Learning to Slow Down

Well - the title of this really should be: Forced to slow down. I had a couple of surgical procedures done on Tuesday of last week. I got pretty sick and my husband was very bossy about what I was and wasn't allowed to do at home. I am notoriously bad at "being sick" and almost always end up relapsing because I think I'm better before I am. John wasn't going to let that happen this time.

A week of doing nothing can start to wear at you - especially when you're used to running around with little down time. This past week was good for me. I learned that I am capable of sleeping during the day when my health requires it, and I also learned that, indeed, the world does not fall apart if chores have to go a few days without being done. Amazing, right?

Here's to good health, husbands who work hard and take good care of their wives, and to our God who heals.

Canada and Alaska vs. White Fang...part 3

The third and final (almost) post about our wonderful trip. Seriously, this was a great trip - and I didn't even have to fly anywhere!

Thursday morning after dealing with the bees, we headed up the Yukon Loop Highway to Dawson City. It got warmer and warmer as we drove and we estimated it to be in the 80s by the time we got to Dawson. We checked into a hotel (that's right folks, I got one night in a hotel) and hung out around the hotel going for a couple of walks and playing cards.

Friday morning we got up and headed to Claim #6 where John and Dan panned for gold and Stacey and I went for a walk. I felt like a new woman - clean hair two nights in a row and a bed to sleep in! YESSSSSSSSSSSS! We played around in the mining area for a few hours and then headed into town for, get this: a walking tour! YAY!

We walked around Dawson and noticed that some of the sites had a fancy stamp you could use. We asked about it and found out the the Yukon does a passport every summer and if you get at least 20 stamps you're eligible to win 5 ounces of gold. What? So we got a passport and got all the stamps we could in Dawson. I got to looking over the passport and realized that had we had it at the beginning of the summer (when we were driving all over Canada) I could have most of the stamps! What a bummer. I guess that means I'll have to do more traveling!

After our fun with stamps and walking tours, we headed to our campsite and played Frisbee and made dinner. We ended up staying up really late that night having a great conversation and slept like little rocks when we finally crawled in our tent.

Saturday morning we head to have a bit of a schedule. We were to meet the convoy across the Taylor Highway and we had to be there at 2:00 when it left. We headed out of Dawson on the ferry and drove on up the Top of the World Highway.

If you haven't yet traveled on the Top of the World...it's a must in Alaska. It's a great drive with lots of little hikes to stop at along the way. At the Y where the Top of the World meets the Taylor, we had to wait for the convoy. There were lots of blueberries around, so we spent our time picking berries until the convoy left.

Following the convoy was not so fun. It was too hot not to roll down the windows and dust came in whether you had them down or not...so the right side of my hair was so dirty with dust that the water from my shower on Sunday literally ran dirty. It was so gross. But I digress. The Taylor has been washed out with all the rain we've been getting (don't get me started) and you could see the areas where the road had sloughed off.

After the 1.5 hour drive on a dirt road behind 7 or so other cars, we made it to Chicken and continued on to Tok. We stopped at our same spot for camping that we stayed at on the first night and headed in Anchorage Sunday morning.

This was a great trip with wonderful pictures. I plan to post photos soon - when I get around to it - with all of the fun captions you're waiting for! :) John and I thoroughly enjoyed the company, the weather and the spots we visited.

Canada and Alaska vs. White Fang...Part 2

We spent Wednesday mostly doing walking tours of Skagway and Dyea (yes, for those of you hanging on the question "did she get eaten by the bear or was she able to thwart off an attack with her sledge hammer" I did make it through the night bear-attack-free). We didn't mean to spend so much time on the walking tours...but alas...we did.

It was pretty funny - we went to the townsite of Dyea (what we thought was the townsite anyway) and spent an hour or so wandering around trying to figure out the weird map and wondering what we were supposed to be looking at. We found a stream with spawning salmon and hung out there for a while looking at the totally fresh bear skat and fish parts that had obviously been flung to their resting places by bear. Probably a mom and her cub judging by the also fresh footprints.

Amazingly enough I wasn't feeling scared of these bears. Probably because it seemed they had plenty of fish to eat, and had little interest in us. That and there were tons of people around. We pushed through some forest after our time at the creek and found more fish parts...but still no city. We finally walked back to the trucks and Dan noticed that there was another path. Yes, two paths diverged in a wood - we took the one not to Dyea. So - we did the real walking tour of Dyea, which was very interesting, and headed into Skagway.

We had lunch in Skagway and began the walking tour through that little town. If you don't know much about the Klondike and the gold rush(es), I would encourage you to find out more. It's very interesting and since there are books written about it, I won't plagerize here.

Again we had great weather and no rain to speak of. Our drive out of Skagway was beautiful and we could see so much more now that the foggy mist had lifted. We drove on to Whitehorse, again stopping along the way when stuff interested us.

We got into Whitehorse later than we would have liked and checked out a couple of campgrounds. I don't know if it's just the Yukon Territory, or Canada in general, but they just don't do campgrounds like Alaska does. The two we went into near Whitehorse were the weirdest campgrounds I'd ever been to. We debated staying in one as we were all tired and ready to make camp, but of the four adults there, none of us felt comfortable staying - so onward we went. We decided to stay in a hotel that night and checked out one that looked inexpensive but not gross and learned that it was Discovery Days in the Yukon and if we could find a room, we'd be lucky.

Huh. We needed two rooms.

Onward ho - up the highway to find a place to camp. We headed toward Dawson City in the almost dark and found a great camping spot along the way. There were hardly any bugs and it was a beautiful clear night. The next morning we found out that we must have camped near a bee hive of some sort because they were out in masses. We ate breakfast and packed up quickly to head on up the Klondike Loop highway.

Canada and Alaska vs. White Fang...Part 1

WOW!

We just got back yesterday from a great camping trip across Alaska and Canada. We had a wonderful time camping with John's cousin and his family - they have a little boy. We hadn't done any traveling with them and you're never too sure how that's going to go (camping can be a bit stressful and we didn't have a solid itinerary) but it couldn't have gone smoother. Great company and fabulous weather capped off a fun adventure.

We had originally planned to drive up the Dempster Highway to Inuvik, Northwest Territory, Canada...but alas, the closing of the Taylor Highway caused us to do some rethinking. We regrouped once we hit Tok and realized we'd have to add at least two days to our travels if we went up the Dempster...so we decided to head to Skagway and hit the gold rush towns.

So - here is our route (this blog is mostly for the purposes of helping me remember in the future when I scrap it, I'll add our photos and more information as the week goes by)

We left last Sunday in the afternoon and drove up out as far as the Tok Cutoff. We found a great little gravel pit to stay the night in. To our surprise, we only got the tiniest bit of rain and by the morning our tent was dry. We weren't sure what to expect for Taylor Highway conditions at that point, so we decided to head up to Tok and find out what the road was like.

I love Tok - it's such a cute little town. It's like Delta Junction - feels like the midwest in the middle of Alaska. Does it get any better than that? As I mentioned earlier - Tok is where we made our decision to head on down the road to Skagway and then up to Dawson City. The weather was just perfect and we headed down the Alaska Highway toward Kluane Lake.

We did plenty of stopping along the way and took our time driving across the highway. It was great doing this drive during the day as I felt like I'd missed so much when we drove through in the dark in July. We checked out a campground or two when we got to the lake, and finally settled on a "make your own site" right on the lake. We all slept great that night with the sound of the lake lapping the shore and just a bit of wind lulling us to sleep.

Kluane Lake is amazing. It's 150 square miles on greenish blue lake that just goes on and on. Stacey and I had a great time walking along the shore and the boys played in the dirt with Matthew. Of course we saw these signs at one of the campgrounds we checked out and I got completely freaked out about bears. The sign said that the area we were camping in was full of soap berries which apparently bears really like. Naturally we squatted our tent down right on top of a whole crop of soapberries. UGH! We didn't see any sign of bear (at all at this spot) but I kept my eye out just the same. Why can't bears just plan to stay away from me in general?

Again we were blessed with great weather (though it was a tad chilly) and headed out the next morning for Skagway. The drive down into Skagway is like you're heading into Mordor or some other mythical place. When we drove down, the fog was sitting in and it was getting misty out. I thought for sure we'd have rain once we got into the valley by the water. But once again - I was wrong.

Skagway is a great little tourist town that totally caters to cruise ships. There were four docked when we got there Tuesday evening and four when we left Wednesday morning. We took our time checking out the little town on Tuesday and did a little bit of shopping. Then we headed out to check out the town site of Dyea (the famous Klondike city where the Chilkoot trail begins) and tried to look for a camping site along the less traveled road and came back empty handed.

When we were crossing the bridge to come back into Dyea, we noticed a guy stuck in the middle of the river with his truck buried deep in water. We had a fun 'hero moment' watching Dan pull the guy out with his wench. This of course leaves John with much wench envy (and I'm talking about the kind you mount on a bumper) so we'll probably have one before too long!

We finally settled on camping in a campground and didn't get to unpacking to stay until after 9:00. This south in Alaska, it was dark much earlier than we are used to and we hadn't anticipated that. As we were getting dinner ready (of course we had to have salmon that night) the camp host came around and gave us some information on the area. She also had to tell us (again we had salmon that night) that there had been many bears in the area and one had taken a swipe at a tent two nights before. great. just. great.

Of course this put me in hyper clean up mode and I was cloroxing everything down and looking for little bits of food. We stayed up late talking that night and I think it was because we were a bit scared of going into our tents. Dan had a few hammers for fossil hunting tucked into his truck, so we went to bed each holding a hammer. I had a hard time sleeping that night - every sound was a bear trying to get into my tent and every stick breaking was a bear coming. John fell right asleep and snored away. Sigh.

The Cracked Pot

A recent email forwarded to me had this sweet story:

An elderly Indian woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.

After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream, "I am ashamed of myself because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house."

The old woman smiled, "Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side? That's because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them. For two years, I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house."

Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it's the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding.

You've just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.
SO, to all of my cracked pot friends, have a great day and remember to smell the flowers on your side of the path!

Hopefully I just look young!

I called a dear friend today in my car on the way to Target. I didn't really want to go in the store while I was speaking with her, and my car was too hot to sit in while I talked, so I sat outside the store on a bench and talked with her.

While I was talking with her, a group of kids (10 or so) walked into Target just as I laughed at a story she was telling me. One of the boys in the group mocked my laughter and I looked up at the kids as they walked in. One of the girls that was in the group said "don't mind him, he doesn't know what he's saying" and I must have been glaring at them because then she says "and don't roll your eyes at me."

Wow - I am at least 15 years older than this group of kids, since when is it okay to mock an adult and then tell them not to roll your eyes at them? Seriously! Maybe being rude to your peers is acceptable, but it seems many of this younger group no longer have respect for adults. I didn't say anything to them, mainly because I was one the phone and couldn't think of anything to come back with that wasn't as rude as what they had done. Weird - I'm hoping that it's just because I look like I'm not much older than they are...but I doubt it as I'm fairly certain I look exactly as old as I am!

I'm going to have to start walking around teaching kids manners. Hmmmm.....where to start!?

Family Trip

John and I got home from our Family Adventure on Monday morning. We had a great time seeing my siblings and parents and several of my cousins and their kids.

We arrived in Denver on Wednesday morning, and my sister Beth and her three girls picked us up and drove us to Colorado Springs where my parents live. We spent the day trying to stay awake and getting dinner together for the little BBQ we had with my other sister Jeni and her boyfriend and his kids.

Here's John with my little niece Amanda - playing at my parent's house.


Thursday we had a good time hanging with the kids and Beth at Whit's End at FOTF and then doing some shopping to get ready for our Nebraska adventure!


Friday morning we got up early and jumped in the car for the eight hour trip to Nebraska. We met my brother and his little girls (YAY!) in Valentine and then headed over to my Grandma's house where we met a bunch of cousin's and even more of our cousin's kids.

We had such a great time catching up with family and floating on the Niobrara River. That was an adventure in itself...making it down the river with our drenched selves and surviving the wind, rain and cold that was the weather!

It's always good to see family and catch up - the trip was too short and we were exhausted on the plane ride home Sunday night.

Alyssa, me, Beth and Anna at Whit's End trying on the costumes.

Bailee being as cute as she can be

The freckle queens together again! Steph and Jayden