It is still raining. Rained all last night. The ground is soaked. I feel like I am in a jungle rain forest. I hope it just gets a bit clear tomorrow. We are going to pack up our trailer and store it on post while we are on our road trip. We both have appointments tomorrow with the dermatologist and are hoping that goes well. Then we will pack for our trip and leave early the next morning for Whittier. I'm looking forward to the ferry ride. Roxie unfortunately will have to remain inside the truck during the two hour voyage. Oh, A moose came galloping though the campground today and Roxie just about went through the window.

I've never seen so much rain.

Tom has left me at the PX so I can surf the net. He gets bored very quickly when I start surfing. I talked him into going back to our trailer for a nap. Speaking of the trailer, we paid $45 a month to store that thing last year in town. We found a place on post yesterday where we can store it for $10 a month. I had Tom sign up then and there for the whole year. $10 a month!! I'm trying to talk him into storing the truck there two. Problem is we are so far from the airport here - it would be a $40 charge to get a taxi out here - I'm still looking at options there.

We have been passing the time eating at different restaurants. There was a list of recommended places in the paper earlier this month and I cut it out. Let's see, we ate at McGinleys' Pub this evening in downtown Anchorage. I had Fried potato cakes with ham - like a sandwich. Tom had - um - don't remember -something to do with roast beef and potatoes. Had a delicious orange spiced chicken at the Panda across from Sears. We also ate at the Arctic Roadhouse last week - a little place famous for their delicious hamburgers. Yesterday we ate at La Mex, day before at Sorrentos - best lasagna I've ever had. Had great hamburgers for lunch one day at O'Malley's Pub. It has been fun eating out - but we have to stop - well, when we get to the end of the list....

Roxie lost a lot of weight at the kennel - we are trying our hardest to not feed her anything except dog food and we are doing really well.

We had maybe 10 minutes of sunshine yesterday!!!! It was beautiful.

We are planning a little road trip - We will drive to Whittier on Saturday, and then take the ferry to Valdez. I really wanted to go all the way to Cordova and then ferry back to Valdez - but we just don't have enough time and it is expensive. We will stay two nights in Valdez and get up early on the third day to travel to McCarthy. We'll stay in McCarthy two nights and then travel north to Tok. Remember that 60 mile dirt road from McCarthy to Chitina takes 3 hours at least. So, hoping we get to Tok. The next day we head to Dawson, Yukon Canada. (Assuming our passports arrive from GA before we leave.) We will be there for two days - splurging on a hotel since we will have been tenting the first part of the trip. (It costs over $90 for a tank of gas for the truck.) After Dawson, we head to Paxson where we will go straight west to Cantwell. It is a dirt road and I hope we have no problems. I'm thinking this trip will take 10 days. We are taking Roxie so it should be fun. We had mailed our air mattresses to ourselves from GA - and now want to find a automatic pump to blow them up. I'm not looking forward to this tenting - but we tented most of the way up two years ago and had loads of fun - so surely I can get back into the swing of things. I think I am a little more aware of the wildlife issues now - yikes! In fact a bear turned over our empty ice chest in the Elmendorf camping area this past week. I wanted to get a photo of the paw prints - but Tom washed it off too quickly. One guy had food in his ice chest and lost it all! He was in big trouble. You aren't supposed to keep any food outside cause the bears are attracted to it.

I finished watching the entire series of OZ. I am now watching The Shield from the beginning season. There's no difference in the behavior of the characters and the plots on these two shows - one just happens to be a prison and the other happens to be a police station. At least the language is not as bad on The Sheild. we are trying to rent only 99¢ movies this summer.

I'm ramlbing.

We are at the McKinley Princess Lodge for a couple of days. We are supposed to have a wonderful view of the South Face of Denali. However, all we can see are clouds. In fact, we've been to Denali Park about four times now, five for Tom, and we still haven't had a really good sighting of the mountain. A couple of times we saw it briefly through the clouds last year but I'm thinking this just isn't something that is going to be. We are however enjoying this lodge - so nice and spread out. All of the young folks working here must be flown in from other countries - lots of other countries. Nice kids.

On the train coming up we had one of these Dome cars. For years I have wanted to travel in one of these special train cars and it ended up being pretty nice. Tom and I were lucky to have a table all to ourselves.

We took Roxie to the kennel to stay while we were traveling this week. Now, remember that we had felt really bad leaving her there for a whole month while we were in Georgia. She did seem glad to see us when we returned. However, we were really feeling bad about taking her back so soon - even if it was only for a few nights. We drove up the driveway to the kennel, Roxie got a whiff and went nuts. She flew into the front seat on top of Tom and about crawled out the window to get to the door. We were a little surprised. But the worst was when we got inside - her pulling us with all her might. She was so glad to see the boarding woman - just gave all of her attention to that woman - not even looking at us again - her tail wagging like mad. Tom was actually a little despondent in the car afterwards - saying that we were too old to have a young dog like Roxie. What can I say - we have to make life more exciting for her. I suspect it is all the dog socialization she gets there. They get exercized three hours a day in a big place with other dogs so I suspect that is what Roxie remembered. I'm sure other dogs are much more fun for her than me and Tom.

I see a break in the clouds - have to go.

Here's our Roxy romping through the Daisies on base. It has been raining for several days. Tomorrow we get on one of those Dome rail cars and travel up to Talkeetna. The hotel supposedly has a great view of the South Face of Denali. Hope we get a clear day. It will be nice to stay in a hotel for a couple of days.

That's Charlie and Liz above with Tom.

We are now back in Anchorage (Elmendorf – camping) after a month in Georgia. We really needed to go home and check on our house – pulling back ivy from the brick and cutting back shrubs, cleaning the accumulated dust out of the house, getting rid of many unneeded possessions, etc. Most important was the new $6000 heat pump we had installed. We also got new ducts and all that stuff. So the first 11 days we were home in GA we had no air – none. We had some huge fans going and that helped – but one day the temp was 102 degrees. It was unreal. We had to go over to my brother’s house to spend the night twice and several times to cool off. When they finished that heat pump installation and turned that air on at 4:30 pm the house cooled immediately and we had the best nights sleep ever.

Roxy stayed in the kennel here in Anchorage for the month. Was she glad to see us! She’s really slimmed down, stopped jumping on us and hasn’t gotten back her habitual begging moans yet. Why do other people have success training our dog and keeping her fit – but yet all we do is make her boss!

It was so wonderful seeing our family and friends. We spent three days up in Amicolola Falls in a lovely mountain cottage with my college roommate and her husband. Terry and Dee had visited us in Alaska last summer. We had such fun talking about our children and retirement and school libraries. Also had a great time seeing my friend from Decatur, Mary, who visited us last summer in Alaska. Lots going on with Mary – she was on her way to Maine to spend a week at a remote place on the coast bird watching. She had received a grant that paid her expenses. Mary is the one who got Tom interested in birds.

We also got down to Columbus to see my dad’s sister, Lucile. We saw my Aunt Janie in Anderson SC and Tom and Charlie made it down to Augusta to see his bother and sister.

Honestly we are glad to be back. I think we will head back to Chevak around the 1st of August to get a few things done in the library before school starts. I’m very excited about the new year and the 1:1 Apple Computer program. Every child in grades 3 – 12 will receive a computer!

Wow, has April been busy! Taxes, Career Day, Student of the Month display, National School Library Month activities, and the annual inventory. I am in the middle of inventory now using my new Alexandria program - the easiest to use library software in the entire world and I am also using my new wireless scanner. LIVE scanning and no downloading! It is truly remarkable. My tech specialist wants to use my program to track school assets he likes it so well. He wouldn't touch that Follett!

The photo at the top was taken on April 22nd. It was 10 degrees and snowing. Tom is ready for some warm weather, a movie theater, and a real grocery store. Me, I could stay out here all summer if it weren't for the mosquitos.

The library is just really blossoming. We have over 18,000 items - up from 10,000 when I arrived. Folks love the bean bags - all sorts of activities take place in here cause it is so comfy amd appealing. We are averaging 40 to 50 kids every time at Extended Hours. They play board games, computer games, draw and color, listen to music, and sometimes they get a book and read! Lots of different activities take place on our 20 iMacs and 20 iBooks - iMovie, surfing, college applications and scholarships, tax preparation for the adults, Kid Pix, Print Shop, World Book, downloading and sharing photos with friends, emailing, there is no end...I remember when I first arrived and couldn't figure out a way to give them free time - supervised and some control at the same time. And now, we have 13 hours a week after school. I have a "List" of kids who can't come in any more because of going to inappropriate sites and chatting. They got several warnings, but did not believe I would really put them on the "List". They will get another chance in late May to start participating again with the summer hours and may cooperate better. I have Apple Remote Desktop which enables me to see (right at my desktop) what every single child is doing on the computer. It is wonderful. Okay, back to my inventory.

This past weekend a teacher friend of ours went MuskOx hunting with some men from Chevak. There are laws determining who can hunt and when you can hunt. So this was quite an opportunity for Stewart. The 12 year old boy that went with them was on his first hunt. I'm not sure but I believe tickets are involved and each person gets just one. The photos show the herd in the way off distance, and then a few up close of the MuskOxen they actually killed. The hide of the animal with the fur is worth about three grand.

Well, supposedly these are Sundogs - which means we are going to have some pretty bad weather. We'll see. It has been so cold but oh so clear the past few days. The faculty had a pot luck dinner for Easter celebration on Saturday night and then the kids had an Easter Egg hunt in the library. Pretty nice. I felt bad that the kids did not have Easter Egg baskets and such - but you know, they didn't miss a beat and had a wonderful time.

Not much is going on - except trudging through snow everywhere. The maintenance man, Leo, was clearing snow so we could at least walk to school and the front loader (which is a huge piece of equipment - the tire's diameter is at least 5 feet) got stuck and the axel is broken and it is right inside the 15 foot wide pathway to the housing, barely enough room left for a snow machine to get through. This is too much. We might be crawling over it before long.
The photos I am posting today are of the Head Start Kids. They come to the library once a week for story hour and it takes them twice as long to get ready and come over hear as it does for the storytime. Then they have to do it all over again going back. Photo #1 the kids are loading up and they are trying to crawl out of the sled -one little fella is making it out. Photo #2 - about to take off. Photo #3 they are taking off back to their Head Start building. They are so darling. We have to surround them with chairs and pillows during story time or else they run off like little puppies.

We’ve been visiting our friend Carmen in Barrow Alaska the last several days and are planning on heading back to Chevak tonight. I am mainly posting some photos because anything I say cannot do this place and experience justice.

For the first time the weather was clear enough and not too cold in Chevak so that I was actually able to take some photos while we waited for the plane to arrive. That yellow boxlike thing is what Tom had to ride in to the airport, while I was fortunate enough to actually ride the snow machine. That’s our plane in the background – one of the larger ones we have landing here. I guess it carries around a dozen people. The flight to Bethel was uneventful, thank goodness. We then flew to Anchorage, from there to Fairbanks, spent time shopping and mailing supplies back to Chevak and attending a library conference. We stayed at the Princess Lodge – very nice. Mary and Charlie, if you are reading this, I of course have lost your phone number and could not remember the last name! We will be back to Fairbanks – it is such a beautiful place.

We enjoyed tooling around Ft. Wainright – I loved the commissary and PX – smaller than Elmendorf and therefore quicker shopping. Stayed at the Princess Lodge in Fairbanks. We ordered out one night and then ate in the bar the next night – best hamburger I’ve had in years. I’ve posted a photo of a street at Wainright – as you can see it is quite cold and snow is really blowing. Sometimes the snow was blowing so fast and furious that we could not see the road – but it blows away quickly.

We enjoyed seeing the ice carvings around town and at the park and got a few photos. When we got out at the park we realized how cold it was and that we were not going to stay very long. We went fast forward through the whole thing snapping photos and shivering. I enjoyed it though – the ice carvings were beautiful. Here I am in a large igloo carving. Here is an amateur ice carver getting a start on a block of ice. If you look you can see the model of the end product in the bottom right of the photo – looks like a Madonna statue.


Here’s Tom with a wolf outside the Princess lodge.

Okay to Barrow we go…. Carmen is our friend from Chevak, our next door neighbor in teacher housing, our Dancing With the Stars co-watcher, and our tea drinking buddy. We visited her and her husband in McCarthy this past summer and were anxious to see her and Barrow! The photo of the car is interesting – Carmen’s friend took us on a tour of Barrow in that vehicle. People don’t even cut their motors off when they go shopping because the motor will freeze. You can see his plug-in hanging down from the front of the car – vehicles have be plugged up to a heater or they stop starting. Also notice the windsheild – the rocks in the summer pop up from the road and hit the car windows – a large percentage of cars have broken windshields. I have posted photos of us at various photo op spots in Barrow.


The large flat place behind me in the photo is of course the Arctic Ocean.

This is the football field with the snack bar sheds at the back.

That is Carmen in front of her school – the schools are all real showplaces – huge facilities with indoor playgrounds, imported tiles from Italy, etc.

Tom and I went shopping at the AC Store – quite a treat – they have snowmobiles and four wheelers in the aisles among the food items.



Here are two photos of me and Tom standing at – or close to Point Barrow. You can only go so far, the road stops and we were in a car. Carmen loaned me her sealskin hat.



And, a snowy owl!