This is our last day in Talkeetna. Usually on a day like today, I feel like I had a really great time but it’s time to move on. This time, I feel like I’m going to miss Talkeetna. It was raining when we woke. It rained most the day, but cleared up a little bit after dinner. We started our day with a yoga class. This was by the same woman, but instead of being in the yurt, it was in the community center. The yurt was a better place for yoga.

On the Hurricane Turn Train

We didn’t want to hike this afternoon. We had done a good amount of hiking, and the rain was showing no signs of letting up. We decided to ride the Hurricane Turn Train. It offers an old, but not historic train. It has no food and no beverages. It takes 6 hours to go to nowhere and back. And it is a total blast. There are fewer regulations than we expected. Passengers are free to bring lunch or snacks, and as the ticket seller coyly stated, “any beverage you want”. There is a time and a place for cheap red wine and plastic glasses.

Twisted Creek

Of course there’s the beautiful country, and crazy Alaskans, and tourists in the mood to have a good time. But this is also a working train. It is the last flag stop train service in the US. The people that live out in this area have no roads and rely on the train for transportation. It runs daily during the summer. In the winter, it runs once a month Thursday – Sunday. Most residents come in to town Thursday, do their shopping, then return Saturday or Sunday. Today one of our flags was from a couple of hunters at Twisted Creek that couldn’t start a fire, got water logged, and decided to return early. The area was so pretty, most of the passengers decided to get off and look around. The train waited until we were ready to move on.

Mayor of Gold Creek with Wife and Daughter

The train publishes a schedule with names like Chase (12:27), Curry (12:50), and 5 more “towns”. In fact, none of these are towns. Curry is a ghost town. Most of the rest are a house or two. The few that are a village can’t be seen from the tracks. In a couple of places, somebody put up a shed to use as shelter while waiting for the train. There are no stops at any of these places unless somebody flags the train down. Gold Creek normally has a population of 2. Today their daughter is visiting, increasing the population 50%.

View from Baggage Car

There is a sign that passengers are not permitted in the baggage car, but nobody pays it any attention. The train got in trouble because the baggage doors were always open and it wasn’t safe, so they bought some netting and strung that across the doorway. Then they got in trouble because there weren’t any emergency exits. (This with an open baggage door on either side of the car.) The conductor has a coffee pot in the baggage car, and offers anybody a cup for $0.75, honor system.

Hanging in the Baggage Car

The baggage car is more popular with the guys. But just about everybody comes back when there’s something exciting to photograph or see — such as a stretch of river with at least 50 salmon visible. (This is no exaggeration, and I have the photo to prove it.) There was very little other game, because this is hunting season. Those animals aren’t dumb, after all. But if an interesting critter does show up, they stop the train until everybody is happy that they have their pictures. Heck, they’ll even back the train up if that’s what’s needed for a great picture.

Hurricane Gulch

The highlight of the trip is Hurricane Gulch. If the weather is good enough, they stop the train on the bridge and let people take pictures out the baggage car doors. When everybody is happy, the train reverses course to return to Talkeetna.

Tomorrow morning we’ll have our last Road House breakfast, then amble down to Anchorage.

I am writing about Thursday, 9/6

Fall Colors

I have to explain. There are two Denali Parks. The state park is to the south. It is only 30 miles from Talkeetna as the crow flies; 60 miles following the roads. To the north is the federal park It’s a 3-hour drive from our hotel. Today, when I say “Denali”, I mean the federal park. Three hours in, three hours out, plus time at the park makes for a long day. We decided that one long day was better than a hotel here plus a hotel there. With one day at Denali, we had to drive the miles in either case. Still, it was a long day. We got up at 4 and got to bed at 11.

Before we left on vacation, Mark wrote about how he saw 5 moose on his travels out west this summer, so that was the number to beat. Beat it we did, thanks to the excellent Denali buss drivers. So far on our trip we saw:

• 1 marmot
• 2 ground squirrels
• several salmon spawning
• 3 grouse
• several loons
• 2 golden eagles
• 3 willow ptarmigan (Alaska state bird)
• over a dozen Dale sheep
• 8 bears
• 5 caribou
• 6 moose

Bear

That’s quite a list. Everything from the eagles down we saw in one day at Denali. We had perfect weather when we wanted it. It rained on the drive out. It rained on the drive back. Once we arrived in Denali the weather was clearing up. It got sunny. The temperature rose to the mid-50s. And the weather stayed nice until we got in the car to go home. As an additional bonus, we were in Denali for the peak of the fall colors. It’s not fall foliage. Most of Denali is above the tree line. Those few areas that have trees are 90% evergreens. But the scrub (ground cover) has riot of reds, yellows, browns, and greens in the fall. The color change lasts only two weeks, and totally by accident we were right smack dab in the middle of it.

Moose

Private cars are banned from most of Denali. Most of our day was spent riding a tourist bus  to the Eielson visitor center. It’s about 60 miles. With the slow driving, stops for animal sightings, and rest stops it takes about 9 hours. Think  of a school bus, but with good heat. There’s no A/C for the summer time. But the scenery is fabulous and everybody is in a good mood (even the drivers).We got off the bus near the end of the day and did a little hiking. It just wouldn’t be possible to have a better day than this.

Hike

I am writing this on Wednesday, 9/4.

Yoga at the Yurt (Where’s my treat?)

We started the day out with a light breakfast. (Raspberry-chocolate chip scones. Yummy!) Then we went off to find the Yoga Yurt. They often don’t have addresses around here. They’ll say “Go to mile 10 of the Talkeetna Spur Road, turn onto Pow Wow Road. and go 1/4 mile. You can’t miss it.” We didn’t miss the yurt, but the dog sure did miss the treat we didn’t know to bring. It rained heavily all morning, but listening in the rain from inside the yurt while doing yoga was quite pleasant. After yoga, we took care of such prosaic business as grocery store food and gas for the car. By the time we got back, it was Noon.

XYZ Lake

Talkeetna has 3 lakes. Their names are “X”, “Y”, and “Z”. Nobody seems to know which lake has which name, but the lake in the center has a trail going around it. The rain had stopped, so we went out to walk around the lake. When we got there, the rain started up, then got quite heavy, and we went back to the car. Once we were in the car, the rain stopped and we decided to try the hike. Persistence pays. We did the hike with a minimum of rain.

A Pond near the Lake

We spent some time resting when we got back. Then it was off to the Wildflower Cafe for dinner. This restaurant is in downtown, which is to say it’s a reak short walk. Their chef is supposed to have been the chef for President Bush, Sr. Personally, I’m skeptical because he serves broccoli, and we all know what Bush thought about broccoli. Whatever the story about the chef, the food was excellent. It’s real good food in a real informal atmosphere. (Our water was served in real Ball jars.)

This evening, we are sequestered in our room, enjoying a bottle of genuine Alaska Strawberry Rhubarb wine and some Planter’s cashews. The wine is about as good as it sounds, but hey, we’re in Alaska. I guess if I had to live through winters where the temperature dipped to -30, I would come to think of this as good wine along with about everybody else around here.

Lake XYZ

While hiking around the lake, I was able to get most of the pictures I missed in our hike yesterday. They’re posted as small pics below because they are yesterday’s news. If you want to look at any of them, just click the pic to make it bigger.

1. Don’t eat the mushrooms with gills in the bottom. Eat the ones with a smooth bottom with dimples. 2.  This prickly plant has sharp spines on the bottom of the leaves. The spines are barbed. If you grab one, you will feel very uncomfortable until the spines drop out in about two weeks. 3. This plant contains silica and makes an excellent scrub pad for pots and pans. 4. Once a year this “pipe cleaner” plant grows a seed pod top which ignites very easily. Early photographers used these seed pods to create their flash.

Mushrooms

Prickly Plant

Scrub Brush Plant

Pipe Cleaner Plant

I’m writing about Tuesday, 9/3. (We got back late and I’m writing early Wed morning.)

Looks edible, but it’s not. (Check the bottom. Gills are bad.)

The forecast in this area is for rain. Every hour of every day. For as long as the forecast runs. But even when the forecast is not good, the weather is very unpredictable. The rain stopped and the sun came out most of the morning. We enjoyed walking around Talkeetna and visiting the shops. It’s not a big town, but it’s big on the tourist list. This is the shoulder season, but we saw 3 tour busses of people visiting. There’s a large ranger station here. Before climbing Mount McKinley, people must register at this ranger station and attend an orientation session. This station is the base for rangers who rotate working on the mountain, enforcing sanitation regulations and offering assistance to climbers in trouble. We visited the Talkeetna Historical Society’s museum. We saw all the shops and most of the art galleries. The Road House (where we’re staying) is quite popular for their food and bakery, both with the locals and with the tourists. There are plenty of people here all the time, and they’re always in good spirits.

Rose Hips, high in vitamins and good stuff. Can be made into wine!

This afternoon we had a hike in Denali State Park with a guide. Our guide was very knowledgeable and quite friendly. The rain started shortly after we started and lasted until we were almost done. We walked around Byers Lake. It’s not the usual route for this hike, but there’s been a lot of rain lately and the trails are muddy and slick, making the normal route undesirable. I got some pics on the first half of the hike. After that, things started getting pretty wet and I moved my camera to the depths of my pack, where it would be sure to stay dry.

Lichen looks like Spanish Moss, but it does not harm the trees

The Grizzly fur (circled) shows this tree was used as a scratching post

We We didn’t see any large mammals, But we saw plenty of evidence of them, including trees where Grizleys scratched themselves while fishing for salmon. Near the end of the hike, we saw salmon spawning.

This plant has neural toxins and is fatal if eaten. Just touching the leaves while eating berries can cause illness. 

The guide said this is a poisonous plant. We accepted her word on the point.

These are unnamed foothills, since they were under the snow line of 8,000 feet

I am writing this on Monday, 9/2 (Labor Day).

That’s what the license plates say, and this trip has been a grand adventure so far. If you prefer a more cynical title, I suggest “Alaska: Beautiful Country, Ugly Houses”. As much fun as we are having visiting, I wouldn’t want to live here. We’ve been noodling this trip for many months. We certainly were not like the couple Danita saw at the Anchorage airport who were calling hotels: “Do you have a room? Do you have shuttle service to the airport?” We got settled in our hotel bed about Midnight AK time (that’s 3 AM EST).

These Anchorage Mountains were an Emergency

Cliff Ahead, Stay on Trail

The first order of business today was to pick up our rental car. When I made the reservation, I decided the only car to drive in Alaska is an SUV. Ours ended up being a perfectly adequate Subaru. On the shuttle from the hotel to the rental car agency, we got our first peak at the mountains just north of Anchorage. The way the mountains were playing hide and seek with the low-lying clouds was quite dramatic. Not long after we got on the road, the clouds suddenly changed and covered the mountains so thoroughly that one couldn’t tell the mountains were there. A few minutes later, the clouds had parted and the mountains were clearly visible. The signs said not to pull over except in case of emergency. This dramatic shift in scenery was an emergency to me. That’s how we got the pic above. The weather continued being incredibly changeable. About 15 minutes later, a very strong wind hit, nearly blowing us out of our late. A few minutes later, the wind died completely. And so it went.

Thunderbird Gorge

Not far out of Anchorage, we saw signs for Thunderbird Waterfall. We decided to walk the 1-mile trail to the falls. We found that Alaska has three tacks to get people to stay on the trail: 1) Authority – “Stay on Trail”. 2) Ecology – “Prevent Erosion, Stay on Trail”. 3) Safety – “Cliff Ahead, Stay on Trail.” None of these are particularly effective against Alaskans, as we learned when we took an unofficial but well worn side trail to a very dramatic and unprotected cliff. Most of the land between Danita and the edge of the cliff had been undercut! This is a beautiful area.

Mushroom

The species of trees and bushes is different than what one would find in the Appalachians, but the area has the same feel as any woodland area one might find on the east coast. This brightly-colored red mushroom was common in the area.

Su River

Our next destination was Hatcher Pass and the Independence Gold Mine. It took us quite a long time to get there, because we kept on stopping at pull-overs. This view of the Su river is typical of some of the dramatic scenery we saw. Finally, when we were close to Hatcher Pass, I said, “I’m not going to stop again until we reach Hatcher Pass”. Of course, I almost immediately saw an astounding view and I had to pull over and stop.

Hatcher Pass Lodge

Independence Gold Mine

Hatcher Pass lived up to its reputation. The scenery in this part if Alaska is astounding. The view at Hatcher Pass is stunning. The road to Hatcher Pass has one lane in each direction. They placed signs all along the road telling people not to stop. Never the less, when we first saw it, I had to slow down dramatically. I got the pic above from a pull-over a little further down the road. Independence Gold Mine is just behind the lodge.

Looking back through the Fireweed on Hatcher Pass

We weren’t the only ones to have a problem keeping our car moving at Hatcher Pass. We had lunch at the Hatcher Pass Lodge with another stunning view, this time looking back on the way we had come. After taking in the view for quite a while, we finally noticed that just about every car that came up the road either slowed dramatically or stopped all together. One man stopped, got out of his car, and walked around taking pictures. We were there on a cloudy day at the end of the season. This road must be a mess in the summer time.

We arrived at our final destination, the Talkeetna Road House, about 3:30. Danita was tired and I was exhausted. We rested until dinner and went across the street for some excellent calzone. We had been dodging the rain all day. We had been lucky in missing the rain while we were hiking around. But the rain became steady as we got to Talkeetna. My initial impression is that Talkeetna is the perfect hippy town. Well it’s time for me to visit the bakery at the front of our road house. It’s been many long years since I have seen rhubarb pie. Yum!

There are no pics this week. I am writing this on Tuesday, August 27.

This was a very busy week and weekend. I spent a lot of time at Nick’s house, getting all their computers set up. Saturday (!) I went down to move their financial computer to the Executive Director’s residence and get that working with her laptop. Just as I was finishing up, I found that I had somehow downloaded a bad printer driver for two computers. This driver was worse than bad — it prevents all printing activities on these two computers. The Executive Director is on vacation this week, and I am on vacation next. We decided to solve this problem in September.

In addition to that, we had a neighborhood “Chill & Grill” Friday, followed by the movie “42” (about Jackie Robinson). Saturday, we had the Sabiston’s over for dinner. (I got home just in time to clean up from Danita’s cooking before the Sabiston’s came.) And Danita and I went down to Bud’s house Sunday. Danita is still sorting through stuff with her Dad. My job was to power wash the front porch and sidewalk. The front porch is a small cement pad, but it hasn’t been cleaned in many years, and it is slightly concave so it holds water after it rains. In addition, the porch, sidewalk, and top of the driveway don’t get much sun so black nasties grow in the cement. The porch was so bad I scrubbed it with “Krud Remover” 3 times before I even turned the power washer on. It was quite a job getting it cleaned up. Bud wanted me to wash his deck, but Danita helped me decline. Power washing a deck is harder than power washing cement. His deck is in such bad shape that cleaning it would result in it needing a paint job. And some of the boards really need to be replaced. If I opened that bag of worms, the job is big enough that I don’t feel qualified to finish it. And besides all that we have the James Bond movies! We ended up having “Breakfast with Bond” Saturday morning, because that was the only time we had available.

We’re gearing up for the big Denali trip. I’ve printed out Google instructions for the drives we have to take, in case the GPS has problems. We went out last night to get me some hiking socks and Danita some outdoor all-weather pants. Tonight I’m meeting Danita at UMBC at 5:00. We’ll go to a local bar for dinner. (They have pretty good hamburgers.) Then we will go to a member’s-only opening of the Black Reef exhibit at the National Aquarium. That’s the last big activity before traveling. We will have several days to make sure we have all the details of our vacation covered and fret about the forecast up there, which so far indicates temperatures in the 40s and 50s and showers every single day. After spending all that money to get to Alaska, you can bet we’ll be hiking around in the rain.

I kind of enjoyed the way I posted daily on my two bike trips. I plan to do the same for our Alaska trip. That lets me post a few pics and describe some highlights each day and prevents one huge, overwhelming post, which would never be finished. I can’t post on Crazy Guy on a Bike, because this isn’t a bike tour. So I will post on this blog, starting the evening of Monday, Sept 2 or maybe the morning of Tuesday, Sept 3. Of course, that assumes that the WiFi works where we’re staying. If it doesn’t, I’ll be posting to my laptop, and download the posts to the blog when I get WiFi access. You can wait for the Email to be delivered, or you can just check out this blog once a day, or you can wait and read a week’s worth of blogs all at once, or you can ignore it all together. That’s the beauty of the web.

Here’s the itinerary and contact info. I’m including hotel phone numbers because I don’t know how good the phone coverage is up there. Unless otherwise stated, all times are AK time zone.

Sept 1: UA 453 to Denver, US 1107 to Anchorage. Arrives 10:30 PM. Staying at

Quality Suites Anchorage Near Convention Center
325 W 8TH AVE
Anchorage, AK 99501
1.888.872.8356

Sept 2 – 6: Staying at

Talkeetna Roadhouse
Trisha Costello, Owner
P. O. Box 604 Talkeetna, AK 99676
13550 E. Main Street in “beautiful Downtown Talkeetna”
phone: 907.733.1351

Sept 7: Staying at

Camai B & B
3838 Westminster Way
Anchorage, Alaska 99508-4834
(907)333-2219

Sept 8: UA 1129 to Houston, UA 1717 to Baltimore, arriving 11:47 AM Eastern time on Sept 9 (overnight flight).

That’s all for now. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Sunday, August 18. There are no pics this week.

This week I read an article about the moose in New Hampshire. It seems the winters aren’t cold enough to kill off the ticks. This leaves a lot of hungry ticks in the summer time. Ticks like to feed off the moose, leaving the moose emaciated. According to the article, moose in Maine aren’t affected because the winters are still cold enough. This very same week, we had several days of delightfully cool and dry weather. Lows were near 50 at night. Riding early in the morning required a jacket. In the middle of August. Amazing. Very nice, but amazing.

Speaking of riding, I had the entire day to myself Friday, so I took an all-day bike ride. I haven’t ridden very much since I got back from the BRP trip. This was partly due to some rainy weather and partly due to other commitments. I decided that if I didn’t do my old training ride soon, I would lose the ability to do it, and have to work back up to it again. I completed the ride. It was hard, I was tired, it felt great. The best part of the ride was the worst part of the road. The entire route is excellent biking except for the last mile or so in Howard county. That stretch has very bumpy pavement, a steep down-hill section, and heavy morning commuter traffic early in the day. The bottom of the hill has very rough railroad tracks, followed by a narrow bridge and an additional short section of road until I go one way and most of the traffic goes another. The pavement is so bad I am forced to ride slowly down the hill. It isn’t as bad as I make it sound, because the road is so bad that many drivers go slower than me down that hill. Friday, a road construction project had sprouted up on that section of road. The pavement on my side was beautifully smooth. The other side was finishing up. And the rail road tracks were very nicely smoothed out. Thank you, Howard County. You have moved the worst part of the ride to Carroll County!

I spent three days at Nick’s place. When I worked for CASA, I developed a shortcut for upgrading Windows 8 to Windows 8 Pro. It worked great and saved a lot of time. Unfortunately, my little shortcut did now work when converting Windows 7, 32-bit to Windows 8 Pro, 64-bit. As a result, I didn’t bring everything I needed when I came on Monday. It took half a day to fix that. Oh, well, that’s why I build flexible schedules. I should finish most of the work at Nick’s Place this week. I’m also working on a project to connect the ReStores to the central office for Habitat.The project is approved, but the company that does computer support for Habitat added a new requirement that adds $1000 to the cost of the project. This is a lot of money to Habitat. We’ll see what they decide.

Wednesday we had the “August Party” at Ed’s place. Ed said it was easier if he didn’t have to put everybody in a car to come to our place. That is eminently understandable. We had plenty of people there. Bud came up from Potomac, driven by Danita’s brother Rick, who was visiting from Texas. Joe was also there. There were hamburgers, potato salad, chips, and sweets a plenty.

Our other big party this week was Bill Bauman’s 70th birthday celebration. It was a typical Bauman party. Lots of people. Lots of conversation. Lots of “BJ’s” food. We had a good time.

We have launched a James Bond marathon. It’s fun watching movies from an earlier era. We’re watching them in sequence so we can see how the movies developed. The free 007 movies I found on Amazon are available only through the end of August. The timing is perfect. It ends when we leave on vacation, and corresponds to TV’s summer doldrums. But it leaves us with a mad dash to watch 20 movies in less than a month — plus attend all the parties, classes, dinners out, etc. Life is hard, sometimes.

Danita’s doing a cooking countdown to our Alaska / Denali vacation.  Between now and when we leave on September 1, she will be at the university retreat two days, we have a SOCA party, and we have an evening at the Aquarium. That means there are a maximum of 10 dinners at home before vacation.

I don’t often write about politics, but it’s hard to ignore how our president, the NSA, and other agencies have worked at hiding the scope of their data collection from the public. (And that’s being very generous to our government.) Those who are “in the business” were not surprised by recent revelations, but this knowledge gained relevance when it was finally proved. I personally think there are more activities that have not yet been revealed. Certainly, other countries are doing as much as they think they can get away with along these lines. And none of this begins to touch on the “cyber-war” activities that the US and other governments are conducting. I read a blog that suggested that Eisenhower’s farewell address is particularly applicable to us today. It’s short. You can read it and decide for yourself by visiting http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html. I found a couple of places where one can watch the original TV broadcast. Unfortunately, every site I could find ruined the speech by breaking it up with commentary.

That’s it for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Note: there are no pictures this week. I am writing this on Sunday, August 11.

There isn’t much that could compare to all the excitement of the last few weeks. It’s good to have things calm down a little bit.

Our neighbors watch their 2-year old grandson. For some reason, they are very concerned that I will hear noises from their house. (They aren’t concerned that Danita will hear noises. She goes to work!) I keep on assuring them that I don’t hear a thing, and that if I did it wouldn’t bother me at all, so long as I don’t have to change the diaper. I saw them outside Monday. They had traded the 2-year old for a 4- and 6-year old last week. They immediately asked if I heard noises. I told them yes, I heard a lot of noise last week, but from my grand kids, not theirs.

We’ve had a lot of rain this week. In keeping with my new philosophy of making sure I’m inside when it rains, I haven’t done much bike riding. I read a very interesting book. If you like spy fiction but find it unbelievable, you will find the truth much more unbelievable. Never the less, everything in “Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal” by Ben Macintyre is absolutely true. It’s about a British rogue who ended up working as a double-spy for MI-5 during WW II. I had read some of the story of Britain’s war-time spy network, but I had never come across this story before. Perhaps the most unbelievable part — the spy was run by MI-5 (internal intelligence), when by rights he should have been by MI-6 (foreign intelligence). It was a fascinating read but I still don’t understand those British intelligence departments. What ever happened to MI-1 through MI-4, anyway?

I did some work for Habitat this week. They were still having intermittent trouble with their VPN phones at one of their ReStores. (VPN phones use the internet instead of phone lines). I kept on swapping things around, trying to isolate the problem. Finally I did a swap that made everything stop working. That pretty much proved the problem was with the internet connection. I patched things up to work somewhat and they called the provider. With a “hard failure”, the provider quickly found and fixed the problem. Now we’re just waiting to make sure the issue doesn’t occur again.

My other gig is with Nick’s Place. They purchased everything they need to upgrade their computers. I’ll be going down Monday to set up the first 3 computers, then again Tuesday to do a little training. There will be several more visits after that.

Thursday was Danita’s birthday. We went out to one of our favorite restaurants, Baldwin Station. I had a perfect steak: better than Chris – Ruth’s at half their price. Unfortunately, Danita didn’t have as good a time. Fortunately, we had a neighborhood crab feast Saturday evening. That went quite well. They kept on bringing crabs to our table, and we kept on eating them. I only had one crab, but there was plenty of other great food available. We were sitting on the deck. The weather was perfect. We stayed and chatted until the mosquitoes were out in force.

On the medical front, I had a 24-hour EEG. I went in at 2 PM Friday. They glued wires to my head, hooked them up to a small box, and gave me strict instructions to act like a slug until late Saturday. I was just about all hooked up when a mother stopped at the checkout window across the hallway with her 5-year old daughter. The poor girl saw me and was all freaked out. I tried to make her feel a little more comfortable. Unfortunately, her mother was making things worse by hissing “don’t stare” under her breath. As if that would make a 5-year old stop staring. I took the hint and went straight home, calling Danita to ask her to pick up some milk. I spent most of the day Saturday watching old James Bond movies, streamed from Amazon for free, while Danita was down at her Dad’s. And I spent *all* of the day in our house behind closed and locked doors. Getting the wires off my head was almost like a spy operation. I had to go to the locked medical building at 4 and call the EEG tech on his cell phone, so he would know to come down and let me in. Fortunately everything worked out in a timely manner, and I had plenty of time to shower before the crab feast. It turned out to be more like a 48-hour test. I’m still finding buggers in my hair. I can’t imagine what people with long hair do.

Today we had a special breakfast. We had a loyalty reward for a free coffee at Panera — and Danita got a bonus of a free pastry for her birthday. So we went to Panera after church and had the cheapest breakfast ever.

That’s it for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Elizabeth

I’m writing this on Sunday,

We had fun visiting at Reed Manor. Here’s a pic of Elizabeth clowning around in the living room Thursday.

Bryon

And here’s Bryon clowning around in the men’s room at the library Friday. (He liked the color of the stall walls.) They had an “Arthur” exhibit. We played around there for a while, then the library had a science hour. They had songs and stories. Then they sifted through ocean dirt to find small shells, bits of coral and fossilized poop. The best time was lunch. We went to Chick Fil A, which was OK. The good part was the play room afterwards. It got really good when a day care mom brought several kids and everybody started running around as screaming.

Carolina Raptor Center

Saturday we included Jul and went to a nature center that houses the Carolina Raptor Center. The kids weren’t very interested in the birds. But they managed to have a good time running around and looking at everything except the birds.

The drive home was easier than normal, because it was Sunday. When taking I-81, the routing programs always suggest taking I-66 East to the DC beltway and around to I-95. Normally, this is a very bad idea and we take some back roads up to Frederick. It can take hours to move a few miles in the DC area. But since it was Sunday, we took the suggested route and got home a few minutes early.

We’re going to stay home the rest of the month. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Natural Bridge

We spent our first day at Natural Bridge. Besides the bridge, they have an Indian village, a butterfly garden, a wax museum, and caverns. We saw everything with time to spare. It’s actually quite a pretty area. I didn’t realize it, but Route 11 runs on top of Natural Bridge. Drivers can’t tell when they’re driving over the bridge. In fact, I rode my bike over Natural Bridge on my recent bike hike and never realized it. This is quite intentional, because there is no safe place to pull over and gawk.

Lace Falls

On the other side of the bridge and at the end of the trail, there’s a small waterfall. It’s 113 steps back up to the top of the hill. The Indian village is between the bridge and the waterfall. I was impressed by how much the actors knew about life in an Indian village in the early 1700s.

Butterfly

I was even able to get a few decent pics of some butterflies. I was amazed I did as well as I did, considering I was using a phone camera.

Foam Henge

Danita went to the caverns by herself. They say it’s the deepest cavern in the eastern US. After all that we took some quiet time in our room. Then we went out to the Pink Cadillac Diner for dinner. On the way over, we stopped at … Foam Henge! If you visit at sunrise on the summer solstice, you will be able to see that foam henge is a little mis-aligned. They say the error will automatically correct itself in about 4,000 years.

Merlin Making Stone Henge

How was the original Stone Henge constructed? One alternative theory is that Merlin did it using magic, kind of like Mickey Mouse mopping the room with all those brooms hauling water. This statue of Merlin was modeled after a friend of the artist, with the help of a death mask. How wonderfully macabre. While this theory of the construction of stone henge is controversial, there’s no doubt about how foam henge was constructed — one strange artist and 4 or 5 Mexicans.

We came back at 9:00 to watch the light show at Natural Bridge. Unfortunately, the rain we had successfully dodged all day finally caught up with us. The show is a half hour long. We watched the first 20 minutes from good seats. When the rain got heavier, we moved to watch the rest of the show from directly under the bridge, where it was dry. It was a very nice light show, but I couldn’t help but reflect on the second day of my bike hike, riding up that mountain in heavy rain, thinking “This is a good challenge. I can do this. But maybe in the future I can arrange my life to spend less time in the rain.” It seems to be a goal I haven’t yet met.

Tomorrow we’ll enjoy a leisurely breakfast and head down to Reed Manor.