the glacial outwashes were creating new lands at the mouths of the rivers. In fact it was like flying over the earth 40 million years ago - before Homo sapiens, nearer to the primordial soup time. And knowing what I know now (as a Homo sapiens 40,002,009 years later, and under the presumption that we are in a global warming period), you can see from 30,000 feet the how, what, and where will be the future human settlement on these vast unscathed landscapes: You can tell where the Minnesota and South Dakota prairie potholes will be; the outerbanks and Cape Cods with their mini golf, hotels and vacationing college students; You can see where the big shipping ports and industrial areas will grow, with their neighboring big coastal cities; and those broad, flat glacial outwash will become the fertile agricultural lands like the historic Mississippi floodplains; you can see the subdivisions, the malls and further up the valleys will be the mountain-lake hunting and vacation lodges; and you can see where timbers and forests will be clear-cut to make room for all this development, and highways and bridges and airports; and you can see the sheer rock faces that will become the rock-climbers' mecca. This is what you can see as you fly over this area called the "last frontier". Will all these National Parks and Preserves remain as I see them a thousand years from now? Somehow I think not.