Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

     I'm painfully aware that I haven't done a post here for several weeks. The fact of the matter is, I was on a vacation. I needed to go south to visit my mom and see how she was doing, so we turned it into a road trip of sorts. We flew into Boise and drove around Idaho for a few days, then across Utah and Wyoming to visit my daughter Camille. From there we went to Custer, South Dakota. Unfortunately, the elected officials whom we voted on to run this country are so incompetent and partisan that we were unable to visit one of the places that I had my heart set on visiting- Mt. Rushmore. It wasn't a total loss though. I thoroughly loved the Black Hills of South Dakota and we visited the Crazy Horse Monument and museum. We watched the seventh and eighth generation of Crazy Horse perform several native dances and it was a pretty impressive display. If you ever wonder about a great place to visit I would highly recommend Custer. The area is beautiful, ...

 For the better part of thirty seven years I've been blessed to live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. I know that every area has it's own brand of beauty, but for me, this area of Alaska, the Tongass National Forest has no equal. It has the best of all worlds for me- forests, streams, bays, mountains all things that I love. Because of the remoteness of the area and the difficulty of getting around, there isn't a large population inhabiting the surrounding towns. The whole 17,000,000 acres is only home to roughly 70,000 people, and those are spread out over a handful of towns up and down the Southeast Panhandle. At thirty some thousand souls, Juneau, the state capital, is the largest town. Some of the other towns with relatively large populations are Ketchikan, Sitka, Petersburg and Wrangell. Then we have Craig, Hydaburg, Tenekee, Angoon, Hoonah, Kake, Metlakatla, Thorne Bay, Gustavus, Elfin Cove and Pelican. I'm sure there are othe...

     I'm trying to do this blog post for the fourth time today. The first time I had something that I wanted, or at least I had a good start on it, when I hit the wrong key and got a message that asked me a question- do I want to do this or that. Hell, I don't know. The computer wanted a yes or no answer. What the heck, I had a 50/50 chance of getting it right, so I said yes. It wiped out all my work. Go figure. The next two tries I didn't like, so I wiped them out myself. So here I am, I've already eaten my supper and watched the last presidential debate. I've got my coffee here with me on the desk and I'm ready to go, but for reasons I can't comprehend, I'm typing faster than the words are showing up on the screen, so it's a hurry up and wait scenario. I feel like I'm back in the navy. Oh well, things could be worse.   The fellow in the top picture is my friend Bob Pinard. We met just over thirty-three years ago when he and his fa...