Snowmen in September

Good morning, my friends. I gave myself an easy day yesterday. There were a few small tasks to take care of, and I did a Bowflex workout. Also, I pureed the watermelon given to us by our CSA farmers. I'll make some watermelon sorbet from that later today. I've made sorbet from all kinds of fruit, but watermelon is my favorite.

Since I was taking a lazy day, I didn't make it into the sewing room until late in the day. Smitty was my helper cat.

As a reminder, my goal was to make this block...the 9th and final block for the Merry, Merry Snowmen project.

Before anything can happen on these, I must first make the background. This one involved some piecing. I needed to applique the peeking snowmen for two sections.

And then I also needed three square-in-a-square sections.

Since I'm working from my stash for this project, it can sometimes take a while to choose fabrics that look similar to those used in the pattern. A lot of the time spent on this project is simply selecting fabrics. When it was all pieced together, it looked like this:

Yeah...my picture is crooked. The block is straight.

It was close to dinner time by then, and so I stopped there. Today I should have plenty of time to finish fusing the applique. Top-stitching might take longer. 

Today I have one housekeeping chore on the list, and I'll get in a walk on the treadmill before I get back to my sewing. Oh yes, and I must churn the sorbet. I'm making good progress on June's block for A Year in the Garden, and so it's probably a good time to trace out the next one for Le Jardin. Here are the blocks I have for that project so far. These are fun to stitch.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I might have to redo the one on the right. The drawing I used to trace the design onto fabric was cut off at the bottom, and so I simply turned it around and drew it like the top. As you can see, the one on the left had the lower two lines closer to the 15¢ price. The one on the right should have been done the same way. They stitch up pretty quickly, and so I'll decide as I go along. 

The promised rain hasn't arrived yet, but it has been much cooler during the day. I'm not convinced we're finished with the hot weather yet. We'll enjoy the cooler temperatures while they last. 

Earlier this morning, I tried to schedule appointments for flu and COVID boosters. If you've been paying attention to the news then you probably know our whackadoodle Secretary of Health and Human Services is going to make America healthy again by denying vaccines to the populace. We've always gone to one of our local grocery stores for vaccines. When I tried to schedule at our usual place, the COVID vaccine was not one of the choices available. Instead, I went to a local pharmacy. There, I could schedule both vaccines, but I was informed we'd need prescriptions for the COVID vaccine. It's my understanding that anyone over 65 is eligible without a prescription, but I've also read that providers are being extra cautious in the administration of vaccines because of these changes. Now, I have a message pending with our doctor asking for prescriptions to get the vaccine. I'm hoping that will come through because neither of us has had COVID, and it's become our personal crusade to avoid it for the rest of our lives. It would be so helpful if our HHS secretary shared our quest to keep our immunizations up-to-date. 

When the orange turd won the election last year, my first thought and fear was the appointment of Idiot Man to be secretary of HHS. It has been every bit as frightful as expected. It's not surprising that his own throat is trying to keep him from speaking. I only bring this up if you, like me, would like to get vaccinated against this winter's viruses. Plan ahead, my friends. It's more difficult than it should be.

Anchorage, Alaska

Good morning, my friends, and Happy Fourth of July to all who celebrate. We find ourselves in Anchorage this morning.

We had about 150 miles to drive yesterday. We're backtracking over roads we've already traveled. We skipped by Anchorage on our way south. We wanted to see Seward and Homer before the Fourth. Apparently, fisher people show up in droves over the holiday, and we hoped to avoid that. Both places were already crowded, and so I'm glad we missed the worst of it.

So all of that to say I didn't take a lot of pictures along our route. Of course, the mountains are always present pretty much everywhere we've been on this trip. We drove through a large area of burn scar yesterday.

It served to remind us that there are a number of wildfires burning in Alaska right now. We've been lucky so far, passing through the fire areas ahead of the fires. I'm watching the reports carefully. There aren't many roads to choose from when traveling across the state, and so it's important to keep track of where the road closures are. Wherever there were open meadows, we scanned the area looking for wildlife. We didn't see any.

When we reached Anchorage, we drove past our hometown grocery store. Of course, we headed there right away to get a few things we'd missed on our last shopping trip.

For one thing, we needed some vanilla ice cream because I was in the mood to bake a pie. I brought some of my homemade pie fillings from home. This is a sweet cherry pie for two, made with cherries from our trees. It made me a little homesick thinking the cherries will be ripe for picking any day now. We've told the neighbors to pick all they want.

When the pie was finished, we headed over to one of my must-do bucket list items for Anchorage...the Potter Marsh boardwalk trail. Here's a little information about it.

We took along some insect repellant, but we didn't really need it. It was windy on the trail, and that kept the mosquitos at bay.

And what a marvelous resource this is for the locals. It extends about half a mile, heading off in two directions.

We saw a moose munching on the grass along the way.

There was a duck in the water nearby. I tried to get his picture, but it didn't turn out. I was shooting into the sun, and so it was only in silhouette when I looked at it. We also noticed this little bird inside one of the many birdhouses posted along the trail.

We walked the full length of the trail. Standing at the far end, you can see where it turns a corner and heads off in the other direction at the top of the image below.

Our shadow selves were happy to be there. We enjoyed this easy trail so much, we'll probably visit again before we leave Anchorage.

When we headed back to our Jeep, I noticed yet more hogweed growing in the parking lot. Let me just say I've appreciated those of you who warned me off of the hogweed. Because it's growing virtually everywhere we've been, I did a little research about the hogweed. As it turns out, what we're seeing is the "common" hogweed." It is harmless. It is less tall than the poisonous "giant" hogweed. What we've seen grows to about waist height in most places. Giant hogweed can grow to 20 feet.

Also, the leaves are different. Common hogweed has a rounded leaf leaf like the one below:

Whereas, "giant" hogweed has a more spiky leaf.

With appreciation to those of you who warned me about the hogweed, so far, so good. Now that I know the difference, I'm watching for it. All we've seen is the benign common hogweed so far, but it's good to be able to tell one from the other.

We have five days in Anchorage (four now). There are a couple of hikes we want to check out. Our next destination was to be Chugach State Park. As it turns out, it's only about a half hour drive from where we are, and so we'll probably visit that on a day trip. There is a botanical garden here, and certain restaurants come recommended. So we'll have plenty to keep us busy for the next several days. As for today, we haven't made up our minds yet. You'll have to check in tomorrow if you want to know how we spent our first full day in Anchorage.

If you're like me, you're finding it difficult to feel very celebratory this 4th of July. If you're protesting today, please stay safe. I'm still optimistic we'll come out the other side of this, and I truly believe the sycophants in Congress have more to fear from their constituencies than they do from the cretin in the Whitehouse. Nevertheless, I applaud those of you out there making good trouble. 

Delta Junction, Alaska

Good morning, my friends. We hit the end of the road today...not the end of the trip. We reached the end of the Alcan Highway. Like I said, there was a place for an obligatory selfie. Happily, the marker is located at the Visitor Center in Delta Junction. A very nice man greeted us there and offered to take our picture.

But let's just back up to the beginning of our day. Of course, we enjoyed more stunning views of the mountains. The scenery never gets old.

The first thing on our list of notable things was this:

There was nothing visible from the road other than the sign, but this is what our Milepost told us was just down the road apiece.

Next up, we crossed the Robertson River.

Something to notice about the rivers in today's drive is the color. They are mostly dry, and that white color is from volcanic ash.

Next up was the tiny town of Dot Lake. There was a lake here as well, but I missed the shot.

There are only a few structures in Dot Lake.

Here's what our Milepost tells us about this

Traveling on...we came to this area of the landscape. There's nothing particularly notable about it except that it is in a depressed region of the terrain. The road was about ten feet above the surface you see in the image.

Here's what our Milepost said about this.

Okay, and then the biggest bridge we crossed yesterday was this one.

There was a parking area off the road and below the bridge where we could get a good look at it. Ya gotta think a bridge this large spans a larger river than what's running here now. Also, notice the white color again.

Here's what we learned about the bridge.

As I walked out to take that shot, I spotted this little pretty. I believe I'm seeing this growing along the roadsides. We're also seeing plenty of dandelions.

My phone tells me this is Shrubby Cinquefoil.

After taking that earlier shot, we drove across the bridge.

From there, we were just a little way from our final destination of Delta Junction.

It's the end of the road.

We stopped off at the visitor center where we had our picture taken, and then we strolled around a little reading informational signs about the Alaska pipeline. We will see that as we make our way to Fairbanks today. Sorry for the damage to this sign. 

Here's what that looks like. It's about five feet tall.

Beside it was this exhibit showing the differing diameters of the pipe.

And here's Mike with some of his besties. I'm telling you, the mosquitos and Mike...they're tight. Mosquitos love him. (Can't say I blame them.) Also, you should know that this photo is to scale.

So there was a quilt shop in town. Hard to believe, but there you go. Of course, I visited. I'll tell you about it in a separate post.

Also, I was trying to use some sandwich rolls on this week's menu, but discovered they'd gone to the dark side as we were leaving yesterday. So I headed to the grocery store while I was out. As I was leaving the parking lot of the grocery store, I caught this incredible mountain view. Honestly...I can't get over the mountains, and I know we're just getting started. 

Driving back to the RV, I could see more mountains off in the distance.

So we'll leave Delta Junction this morning. We're on our way to Fairbanks. We'll spend three days there, and we have some activities planned for ourselves. There is a quilt shop in Fairbanks, but I've decided not to go to this one. The quilt shop will be closed Sunday and Monday, so I would have to go today. Looking at the news, we've learned there will be No Kings protests going on in Fairbanks today. As a newcomer to the city, I'd rather not get in the middle of that. Besides, having visited a quilt shop yesterday, it seems less appealing than it might have otherwise.

So I can't let No Kings Day get away from me without saying something about it. The recent news out of Los Angeles has been very disheartening. I was born in California, and lived a good part of my childhood there. Also, my dad was a 32-year veteran of the Marine Corps. Those two factors make what's happening there feel especially personal. If we were home in Oregon, we'd be attending a protest today. Since we aren't, and since we'll be driving a good part of the day, we'll miss this important event. And all of this to say that if you are protesting, please be safe. I found this image online, and there is some good advice here:

So that's all I have for you for now. Be safe my friends. If I can't be with you marching and carrying a sign, know that I'll be with you in spirit.