The Average Blogger

Such Is Life

I wish I had some amazing photos or some beautiful words to share with you after my extended hiatus, but you'll have to make do with average -- and meager -- offerings on both counts.

What we did on our summer vacation:

Played with dogs.

Ditched the kid and celebrated our tenth anniversary with a visit to St. Louis and amaaaaazing seats at a Cards game.

Played with family. This is Totally Awesome Nephew Jude. I asked him how old he was and he said, "My mom says I'm 3."  Atta boy, Jude. Trust but verify.

We went to Hutsonville, where NYAB's dad grew up, just to poke around. Found the gravestones of his grandparents. The YP was much more taken with the park.

After the Midwest, we went east, to the beach.

And the many entertainment venues Chincoteague has to offer.

All in all, a good couple of weeks.

Then it was back to school -- which doesn't really look like much of a change from kindergarten, does it?

I also finished the first draft of my book and am furiously rewriting it now to add texture and depth and threads of continuity and all the other stuff that theoretically make books good. Between that and my day job, it'll probably be another two weeks til you hear from me again.  Maybe. I don't know. Every time I think I'm ready to hang up this blog biz, something comes along and gets me in a mood to post. We'll see.

Play Misty for Me. Wait. Wrong Misty.

We had the best weekend, y'all.

So, it was the 150th anniversary of the Battle of First Manassas out where we live. There's been a billboard up advertising a twin-pack DVD set of Gettysburg and Gods and Generals for weeks. About 17,000 people were expected to show up for the re-enactment slated to take place somewhere not on the actual battlefield proper. Roads were blocked, dudes hauling cannons around on little trailers clogged up the gas stations starting Wednesday afternoon.

You might be thinking we bought tickets and were part of the festivities and taught the Young Prince more about Stonewall Jackson and fifes and drums and what-all.

You'd be wrong. We got the hell out of town.

Honestly, it was over 100 degrees this weekend, and there was no way we were going to sit around outside watching guys in wool suits run around challenging each other with bayonets. And since we weren't going to do that, we certainly weren't going to venture out and sit in all that traffic to do something really exciting like grocery shopping. So we'd already concluded that one of two things would happen: We would stay home and go absolutely insane from being indoors all weekend because it was really too hot to play outside, or we would stay home all weekend, try to play outside, last about 10 minutes and then spend the rest of our time panting on the living room floor from overheating. 

Instead, after the kid's drama camp wrapup performance on Friday afternoon (he had a tiny part; he was a shopkeeper and a prison guard, though he did have actual lines,) we did some laundry, threw together a bunch of items and loaded the car with snacks and towels and chairs. Then we got up at 5 a.m. Saturday and drove 4 hours to Chincoteague. NeighborGirl came with us, which was completely awesome as she 1: serves as another boot on the neck of the YP, and 2: she and I share a worldview that involves raising our eyebrows and making fun of people who are not cursed with self awareness.  Going to the beach at Assateague was good news for us in both regards. We parked our vinyl chairs at the water's edge and proceeded to make fun of everyone whose bathing suit was too small, whose tattoo was too ugly, whose behavior was too slutty or whose pale fishparts were too sunburned at the early-early hour of 11 a.m. Meanwhile, Not Your Average Blogger and the kid flopped around in the surf. The YP also buried himself in the sand a few times, then ran back into the water and rinsed off.  It was great. We just sat and absorbed Vitamin D for about three hours, and then after a few minutes of debate decided we were not going to bop on back home that night; we'd stay over and head home on Sunday instead.

That required a bit of work on our part -- we had to find a room, and probably got the last vacancy on the island, and then we had to go buy clothes that were not full of sand and salt water.  I am pleased to report that my new car did remain fairly sand-free, especially considering what kind of shenanigans the kid was pulling (including somehow suckering NeighborGirl into carrying his filthy self back to the car because the sand was too hot on his feet. I know, she has much to learn.)  After getting lunch and tooling around the island for a bit looking at the scenery and the houses and so on, we checked into our hotel and spent another hour or so in the pool.  We then headed out for a night of entertainment -- we saw Captain America at the very old-fashioned theater and then had dinner at a place called Bill's which was not too bad.  Oddly, the entrees were the worst part of the meal. Soup, salad, sides, all amazing. Prime rib was more "meh, it's ok" rib.

After dinner we drove around a bit more, but it was fairly dark and there wasn't a lot to see. We headed back to our hotel and NYAB and the YP passed out fairly quickly. NG and I didn't last much longer, though we did finish a couple crossword puzzles.

Next morning we got up and had breakfast at the same Bill's as the night before. I took a shot and tried scrapple, and having done so I can safely say I see no need to ever go near the stuff again. The pancakes were pretty good, my omelette was not awful. The grits were pretty runny, though -- more like Malt-O-Meal than mush. I think the YP did not like this establishment, as the only time he showed any truly smackdown-worthy behavior was while we were sitting and waiting to eat.  Perhaps next time we will find a place with waterfront dining and toss him into the water when he acts up. 

After breakfast, we headed out to the lighthouse and climbed it to the top. NG and the kid pounded up there pretty much without stopping. I'm not in good enough shape for that, though I'm better than I might have been a month or two ago. After the lighthouse, we wandered back into town, stopped at the museum and spent way too long locating items in a scavenger hunt. A quick swing by Dairy Queen and it was time to head home, a trip that went fairly quickly and seemed even shorter thanks to NG's excellent taste in downloaded comedy routines.

I wish I could tell you I had photos of all this loveliness, but of course I left my camera at home like a dope.  But even this was a good thing; as it means I'm bound and determined to go back in two weeks and do it all over again! Frankly, I'm ready to buy a house there and spend all my weekends and most vacations there. But I reckon we should maybe spend more than two days there before making that kind of commitment, no?

Going Places, Doing Things

Since moving to DC, we've had a number of encounters with friends here on family vacations.

A woman I've been friends with since third grade was in town yesterday with her husband and three kids, and we had lunch together. It was very nice to see them, the family was absolutely lovely, and everyone else at Union Station for lunch at that time was reasonably polite and friendly.

But it's funny to me. The kids were clearly worn out and I could see that the idea of hiking up the road to look at paintings of dead people in yet another frigging museum would not have been in their top 10 -- not even top 100 -- choices for a fun afternoon. And it got me thinking about how none of the kids I've seen from out of town ever seem to have a lot of enthusiasm for DC visits. And as a kid who made an annual trek into DC with my Virginia-resident grandparents every summer, I can completely understand it. There's a lot of walking, a lot of standing around in museums where you don't really know enough to understand why it's a big deal that you're looking at this stuff, a lot of walking, not a lot of places to play, and oh, did I mention the walking?

(When I was a kid, this visit was always kicked off by getting up before sunrise so we could take the train to Union Station. Honestly? I still think my grandfather was a little insane for preferring that method. The train was sort of nice and all, and I remember -- this being the old and unsafe days -- standing outside on the platform of the last car and watching the track fly away behind us, and the water cooler was sort of neat -- but jeez, we could have gotten up two hours later and arrived at the same time. Except if we had done that, OMIGOD WE WOULD HAVE HAD TO PAY FOR PARKING!!) 

Plus, some of the most pleasant memories I have of those DC tours are gone now. The old-fashioned ice cream parlor at the American History Museum? First they fired the waiters (this was the first place I ever saw waiters in black pants and starched white coats,) and made it a buffet, then they cut back on the menu, then they ditched it completely in the overhaul.

And you can't just blunder in and out of the Capitol anymore. There are stickers and mental detectors and I don't know what all. And it's shut down entirely on Sundays, even the visitor center. This strikes me as kind of dumb, to not allow people in to look around when there is no actual business being conducted. But I guess that lack of logic isn't too surprising; this is the seat of federal government. I loved roaming around that building as a kid because there was so much cool stuff to look at. Paintings, frescoes, statuary, really cool furniture. And I knew that Important Things went on there. Although I remember my grandmother took me in so we could watch a House floor session one time, and I was ready to pass out with boredom. I didn't know what issue they were talking about, I couldn't figure out how any of the speakers felt about it, and I had the distinct feeling that my grandmother couldn't have cared less so it didn't seem like it was worth trying to figure out.

I took Thomas to sit in on a session of the Senate when he was about 5. After about 10 minutes he said, "You watch this on CSPAN and it looks like court on TV too. Why are we here?" 

It seems that the one enduring fascation for the under-12 set is the wildlife.  I remember being astonished at the sheer number of pigeons in the city, and stomping after them to chase them off. Thomas is a big fan of the ducks in the reflecting pool. And pretty much every kid we've ushered through the city is way, WAY more interested in the squirrels than in the Hope diamond. So there's the welfare critters and the carousel, and once you've hit those, you might as well wander up to the Air and Space museum because they've got a McDonald's and you know the food will be what you expect.

Now, I'm pretty sure it isn't just DC that does this to kids. We went to New York and the YP was bored stiff with huge portions of our planned activities. He was far more interested in the M&M store than he was in the Met. He found room service far preferable to venturing out on yet another hike, even to find an ice cream place.

So why do we do this? Why do we take our kids places where we know they are going to whine that they are bored, complain that their feet hurt, and ask over and over and over and over and over when they can play their video games?

Mostly, I think we do it for ourselves.  I know there have been plenty of cases where I dragged my kid places because I wanted to see them and couldn't really figure out a way to ditch him. There have been other times where I dragged him somewhere because I thought it was important for him to be exposed to something; even if he didn't have the faintest idea what was going on, there might be some tiny impression made so that in later years I could tell him, "you saw that, you remember any of it?"  And of course, there have been other times when I thought our plans would go over like gangbusters and instead they were a big fat failure that left everyone miserable and mad at each other.

So is it worth it? Is it worth dragging your kid halfway across the continent so that five years later they can remember the pigeons? So they can say, 'Oh, I remember Mount Rushmore. I remember you made me eat a hot dog I didn't want because they were out of hamburgers."

I think the answer is yes. Because while I might remember the pigeons more clearly than the presidential exhibits, what really stuck with me was that everyone in my family cared enough about me to take me a whole bunch of different places and show me all kinds of strange stuff, and even put up with me when I was being a godawful brat about all the damn walking. That involvement isn't something you can just hand off to a coach or a teacher, and it's something you can't really try to play catch-up on at the end of a childhood.

So to all my relatives who took me places and showed me stuff, thank you.  And thank you also to all you grownups out there who do this stuff for the kids in your sphere of influence.  And finally, an extra big thank you to all the other people milling around the planet who have the kindness to keep their opinions to themselves and who graciously tolerate those kids being exposed to such things, even when the kids in question are resisting and kicking up an awful scene about how miserable they are. 

(This weekend, though, we are going somewhere I know will be a big hit. We're driving up to Hershey tomorrow and spending the day at the park, then tooling around town the next day and Sunday-Driving home. Huzzah!)

Places We Eat -- or Don't

The Red Flame next to the Algonquin is an excellent coffee shop. Very dive-y.

Renaissance at 52nd and 9th has awesome breakfast.

At Morton's, the mashed potatoes serve two.

At Shula's -- do not get the twice-baked potato unless you really like garlic and onion.

 In Gettysburg -- the Perkins is on 30, heading toward York.

Alaska 4 -- Just Krashingly Lovely

Hey, I warned you I was running out of alphabet ideas.

After our whirlwind tour of Wrangell-St. Elias, we headed to Seward for the last five days of our stay. Here is a sign I couldn't get enough of:

It was a nice drive, and along the way we stopped at the Matanuska glacier (another goddamn glacier!) and hiked out to it. This one was really cool, though, because as you walked over it, you saw how it went from dirt to ice.

How you get there:

Where the hike starts:

And where it ended for us:

Although if you know your way around glaciers, you could go much further:

After the mountains comes the sea. I am pretty sure we saw some Beluga whales swimming near shore. You tell me:

We finally got to Seward, and stayed at the nicest lodge suite you can imagine. The Windsong lodge wasn't really "lodge-y" -- there was almost never anyone in the common area, the fireplace was only lit once in the week we were there, etc.  But omigod, the rooms! DVD player and porch facing the mountains. It had a separate bar area where we made the kid sleep.  He was all jazzed at the idea of a trundle bed and insisted on pulling it out every night so he could "fall" out of his real bed. Though we could have just had him sleep in the bathtub, as he fit quite nicely:

There isn't much to do in Seward proper, it's very small-town in nature. We spent five days there, but mostly it served as a base for other things. We did take two days to sort of goof off, do laundry, lounge around -- oh, and hike.

... Including to Exit Glacier, which was a really interesting hike because they have marked off where the glacier was in various years past. So, you could see that in 1976, you'd have been standing on the glacier at X spot, but today you have to hike another half-mile or so to get to it. It was very interesting. No photos, you've got the idea on glaciers and I have other stuff to show you.

The main event was a Fox Island Resurrection Bay lunch cruise, with many sightings of water critters.  Lunch was at another cute lodge on ... duh ... Fox Island, and if I hadn't loved our lodge so much I would have been sorry not to be staying at this place. Quiet, secluded, an island! We saw a flit of a whale -- and I got a photo that looks pretty much like the same photo I took when we went whale-watching in Hawaii. But it's not, I swear. Different, and MUCH colder, water!

We also saw otters. Very cute otters.

And steller (not a typo) sea lions.  They are a lot like lower 48 sea lions, only bigger and grumpier.

I told the Young Prince I was going to turn this one into a poster and put the words, "BUT MOTHERRR!" at the bottom.

The other major animal event was puffins. Regular:

And tufted:

And, the YP completed his second junior ranger badge (the first one was at Denali, did I mention this?) and got sworn in on the boat. 

The last big Thing we had planned was a raft trip down Kenia River with AK Rivers Company. I was a little surprised, I figured on a river where you weren't making a bunch of car or hiking noise there'd be more animals visible, especially what with them needing a drink and all.  But we really didn't see anything. Oh, except eagles.

After that amazingly peaceful, but astonishingly nippy run down the river, we still had an afternoon to kill, so we went to Kenai. First major astonishment: the kid ate four tacos for lunch. This, up from his usual of one. Guess that fresh air had an effect.

And then, because it was close by and we figured the kid could use a run, we went to the beach. Why not? It's Alaska. What better place to shed your britches and jump in the water? It's only 40 degrees!

After all that, we had another lazy day of souvenir purchasing. Thomas got his hair cut just in time for school, and we capped it all off with another 2-hour hike and dinner at a place by the harbor.

Next day we got on the road back up to Anchorage, stopping on the way to look at one last glacier (the Portage glacier this time.) We got to town much too early to just go to the airport, so we had lunch at a place called Humpy's (also on Joan's recommendation! Thanks again, Joan!) and then killed a few hours at the children's museum/Imaginarium, which was probably more fun for NYAB and myself, though the kid seemed to have a good time. 

Turned in the rental car, headed back to the airport, the adventure was over. Well, except when the TSA infuriated my 7-year-old by insisting he not only remove his sweatshirt to go through the metal detector but also confiscated his half-to-3/4-empty jar of peanut butter that was going to serve his noshing purposes on our 16-hour trip home. "BUT THAT LADY IN DULLES WAS ALL COVERED UP IN THAT BLACK THING AND YOU COULDN'T EVEN SEE HER EYES! WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY SWEATSHIRT?"   And then, "WHY DO THEY THINK I AM A TERRORIST? I AM SEVEN! SEVEN! YEARS! OLD!" I am only slightly ashamed to say that we parental units were exasperated enough with the proceedings that we did not tone him down in the slightest.  In fact, NYAB told him to send a letter to Janet Napolitano.

Know what? He did. It went out in the post this week. I rather think we will hear nothing in return, but I was amused as hell.  A transcript:

Dear Secretary Napolitano

You have to stop taking peanut butter away from kids. We are not terrorists. We just want to eat a sandwich on an airplane. I was taking a long long flight from Alaska back to my home, and the airport security people took away my jar of peanut butter. So I had no sandwiches to eat on the plane and the food the airplane people gave out was not any good. If I was a terrorist, you could have my peanut butter and put me in jail. But I'm not. I'm 7 years old and want to eat a peanut butter sandwich. OK?
Sincerely (but firmly),
[The Young Prince]

Oh, apples and trees.  What ya gonna do? Fortunately for all of us, there was a McDonald's on the correct side of the security kabuki theater, and the boy was placated. After turning his nose up at the airplane food, he pretty much conked out and stayed asleep through our four-hour layover in Houston and much of the flight to Washington.

And then we got home, and it was time for laundry and unpacking and getting back to normal life.

I would love-love-love to go back.

 

Alaska 3 -- Gee, Haw, I'm Lazy

So, there we were, at Wrangell-St. Elias. It is an interesting park, because you can't get into very much of it by car, not even with bus tours like at Denali. There are two unpaved roads that head into the park, but no rental company lets you take their cars on them, and the park literature says "High clearance, two wheel drive vehicles usually can make the trip in summer." Note that "usually." 

Well, that's no cause not to see it. We took a plane, instead. 

We signed up with a tour company that would fly us into the park to Kennicott/McCarthy, and it was an interesting study in rolling with changes, because we had made this reservation only a couple days before as a last-minute decision, it was all done via e-mail and not through the tour company, so we were curious to see how it would work out.

So we drove out early in the morning to a landing strip at a place called Chitina (CHIT-nah) and waited with six or seven other people for 9 a.m. to roll around, when ... something was supposed to happen, though we weren't sure what because there was no office for our tour company and there weren't any employee-looking types around. Another tourist happened to be driven up by a lodge employee, and she explained that no, the company only had an office in McCarthy, at the other end of the route, and that at 9 a plane was supposed to land and we'd all get on it.

9:30, no plane. 9:45, no plane. The hotel employee goes over to a pay phone that doesn't take money and dials the 800 number (conveniently posted near the phone,) and learns that McCarthy is socked in, but the pilot will try later. When later? How will we know? How will we know if he decides not to come? Hmmm.

So we all piled into the car and drove up the road a piece to explore Chitina. We saw a moose by a lake, which was rather pretty.

Walking past every building in town took about 15 minutes, and then we drove down a little bit of the road into the park just to see what was there. It looked like it would probably be a very bumpy, gorgeous and harrowing drive.

We headed back to the air strip and waited. Finally, at 11:30, two planes arrived, and we all took off.

It was another very nice flight with a lot of great views of mountains and glaciers.  The pilot talked about driving the road we were flying above, and he said it takes about 2 hours to go 50 miles -- which was somewhat reassuring, since we didn't know what the weather would be like when our plane was supposed to bring us back that evening.

We got to McCarthy, got in a van and were driven to Kennicott, where we had a decent lunch of stew over rice at the lodge. NYAB was enchanted, though I was less so since we were a bit pressed for time and some woman had set up camp in the one women's bathroom to be found. 

And then we took the mine tour, which was incredibly interesting and even held the YP's attention, although he was also quite taken with a local dog that befriended him and wanted to play fetch as we walked along the main road. (That will be important later.)

The mine is the tallest wooden building in America (not the tallest wooden structure, as the guide was quick to point out, some roller coasters are taller.) It was built on a hill so that production went downhill-- starting where the copper was and landing at the train tracks, where the train took it away.

Forgive this astoundingly crappy photo, but I think this bit was my favorite part of the tour. Because the process of extracting copper from rock required a lot of banging and shaking, the building had some foundation trouble.  When someone noticed that it was sliding off the mountain, they installed giant cables on either side of the building, and every so often someone would use a giant wrench to twist this gizmo and tighten the cable to pull the building back up.  Wonder what OSHA would have to say about that.  Or about the giant corroded vats of ammonia used for the last bit of the extraction process.

After the mine tour, we headed back to McCarthy and our flight home, which the YP was in a big hurry for, because as far as he was concerned, the main event was happening back at the lodge at 7 p.m. 

Dog sled! Well, dog cart, really, since there was no snow. He was over the moon, and there has been much discussion since then in the Blogger household about whether to add another four-footer to our mix, allergies be damned.  Sigh. So much hair. So much effort. But so much reward. 

Next day was another long driving day, down to Seward. You know what? I'm going to save that for the next post. I have to go to work.

Alaska 2 -- Denali, Eating, Fairbanks

So, Denali. What can I say ?It was amazing.   Our first afternoon there, we drove as far as you can into the park -- about 20 miles or so, and puttered around the Savage River a little bit. 

We hiked a ways, but we didn't have a trail map and even though we figured it looped around at some point it was starting to rain so we just headed back after a half-hour or so.  I didn't figure on seeing any animals in the part of the park where Just Anyone could drive, so imagine my surprise when on our way out we stop with a cluster of other people and watch a giant moose and his lady friend while they chomped down dinner.

I hate autofocus. I should really learn how to use my damn camera already.

Next day, Gary went off on his own while the three of us took a daylong bus tour into the depths of the park with Kantishna Wilderness Trails Tour. It was quite a trip.  They load a bunch of people onto an old school bus and some certified-type (and genuinely knowledgable) guide drives this creaky old bus along a frighteningly narrow road with some frighteningly precipitous dropoffs and yaps about what you're looking at while all the passengers stare out the window looking for bears and moose and ptarmigans while hoping nothing scares the driver or otherwise runs the bus off the road. You basically go through a huge chunk of the park, stop at the "historic town" of Kantishna -- which is now basically a lodge with some folks around who explain what stuff used to be like, a la Williamsburg, but smaller -- have lunch, poke around, then drive the same road back looking for more critters and different afternoon light for picture-taking.

So this was Wildlife Day, and we basically got sightings of all animals in the park except lynx. (Though I could have done with a better view of caribou. Sigh.) People there are very hot on Dall sheep, which ... I don't know, whatever, we saw a lot of them and it was like looking at sheep.

We saw two wolves, and I can't at all describe how amazingly cool that was.

And a grizzly bear! Not to be confused with the smaller and less ferocious black bear of the previous post.

We could also see Mt. McKinley, which is apparently a big deal. I guess the peak has its own weather system and 90 percent of the time all you can see is clouds.  We totally lucked out on the weather for this trip, did I mention that?

The Young Prince was surprisingly malleable on this day of forced inactivity.  The day started so early that he actually slept for the first couple hours, and then once he woke up and got over his Morning Cranks, he was more or less OK.

This was a setup. He wasn't actually screaming inside the bus. I don't think.

I mean, he didn't spend a lot of time looking out the window trying to spot wildlife, but he did look up when others spotted things, and he was more than happy to get off the bus and walk around the stops and look at things. Honestly, from what little I remember of myself at the age of 7 I don't think I would have done very well just sitting and staring out a bus window for 9 hours. Where I would have read a book and made myself car sick, he played his video game with the sound off -- also a minor victory for the old folks, since he went volume-less without protest. At Kantishna, he discovered to his amazement that he likes tomato soup and then was sucked into a hula hoop demonstration and did better than the woman running the program (Thanks for the practice, Grandparents!) -- a lovely woman whom he then latched on to and became her special helper in the panning-for-gold demonstration.

Panning for gold is a setup; there's a nail-clipping of gold in every bag they hand out.  The YP found his fastest, and we got it laminated -- and then it promptly disappeared. I'm sure whoever had the hotel room after us was thrilled to find it and retired immediately.

When we got back that night, we reconnected with Gary and had what was probably the second-best meal of our trip at the lodge restaurant. So, so good.

After that we went back to the room and tried to settle in for the night. Alaska time had me sort of off-kilter for most of the trip.  When we got there, it wasn't getting dark til 10:30 or so at night, although they were losing 7 minutes of light a day, so by the time we left it was getting dark around 9. I had very little idea what time it was where we were, and even less idea of what time it might have been at home. I think I did most of my checking-on-work stuff around 3 a.m. DC time. Heh.

Next morning, Gary headed back to Wasilla to wrap up his job stint there and head back to Tucson, while we futzed around until later in the morning, when we were picked up by a van service and taken to our next adventure: a helicopter ride to a glacier. The copter carried us and another couple out to this ice patch, the Yanert glacier, at the foot of Mount Deborah, where we got out and wandered around staring at the landscape. The YP, of course, is an old hand at helicopters, having ridden in one in Hawaii.  Not Your Average Blogger and I were both glad this one had doors -- NYAB for security's sake, me because it would have been Effing Cold without them.

The glacier was amazing. It was gorgeous, and silent, and so removed from anything.  I don't quite know what the YP thought of it, other than it was a chance to play in the snow in summer time. 

Ice falls, above. Ice river, below.

It took some doing to explain to him that we weren't standing on dirt that was covered with snow, like at home, but that we were standing on a piece of ice that was as tall as 6 of our office buildings.

I don't know that he ever fully grasped what we were telling him, though flying back and seeing dirt on top of ice might have helped him a little bit.  By the end of the trip he was able to explain the difference between moraine, glacier melt and snow melt, though.  I am not sure how long he'll retain that info, either. He has held on to the difference between moose and caribou antlers, at least.

After the helicopter, we headed back to the park for another little hike, this one down to a lake near the park entrance.  I am, it seems, dreadfully out of shape. I've got no air.  Or perhaps I'm just not suited for my family's approach to exercise.  The menfolk just bolt up and down these trails and get to some spot and wait for me unless I tell them not to, whereas I sort of plod my way along toting my camera at my standard 3 mph, slowing down to 2 as I huff up some of those steeper suckers. I like to think that I am the tortoise to their hare, but the truth is I'm really just a sad sack to their speed and endurance. And I need to go on a diet. Glargh. Still, the hike was nice, and got us all good and hungry for that night's dinner at the Salmon Bake -- which was OK, but not as good as the night before. In fact, the food sort of trailed downhill the whole trip.  Even the worst was still excellent, however. This was probably the best Eating Vacation that I've taken since last we saw New Orleans.

Next morning we headed back to the park one last time -- the YP got his junior ranger badge and we took a last drive into the park for one last view of what there was to see. We got to see a Moose Crossing.

After that, we drove up to Fairbanks, with a stop at North Pole, Alaska -- not to be confused with North Pole, The World.  Santa was there and chatted up the YP, but he's not taking orders yet.  We also saw some penned-up reindeer.  What better choice for dinner that night than reindeer sausage lasagna? The YP was most horrified with me and insisted I would get nothing good for Christmas.

The Fairbanks Princess Lodge is a stupid place.  It is too far out of town to be a useful hotel, but it is too far from anything remotely natural to be a lodge. The restaurant is meh. If we had it to do again, this is the one place I would have opted for something different. On the plus side, it was the first place we stayed where the staff would call your room if the northern lights were showing -- and they were! So we all went out the parking lot and shaded our eyes against the lights and looked at this giant green rainbow-like thing arcing over our heads.  NYAB and I scuffed off a ways behind the hotel to see it with a little more darkness. 

That was the other semi-regret of the trip.  The phone rang at midnight and the kid didn't wake up. After some deliberation, we decided to let him sleep, since it would be hard to wake him up, he'd never go back to sleep, he wouldn't know what he was looking at, etc. etc. He was very unhappy to learn this the next morning and insisted that if the hotel called again any other nights, we should take him too. Turns out that was the only night they were visible. But now I can cross "see the northern lights" off my do-before-dying list, though I hear September 2013 is going to be the kickass time to go back and get a great show.Who's with me, besides the kid?

Next morning we headed to another tiny airport and got on another tiny plane -- though this one seated 8 or 10, I think -- and flew up to the Arctic Circle.  I think the YP was disappointed, he was hoping for Fortress of Solitude snowscapes and lots of dancing polar bears.  What he got was a lot of green, a couple cats, and some cool views of the pipeline.

The plane landed at a town called Coldfoot, which looked to me like it consisted of a tiny airport and a truck stop. Part of the tour involved going down the (newly paved and thus highly disappointing) Dalton Highway to visit a place called Wiseman. I'm not sure what you'd call it -- a village? A settlement? A camp? About 15 people live there, and man, I tell you what, they are old school. They hunt and fish; they use solar and wind, they have giant woodburning stoves, if they want a freezer they dig a hole under their house.

Let me put it this way: The kid amused himself by stacking lopped-off moose and caribou forelegs into a piece of art.

It is moments like that when I realize how very ill-equipped I am to survive in any sort of setting that requires me to be even remotely useful. I couldn't possibly cut enough wood to burn all winter, I don't think I could fell a tree for log cabin purposes, and even if I could, I don't know how to build a house. I don't know how to make a snare, I doubt I could hit a caribou with a shotgun, and even if I did manage to accidentally down one, I wouldn't have the first idea what to do with it to make it edible. Not to mention the whole freezing to death thing. I've generally held a great amount of respect for the elements -- I know Mother Nature ain't my friend; I've seen what tornadoes and hurricanes and earthquakes do. I know the ocean is a fracking scary place. I think people who build their houses on beach cliffs are idiots who deserve whatever mudslide happens to them.  But none of what I've seen -- NONE -- compares with what you realize could happen to you up there if you stop and think about it for 12 seconds. You really have to know what you're doing and be ready to cowgirl up and do it the second it has to be done.

Needless to say, I was sheepishly happy to get back to the hotel that night. I blasted the heater and stole all the blankets just because I could.

Next morning, because we were feeling less than adventurous, we ate at Denny's.  Granted, it was the northernmost Denny's in the world, so we had that going for us. Not surprisingly, it was very much like all the more southerly Denny's eateries I've tried.

That day was a long driving day, with some eagles spotted and some nice vistas. It was also the only really bad weather day we had, very California winter-y -- wet, sort of cold, made colder by the damp.

We got to Wrangell-St. Elias that afternoon, poked around at the park visitor center and wandered on the trail nearby for about an hour, then checked into our next Princess Lodge (Copper Center, better than Fairbanks, with a bodacious fireplace and comfy couch in the common area.) I had caribou for dinner. It is gamy and a little tough. NYAB was on his 142nd salmon of the trip, this one with some kind of walnut coating, and declared it excellent. 

Up next: Mines, Dogs and Boats. Probably the last installment.

We Regret the Delay...

I fully intended to post the next installment of my Alaska review today, but it turns out I'm working a solo shift until 3, when I will race home to get my kid and take him for a quick blow-off-some-energy session at the pool, then race back home to log on and work a night shift.

Thinking about Alaska today would just depress me, I think.  Perhaps tomorrow. Sorry!

In the interim, Gettysburg "condo camping," (phrase courtesy of my friend Maria,) was fantastic.  Especially since it decided to absolutely dump rain the night we were there. A tent would have kept us from drenching, but we all would have been sort of clammy and mildewy by the time we got home. Huzzah.

Extended Absence

Where has Average Blogger run off to this time? Juneau? No, but Alaska.

Har, har.  :D

Back in two weeks, y'all.

Something Old, Something New

So, yeah.  Vacation, part 2. The Bix Fest is a memory from my childhood. When I was little I know we went at least twice and possibly three times in the five years we lived there. Basically, my recollection of it was that there was a huge two-day concert of big band music in a graceful old riverfront park with a bandshell and some trees.  And yes, it is still that, though this year a dam burst so after the first day the park venue got closed down and everything moved to secondary venues that were on the schedule -- either a new expansion from when I was little or simply a part of the festival I never knew existed. A host of other events also revolve around this now; one of them a streetfest a couple blocks up with your typical assortment of bounce houses and fair food and junky vendors, which we all got some entertainment out of. The other event of note is a 7-mile run that closes off a bunch of downtown streets and has a kid's run the night before and so on. My friend had signed herself up for the adult run, and we had both signed up our kids to do the half-mile run for 7-year-olds.

Now, I am not a runner. I am not an active person at all. My daily exercise generally consists of sauntering a half a block to get an outsize coffee milkshake from Starbucks. But my friend was running it, and for whatever reason, I somehow found myself thinking it would be not so-so bad to walk the thing. So I signed up, and then we went off to watch the kids do their race.

It did not go well.  The YP got all manner of encouragement to just do his best, to run at a steady pace and just try to beat the time it usually takes him to run the half-mile from a busy street to our house. He, however, got it into his head that his friend would run with him, though his friend had gotten the same instructions to do HIS best.  Now, Dylan is almost literally twice the YP's size. He is stronger, he is bigger, he plays hockey and has a healthy competitive streak.  And poor D. stuck with our kid as long as he felt he could, but then took off.  I didn't see exactly what happened, but I do know that our kid stomped in, furious and at a dead walk, with the next heat of 8-year-olds, so my guess is that he ran after D. for about 10 steps, then got mad and stomped the final 3/4 of the race.

Aside from the initial panic of wondering what on earth had happened to him, (since I was under the impression that they wouldn't let 8-year-olds run til the 7-year-olds were out of the way,) we then had to explain and remind and go through the process of getting the YP to understand his friend hadn't simply ditched him ("He said we'd run together! He promised! He lied!") that D. wasn't a bad friend, and if the YP wanted to be a good friend he'd go be happy that D. had done such a good job, and that it wouldn't have been very nice of the YP to keep D. from doing his best just to stay with the YP.

It was an interesting thing. Given how worked up he was -- and what lousy competitive examples his hate-to-lose parents set --  the kid picked up surprisingly quickly on the concept of being a good sport and congratulating D.  What he did not pick up, which I find mildly disappointing, was the idea that he could try again next year. I don't know how to fix this aspect. When he does badly on something, he has no desire to improve, he lacks the "I'll show you guys, I'll be back next year and kick all your asses" spirit. I don't know if this means we are raising him to be a quitter or if it means he's better at recognizing when to cut his losses.

In any case, he basically sang the entire songbook of Mamma Mia on our way back to the hotel, so perhaps it is time to put away the athletic aspects altogether and simply stuff him in drama camp for good and ever.

The nice thing was, the next morning I knew I couldn't possibly turn in a worse performance than he had, so off I went at 7:30 a.m. to my 7-mile walk.

And can I tell you, it was really, really fun. It was dumping rain, which turned out to be a nice thing by the end of the race, when I was hot and sweaty and can't imagine how messed up I would have been if it had been 80 and humid. Since I was walking, and not really being all speedy and competitive, I had time to sort of look around at the buildings and businesses I was ambling past.  There were hordes of costumed participants, including a group of youngish women dressed as brides, a group of older dudes dressed as Elvises, and a group of women dressed as Marilyn Monroe who might or might not have been the wives of the Elvises. I was also astonished by how many people turned out along the route to watch the race -- held parties, even -- and stuck around to watch the slowest of the slow walkers file past. Quite, quite nice.

I didn't even feel too bad afterward, though next time I will not wear a T-shirt, since the sleeve seams chafed my inner arms to such a degree they still haven't healed. Urgh.

After I'd rested up a bit, we drove across the river and toured my old haunts -- still didn't stop and try to visit the current owners of the house where I grew up, but we did drive through downtown for a stop at the chocolate shop, and where we learned the old library building where my dad worked is now for sale, then up past my friends' houses, the school administration building where I and my peers spent hours playing on the grounds, by my actual grade school and on to Whitey's for milkshakes.

That afternoon, my parents rolled into town and we took in a bit more of the concert festival. That night, a friend of mine from grade school met us for dinner and then she and I rolled over to a bar next door -- climbing over a berm to get in, since they were worried about the water rising -- and sat and talked for another couple hours about what had happened to us since we'd last seen each other at the age of 10. It was quite, quite nice and I hope to do it again sooner rather than later.

Next morning we took off, and plotted our homeward route to avoid roads closed due to flooding and into Wisconsin and Michigan, to knock two more states off the YP's list.  Once we hit Alaska in a couple weeks, he'll be down to seven left that he hasn't seen.  Of course, he doesn't remember a blessed thing about most of the states he has seen -- including Wisconsin and Michigan!  Still, it might look good on a campaign trail someday.  Heh.

And now we've been back for a week, and I'm almost caught up with the laundry, and the kid is in golf camp, and all is relatively well.  But that's another post.