Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  As often happens in Alaska, when the skies get clear, winds start to blow. This past Friday night, the wind started blowing harder than normal. The weather channel had mentioned winds in the thirty five to forty five knot range, with possible gusts to eighty. It seemed like they were being a bit extreme, but I know from experience that such hurricane force winds are certainly possible, especially in the winter. As the wind roared outside my window all Friday night, I could hear the glass flexing and branches hitting the side of the house, as well as the trees trying to resist the force of the wind, bending and snapping back in an endless game of stretching to their limits. I spent a restless night, waking frequently, expecting at any moment to see the night light in the master bathroom dark, and the appliances in the house completely still. About six-thirty in the morning on Saturday, Jan said that we'd lost power. I was already awake in anticipation of such an event. I dressed a...

    I guess I'm old fashioned. I still address Christmas cards to friends, near and far. I know that a lot of people have stopped sending them altogether, and I can't really blame them. The cost of just one first class stamp is around 78 cents if I recall. I bought four books of them the other day. The post office that we use has a very limited supply of stamps. You can choose one design for Christmas or go with the old standard, the American flag. I could order them on-line from USPS and enjoy a variety of scenes, but the sap suckers charge me the postage to send the stamps, so I go with whatever this post office has.   It's nice to get any kind of greeting in the form of an email I suppose, but getting a card, something you can look at again and again without fear of erasing it is kind of nice. To me it also shows that someone cares enough to take the time to write a little something and sit down and address the card, and it's nice to know that they think enough of...

  I'm sure most of you have heard of a bender, you know, a wild drinking spree? Well, lately I've been on a spender. Money seems to be running through my fingers like water. For example, Jan and I were with our youngest daughter, Autumn, a few weeks ago. Jan wanted to buy me a recliner for Christmas, which is kind of early, but as it turned out, they didn't have the color I wanted in stock so it was good we ordered it when we did. On the way home I happened to mention that I needed an air compressor. The tires on the garden cart, the two wheel dolly and the snow blower were all in desperate need of air. I tried to move a huge pot of flowers from the front of the house to the side with the two wheel cart and just about got a hernia. The tires were so flat it was like not having wheels at all. Autumn checked on her phone and discovered that Lowes had compressors on sale for $99.00 so I picked one up that evening. What they don't tell you is that they don't come with a...

      This will be the final installment of  my documentary, Peeing Across America. No doubt volumes could be written about our time on the road, and the many stops we made along the way to empty our full bladders, but I don't want to bore the reading audience, so it's best to shake it off, wipe it out and move on. After watching the sun set on the Grand Canyon, we made our way to the Red Feather Lodge where we spent the night. It was kind of a two part lodging facility, something I've never seen before. They had a regular hotel, and a smaller, less fancy, but still fairly expensive motel on the property. Since we were only spending one night and didn't want to finance the next property they wanted to build, we opted for the motel. It was OK. Not great, but it runs in my mind that the shower was good and it did have air conditioning, which frankly was pretty noisy, but I didn't complain. The occupant in the bed next to me was snoring pretty soundly, and when the air...

    As we continued on our journey towards the Grand Canyon, we moved along through the great state of Utah, peeing as we went.  We stopped to take a leak near an old corral. Extra, extra, read all about it, Liz takes a whiz in Virgin. We made it to Springdale, before we stopped again. I can't remember how far away it was, but probably not that far. Surprisingly, I didn't have to go. The girls declared I had a bladder the size of a watermelon, which of course we know isn't true. More like the size of a large grape. Even though there are things like Google Maps and regular maps on the internet, somehow, we figured that if we went down to Zion National Park, close to the town of Hurricane, we could meander up to Arches near Moab in a few hours. Of course we were wrong, not surprisingly. Instead of returning the way we had come, we spent two nights in Hurricane. The girls hiked for the better part of a day in Zion, and later we all took the car to a different part of the par...

  For those who might be concerned that I'm giving up on my documentary- Peeing Across America, let me assure you, I haven't written the last of that yet. I just thought I should share a little bit of what's happening in my life while I'm alone at the house. Near the end of our trip south, we dropped Jan off in Denver to visit her sister in Wisconsin. It seemed to make sense, rather than going all the way back to Wasilla and then having to leave from Anchorage. In retrospect, I wonder if it wouldn't have been cheaper to have gotten a round trip ticket, but that's a moot point, water under the bridge, money already spent, whatever. When I returned to my house, I had the whole thing to myself, which isn't that big of a deal, considering that just Jan and I live here. While there are certain benefits about being alone, like watching what  I want to on TV or not having to share the computer, there are a few minor downfalls too. Things such as having to do all th...