Where I've Been

Good Grief, but it's been a very long time since I posted. Far too long. But I've been wonderfully busy.

Winter came to Coolin, Idaho and Priest Lake:

So we headed out from here:

To Canada, to visit with Lithus' family. The visit itself was lovely. The drive back to the US was technically, lovely, but a little more harrowing.

There really is road under there

See? Technically lovely.

But we made it, in spite of ourselves and the weather. To the new gig, with the new company

With a stop in Leavenworth, Washington, first:

Doesn't the whole place look like Santa threw up on it, in the very best way???? Yeah, I fell a little in love with Leavenworth. Apparently, Octoberfest is even better. Road trip in the future!

And then Christmas in Nevada and CaliforniaAnd now the adventure continues in Colville, Washington, because this is the last place we expected to be. Ain't it great?

Home Construction by Aviators

Friends of ours, BossMan and LadyBoss, are building a house out on Big Lake, about 1 1/2 hours outside of Anchorage. The spot they've picked out is really beautiful, up on the top of the hill, overlooking the lake. They've been planning it all winter, prepping the property and bringing in the parts and pieces, getting ready for spring and building season.

Last week, BossMan asked Lithus if he would come out Saturday and help get everything up the hill because the spring thaw was coming about three weeks early this year. The lake was melting, which is fine ~ unless the parts of your house are scattered on it like so many legos on a living room floor. So, with the help of a third line pilot, BossMan and Lithus cleared the lake of the house. It looked like this:




The trailer they've been staging out of.



BossLady is at the end of their pier. Yes, we are all standing on lake.





What the view will be eventually



The ice road across the lake. Yes, I'm driving our firebird. On a lake.

As I told Lithus on the drive home, while it might have just been another day for those guys, for the rest of the world, it was a really cool day.

Frozen Fog

Oh, how I wish I had my camera. It is, however, in Spain with Lithus right now. Instead, I will have to try to describe frozen fog. I won't do it justice. You've been warned.

Interestingly enough, I don't have huge amounts of experience with really dense fog. Dense like 19th c. London Jack the Ripper dense fog. Boston, while it gets a little foggy occasionally, has nothing on 19th century London. The Portland/Vancouver area got it every now and then ~ but we could always see the street lights at least. There was one particular night when I was driving from New Jersey to Suffolk, VA at two in the morning where the fog was impressively heavy. And that's really about it. Until we got to Anchorage.

Anchorage gets fog. Fog as in you can't see out the windows fog. As in the lights get swallowed. As in please-God-don't-let-me-have-woken-up-in-a-Stephen-King-novel fog.

Friday night, such a fog rolled in. Yesterday morning, the world was covered in frozen fog. I've seen ice. I've seen snow. I've seen hail. Frozen fog isn't any of those things. If you've seen frozen fog, you'll know what I mean. If you haven't, you'll have to trust me.

The world is painted a flat white. It's not glittery with ice. It's not reflective, like snow. It's a flat white. And once you get close enough to see it, you discover each individual, miniscule round kernel, packed together like the world's tightest, smallest and whitest bunch of grapes.

It is stunningly, breathtakingly beautiful ~ and unlike anything I've ever seen before.

We officially need two cameras.