The wonderful thing about boxing, is boxing's a wonderful thing!

Thursday, January 24, 2013

A New Year, A New Decade - a new goal.

So. It's my birthday today. 50 years old. Betcha never thought you'd see a 50-year-old tigger. Well, i haven't lost my boing!! LOL
As a matter of fact, i have my boing back. i have decided my goal for this new year - the 50th year of my life - is to post at least every other day. you all are gonna get sick of me. 


What to post first? why, what i did for my birthday - which, granted, was my trip to Alaska last summer. i know, it's seriously lame that i haven't posted anything about it - but in my defense,  we sold a house in VT, took this trip to Alaska, moved 1400 miles, went through the holidays and well, here we are. Sometimes these things take time.

Stop laughing, Bubs, or i'm siccing The Shoes on ya!!

Anyway, the best way to tell this story is to do so in pictures. ON with the Show!!
 
 What do tiggers do whilst waiting for planes? carve stamps, obviously! and here i am, carving in the Burlington airport. Nice day for it - it was basically the last sunny day on the trip for a week.  We left on Tuesday afternoon, July 10. Because of the way air routes go, we flew VT - NY - LA - Anchorage, staying overnight in NY.

35 hours later, we landed in Anchorage. (it's a long long way across this country). It was still light out, although not sunny. We went to bed. The next morning, we got up and went to a park (letteboxing, no less; A Seattlebound and her Alligator box). We wanted to see wildlife. A moose? A bear? owls? Something exciting?? Why yes!!


that's our first Alaskan wildlife: the vole. About the size of a golf ball. Whoo hoo. 

That night, we met Nana C, who took us out for dinner at a local diner and boxing!! Yeah for fresh haddock! yeah for Nana C!!



This picture was taken about 8:30 pm. One's sense of time gets a bit warped way up yonder. i had a really hard time sleeping; Mr Umbrella couldn't keep me down. He napped a lot.
On Friday of that week, we started the day with a mini-meet with knottyknitter and Eidolon's girlfriend (whose trailname i perpertually forget -and since i don't have her permission to publish her real name here, i won't. i apologize for this in advance). we stamped up a storm! we drank coffee. 

eeyoremama, me, knottyknitter and E's gf

Then we hit the trail. We hit basically every major park in Anchorage(oh the wonders of the rental car) and what a blast that was! Lots of new flora and fauna and some seriously cool boxes. Alaska HSM has a bunch of cool boxes that are repositories for lots of carvers - neat stamps. Plus, there's a lot of fun places to hang out. One of the parks- i think it was Bicentennial - was having a fish boil of some kind and invited us (we declined - boxes you know).
In the lower 48, i have never been in a municipal park that warned you  you might get eaten by a bear. ever. (and we have bears in VT, just not huge ones that snack on humans). THAT was a new experience. This was heightened by boxing beside eeyoremama (my sister), who kept clutching my arm and saying loudly "WHAT WAS THAT??? ARE WE GONNA GET EATEN BY A BEAR??" "No, we are not going to get eaten by a bear." "HOW DO YOU KNOW??" "Well, for one, i'm pretty sure they can hear us coming for about six miles. . ."

So that was our first 2 days in Alaska. We managed to find 24 boxes in about 36 hours. Then we joined the actual tour group we paid for, which was through Adventures by Disney. It was fantastic. On the first day, we biked the Tony Knowles Coastal Path, and saw moose and eagles from Earthquake Park. Then we wandered around the Farmer's Market, and had a great salmon dinner in this restaurant on an old bridge. The next day, we went through the Native American Heritage Museum.
  flowers in downtown Anchorage -HUGE!!










View of Anchorage from Earthquake Park -here's where the cliff fell into the sea in 1968.


Then we headed up to Talkeetna and Denali. (i was on a bus and drove by a number of boxes on the way. it was sad, really. i could see places i had read about in clues and the bus driver just didn't want to stop. Really unreasonable if you ask me.) 
Talkeetna looks almost exactly like Cicely, Alaska, from Northern Exposure.
 Don't i look thrilled?

 It was pouring down rain the day we were there, but we were wandering around town like tourists anyway. 
Well - technically, we were supposed to be wandering around town like tourists. eeyoremama and i took off like shots and hoofed our way around town looking for the 3 boxes we had clues for (we missed one - i'm sorry). This is what we saw whilst stamping into the box:

 
 yes. that's a plane. taking off.  Welcome to Alaska. 

And last but not least, we found some things to play with on the trail. . . or i played with them. Just in case you wondered if we saw any other wildlife out there. 





  it's a tiggersaurus rex!!

And on that note, i will finish for today. there is definitely more, but since i am going to be posting so much more frequently, you can stay tuned for more Alaska pictures, AND for what i actually did today, Jan 24, 2013. It involved a Wolf, a Knitwit, and a Scorpia - and it was wonderful!!
Thanks to everyone who made today special!



1 comment:

  1. Read this today! What a wonderful trip we had- about time for another!❤

    ReplyDelete