West Coast - East Coast

Beck and I recently took a little time off from work to do a bit of family and friend visiting down south. We did not have much time in any one spot so sorry to all the good folks we missed along the way..... next time hopefully.

We bounced around from Washington state to Washington D.C. then down to North Carolina and back. Talk about head spinning visits, we managed to fit allot in in a short time. We were in the small town of Ronoke Rapids, N.C. where my Grandparents live, for New Year's eve. My maternal Grandmother (Gran) is a bit of a social butterfly and asked if we would accompany her to a dance with live music at the local American Legion to bring in the new year. It sounded like fun and something we would not normally do on our own volition so we went. There was allot of dancing to a cover band playing everything from Patsy Cline to Rockabilly. I had a chance to dance with Gran and Becky had the chance to dance with a man three times her age and half her height, and of course we danced together the rest of the time. Out of all the places we've been on New Year's eve, ringing in 2010 will go down in our memory banks as a notable one. My Dad and Agnes were in town so they joined us for the festivities.
After N.C. we had one full day in D.C. before heading back to the sub-Arctic. We had hoped to have lunch with Barack and Michelle but they were busy so we took a tour of the museums instead. To save you some time reading I'll just hit the D.C. highlights: 1)letting Becky pilot the F-16 flight simulator at the Air and Space Museum (spent much of the time upside down), 2)the Holocaust museum was highly emotional and exceptionally well designed... a must see if you can only go to one museum and 3)riding the Metro everywhere and watching people get transported through tunnels underneath their city like mole rats. We are back home now. The days are getting longer and the temperatures are comfortable above normal.

One Score and Fifteen Years Ago

One score and fifteen years ago a lovely bouncing baby girl was born on December 20th to the Ploof Clan of Minnesota. To celebrate the special day this year Beck and I along with Mother and Skeet took a little trip into the Alaska Range a few hours south of Fairbanks. I reserved the public use cabin at Fielding Lake well in advance of our departure. Food was packed and gear organized and loaded into the car the night before. The morning we were to leave Fairbanks we woke to an obnoxious -32F temperature outside. Damn! That deflated our dream of skiing into the cabin. Even if we were to dress well enough to hide from the cold there would be no assurance that our vehicles would start after sitting in the those kinds of temperatures overnight. We still needed a get away for the day and since everything was already packed we decided to met Mother and Skeet in town and caravan down as far as Delta Junction, two hours south... maybe the weather would change, but unlikely. The drive was so beautiful that even though the temperature was still around -30F in Delta Junction along with a howling wind that was not present in Fairbanks, we decided to keep driving south toward the trail head of the cabin. As we approached the mountains the wind started to blow so hard I had to really concentrate to keep the truck from blowing around. At this point I figured there was no way we would be skiing into the cabin but what the hell, the drive through the snowy mountains was spell binding. An hour later we arrived at the trail head, climbed out of our vehicles and were blown away (figuratively this time, not literally). The wind had stopped and the temperature had risen to around zero Fahrenheit. That is down right cozy in these parts this time of year. It was simply amazing how much the weather had changed while driving through the mountains. It was perfect for a ski into the cabin so we did.

The ski in was perfect. Once we got the fire going in the cabin and warmed up a bit we proceeded to relax for the evening. The dogs ran wild and free outside chasing their shadows while the people stayed inside by the fire playing board games and cooking dinner. All was well for the 35th anniversary of Becky's birth. The next morning we woke to a beautiful sunrise and slowly made the return journey back to Fairbanks.