I have followers??

I was just reading Amanda's new post and checked up on my blog. She's so much better at this than I am and has much more interesting experiences.. anyway I'm thrilled to find out that I now actually have a few followers and thought they might like to know how I'm doing.

Not that I live an exciting life, but I enjoy it.

Tomorrow Mark and I are both off and we are going to Tubac for the first time. We've heard that it's a good place to shop for local art and thought we'd get a start on Christmas shopping. Since we live far away from our families we have to shop early and get it into the mail.

I'm slowly learning my new job at Wal-mart pharmacy and as I get better at the job I enjoy it more. It's so nice to finally feel like I kind of know what I'm doing. People think you're just counting pills.. it's a lot more complicated. But that's enough about work.

We are slowly getting the new house in order. It's mostly furnished now and most of the artwork is on the walls. We really like our new house and the neighborhood it's in. If anyone's interested.. Madera Highlands, Sahuarita Arizona and there are three houses being built right next to us.. so you could come and be our new neighbors. The one right next to us is almost finished. the neighborhood is amazingly quiet and all the neighbors are really nice. There are a lot of kids and a nice mix of races and ages. And we have a nice park with a place for dogs to run off leash, pool, tennis courts... We see lots of people out in the mornings and evenings walking or riding bikes. We are next door to the largest irrigated pecan orchard in the US 6000 acres! www.pecanstore.com It's a nice view. And we also have a view of the mountians.

I'm taking another online class from berklee school of music berkleemusic.com . This one's Pro Tools 101. And on that note - I have homework to do.

Talk to you later,
Nina

More pictures

This is the teardrop trailer and my Ford Escape. Amanda and Kim will be riding in the car with all of Mark's African Violets and a few other house plants. And the cages where Toftee and Darla will be spending the nights.

I've decided that I don't like formating pictures to go in the center because I can't wrap the text around them... This is an Eagle that Mark, Amanda and I spoted a few days before we left Alaska while walking on the beach below our house.

I'm still in the laundry mat at the campground in Fort Nelson. Maybe I didin't tell you that before.. anyway it's taking forever to dry the one load of clothes that I had to do. The washer here didn't do a good job getting the excess water out of the clothes. Toftee got sick in the truck the day before yesterday and washing these jeans has been a priority for me even though she didn't get much on them.

I spent some of the time checking email and writing replies to a couple of them. But when I tried to send them.. they didn't go. So if you emailed and didn't get a response... now you know why.

I'm on my 4th time through the dryer. The first trip was 2 loonies (Canadian dollar coins) and lasted 30 minutes. The last two times were 4 american quarters and lasted 15 minutes each. The clothes are about where they should have been coming out of the wash. But I have no more quarters left so this has to be it. Wonder where I'm going to put all these wet towels and my wet jeans?

I'm using a different dryer this time. Here's hoping it works.

One last photo... some radom signs at the "signpost forest" at Watson Lake. Another must see. Now to put in some links just because I can.

The dryer is finished. And no they aren't dry. But I have to go anyway. See you in Sahuarita or on the web.

Pictures

Tonight we are in Fort Nelson. We spent last night at Liard Springs and visited the springs this morning after breakfast. This is our third trip on the Alaska highway and we always like to stop at Liard Springs.

According to the Milepost and other sources (i.e. other travelers) the 200 miles south of Liard Springs are the hardest. Going North you can use the springs as a reward for those miles. But we are heading south. We didn't make a lot of miles today but theywere hard ones and we got a late start.

We thought we'd reward ourselves tonight with a stay in a hotel. But it wasn't to be. After finding the Super 8 advertised on a billboard coming into town and parking both rigs.. we found out that not only was that hotel full but so were all the other hotels in town. In fact we were lucky to get a campsite here at Westend Campground. Somthing to do with the "oil companies changeover?"? Whatever that is.

Out of Wasilla/Knik

Well we didn't get far today, but the hardest part of any trip is just getting out of town. The first step. We are stopped for the night in Glen Allen. About 150 miles.

Darla (the cat) and I are holed up in the car away from the mosquitos. Mark is taking care of the dog and the girls are in the showers. Darla is enjoying a little time out of her box. She looks VERY annoyed. But that's pretty close to her usual expression anyway. Maybe just a little more annoyed this time. She's laying on the drivers side on the floor with her eyes closed. Actually right now she looks content. She might even be happy when Mark comes with her food.

Toftee traveled pretty well today. As soon as the truck starts moving she curls up and goes to sleep.

I have pictures and will post them later. Right now the camera is in my pocket but the computer case is outside on the picnic table and the sync cable is in there. Too many mosquitos I'm not going out.

Nina

U-haul

The time is near. There's a U-haul in the driveway and we're busy packing. Time is short so this will be short too.

Mark will be driving the U-haul and our daughter and her friend will be driving my Ford Escape pulling the tear drop trailer. Mark and I will sleep in the trailer and the girls will share a tent. Our dog and cat will bed down in their carriers inside the car.

So much to do. I can't say I'm really a fan of packing your own stuff. I much prefer to have professionals do it. But it's not in the budget this time. So back to work.

Nina

Saying Goodbye - Walk on the beach

Our house in Alaska is right on the beach. But about 120' straight up. One of the things on my list as we look at moving back to Arizona was to make another trip down to the beach.



That doesn't sound like much, but really it's not somthing I wanted to do by myself. The trail leading down to the beach is REALLY steep. There are strong tides and wild animals (read Bears) that add to the danger of going alone. An injury of any kind would make getting back up the trail really hard. Although the motivation of a bear ...



This is a picture I took from the banks of Fish Creek located about 20 minutes walk down the beach. It's looking toward Knik arm and the Chugach mountians across the water. You can almost see the snow caped mountains in the picture. I had to shrink it to fit here - sorry.



Spring has arrived here and all the trees are budding and as you can see in the picture the grass is sprouting up. The temperature was about 55. Perfect and sunny.



It was a little muddy.


Next Monday I'm going hiking on the Gold Mint trail in Hatchers Pass. It's a trail that I've not been on. It should be a lot of fun and beautiful. Hopefully I'll get some good pictures and post them here. Shouldn't be as muddy since it's in the mountians.

Nina

Guess I should update..

It's late and I'm tired after a long day at work, but I noticed that it's been a while since I updated this. Hopefully later I'll replace this post with one that's better written.

We got the news yesterday that our loan is going to go through for the house we're buying in Sahuarita AZ. So the good news is that now we have a place to live lined up. Now if Mark could sell his dog truck.. then he'd have enough money to buy a truck to drive once we get to Arizona. The plan is to leave his old truck up here for us to drive when we're visiting Alaska.

I had a transfer all worked out with Walmart, but then they realized that I wouldn't be there within 30 days. So I have to wait until just 30 days before we arrive to work that out. So still a couple of weeks from now.

The snow is mostly gone and you can see the brown grass. The road is still really muddy but gets better every day. It was almost impassable for a while as the snow melted and refroze.

The moose seem to have gone back into the mountains. We haven't seen any for a while. They come down here to the lower elevations when the snow in the mountians gets too deep.

Last Tuesday I took my first bike ride since moving back up here. It was great. I think I probably rode about 10 miles. The weather was pretty much perfect. About 45 degrees and sunny.

Moose video

I'm trying to upload some video that I shot about a week ago in our driveway.

I've spent the last couple of weeks filling in in the Pharmacy at Walmart and put in lots of overtime so haven't had time to work on my blog. This is a really good thing since my most recent paycheck took a real hit from some unpaid time off and then me being sick.

Volcano

Mt. Redoubt errupted today. Here's a link to the most up to date activity.
Alaska Volcano Observatory
So far we've not had any volcanic ash fall our way, but if the wind changes we could have some. In that event we've taken precautions as directed here.
http://www.ak-prepared.com/Poster_Contest_Files/Ash_Alert.pdf

This is me getting ready to ski Crevasse Moraine agian today. This was only my second time and tragically might be the last time for a long time. The warmer temperatures are taking a toll on the snow conditions. It was a little icy, but not bad. And I didn't actually fall down even one time. Although there were a couple of times..

When we went last week we followed the groomer and the trails were in really great shape. Today it looked like it'd been a while since the groomer had been through. The tracks had some holes in them and were partially filled with snow. Since I didn't fall.. maybe this was a good thing for me??

Since I remembered to take the camera this time I thought you might enjoy a few other pictures.

I took the map along just in case and I got it out quite often. They also had thoughtfully posted maps at almost all of the junctions of the trails with a handy little icon that said "you are here".

This is a REALLY nice trail system. And another nice feature for me is a well stocked restroom at the trail head. I have a picture of that too, but really .. if you've seen one you've seen them all.

On my way off the trail I came upon some kind of strange green trail marker. On closer inspection it turned out to be a green bag used for poop scooping. Someone must have dropped it. Being a good trail citizen I picked it up and placed it here.

I hope I get to go again before the snow melts. But if not.. it was fun while it lasted. And I hope to be back in Alaska or somwhere else where I can ski again someday.

Skiing at Crevasse Moraine

I actually wrote this last week, but didn't get to post it until today..

I wanted to blog about my experience today (that would be March 17) skiing but frustratingly enough for some reason neither blogspot nor yahoo will open up for me. My home page works fine though. Maybe this is a sign tthat it's time for bed since I do have to be at work tomorrow.

Just some things that stand out. First I didn't break a leg. Thank goodness and thank God. That would have made it rough to be at work tomorrow and I missed a couple of days last week being sick. Speaking of which it's really great not to be sick anymore.

My performance on the trail wasn't stellar and I was really embarrased by my lack of stamina. Some of which I put down to being sick last week and not exercising and eating right durring that time. Now that I'm not sick I'll get back to my routine of regular exercise. My goal in that area is to burn off at least 300 calories a day - which I was doing pretty well in..

I fell several times and no I wasn't counting. But none of the falls were serious. Snow is not actually soft - as it might apear to be at times but still I didn't hurt myself.

It turns out that a lot of the techniques I've used before as a beginner/Intermediate (at times) level downhill skiier work fine for cross country skiing. And that the bindings on my new boots and skiis are far superior to the ones the movers broke for me when we moved to Cottonwood AZ 5 years ago. So in actuality they really did me a favor in breaking them. That forced me to buy new skis this year and since I had new skis I might as well get new bindngs and therefore new boots to boot. I did however manage to get by with my "old" poles.

I wanted to post some pictures but forgot to bring a camera.. but here's a web site with some great pictures of the trails. http://www.solsticelight.com/aks/gallery/journal/alaska/030301/index.htm

Mark and Stacie from the Mat-Su ski club were nice enough to meet me there and show me the trails and basic techniques.

Tear Drop trailer - not a moose

I was looking for a picture of the Moose that frequently come around our house. A couple of days ago I actually saw 9 (NINE) moose on my way to work.

Anyway.. not finding that on the computer I found this picture which I thought you might like. It's a picture of our Teardrop trailer which we used when we drove the Alcan NORTH last summer.

We'll be using it again this summer headed SOUTH.

It is very small but comfortable. It has a (wall to wall) almost double bed inside and a "chuck wagon" kitchen in the back. That is you open up a hatch (the whole back side) and inside is a countertop and cabinets.

It has a battery and battery charger in the front storage area which run lights and a fan inside the trailer. There is also an electrical hookup that will run these things in addition to a regular outlet inside.

I can't beleive that anyone would read this.. but

Well.. I'm here at the computer to check on my daughter's blog "amanda goes east" and came accross this opportunity to express myself in my very own blog. I have to say that my "blog" on myspace hasn't generated much interest. But maybe this one will be different.

I titled my blog "South from Alaska" because I now live in Knik Alaska (about 45 miles from Anchorage) and will soon be driving the Alcan south for the first time. I've now driven it twice headed north but on my other move south we took the ferry. The Alaska Marine Highway. I highly recomend it although I personaly was sick for the part where we crossed the Gulf of Alaska.

I work at Walmart and so I'm there almost every day. Which is why I can tell you for sure that the Wasilla Walmart has a display of "The Milepost" which they recently set up. I've been thinking that I should get one for my upcoming trip south.

Why move away from Alaska you ask? Good question. The typical answer - work.

Mark, my husband, will be taking a church in Sahuarita AZ this June.

We will miss Alaska but we also love Arizona and we're looking forward to making new friends there and getting to know the church we will be serving there. We know that God has great plans for us and for Santa Cruz UMC.

See you later.