The Little Things

Good morning, my friends. We gave ourselves a chill day yesterday. After four weeks on the road, we're feeling as if our driving/sight-seeing time is pretty well balanced with our downtime. For this trip, I've intentionally worked in down days to give us time to rejuvenate and, if we're being honest, to spend time with the kitties so they don't spend too much time by themselves. Fortunately for them, our two laps are adequate to meet the needs of two cats. 

Sadie spent her morning soaking up the morning sunshine in her catio.

Smitty got in a short walk. There are a few too many people and woofies here for his taste, but we managed to get a few minutes outside during a lull in the activity.

Mike and I spent the day relaxing, reading, slow-stitching, and the other usual stuff one might do on a day off. Later in the afternoon, I got an itch to do some macro photography. Everything we've seen in Alaska has been on a grand scale. It's surprising how much there is to see when one turns one's gaze to the smaller things. Here's what I saw on my hunt.

I love these poppies. My phone tells me they are Iceland poppies, but they could also be corn poppies. 

I thought they were all orange, but I discovered some yellow ones on my walk.

I liked these little evergreen shoots...

With their tiny pinecones.

We've seen lots of bluebells at the rest areas and along the highways.

My phone tells me the next two images are Arctic raspberry.

I don't know what this is, but it's shape was interesting.

My phone tells me this is "sagittaria graminea" or grassy arrowhead.

Of course, the lowly dandelions.

And the shot I can never resist: Official  flower of the military brat.

So that's about it for the day. We'll be moving on today. I've made reservations ahead for our next four stops (about eleven days). It seems things are getting busier down the road, and I've had a little trouble finding places to stay. We're often managing with incomplete hook-ups. Without a sewer hook-up, we have to be careful how much water we run down a drain. Without a water hook-up, we have to remember to fill up before leaving a location. And without electricity, we can operate on an inverter. We have solar panels that charge our batteries and we can use a generator as a last resort. It's kind of noisy, and we'd prefer not to use it if we can get by without it. Also, Mike worked on it before leaving home to be sure it was in good working order. Nevertheless, it isn't running well and so we're avoiding it even more than we would ordinarily.

And all of that to say that our next stop will be Talkeetna. We'll have two days there. The closest camping spot I could get was near a state recreation area at Montana Creek. It's hard to know until we get there what the spot will be like. We're hoping for the best. We'll be about 15 miles from Talkeetna where we're staying...so...not too bad. Our plan is to head into town after we get set up and have dinner there this evening. We'll head up there again on Saturday. We want to meet their mayor, who is a cat, and we'll just spend some time walking around enjoying the place. Also, there's a quilt shop. I'm excited to see what Talkeetna has to offer its quilting community. 

Our drive will be short today, and so we'll hold off leaving Cantwell until check-out time, and that will have us arriving at the new spot at about the right time to check-in. Just now...it's time for breakfast. If  I miss a few days posting, know that it will be because we're lacking electricity. I can run the laptop on battery power, but at some point it has to be recharged. Also, our internet is sometimes too slow to be workable when we're parked under a canopy of trees. That's just an FYI...no need to worry if I miss a day here and there. Eventually I'll be back to tell you anything you might have missed.