Autumn, School and Badlands

Hola!
Just looking at the calendar and I want to eek in another post before we lose September by the wayside :)

SCHOOL. is back in session! Which means something for 4 of the 5 of us here in Massachusetts.

David is into his last semester at BYU (??!? what? yes, he is graduating soon!).

Teresa also started her semester at BYU. Both have different apartments than last year or semester.

David says bye

USC INTRO. Kara started classes at USC (University of Southern California), located right in Los Angeles. Frank and I flew out with her for move-in day. It was a lot of organized chaos, with vans and SUVs pulling up and unloading out onto the curbside or grass.

(And of course her apartment was on the 3rd floor, and there was no elevator in the building, haha! :0 )

roommate Julia and Kara

We met her wonderful roommate Julia, and we also met Julia's family. 7 people there to help her move in! Kara has been to football games and other fun stuff, and is getting used to her very full course load.

Move-in day

Convocation: they had all the
freshmen file in by college, wearing
gowns (no caps)

TUTORING. I have started tutoring again, English Language Learnersmy same 2 elementary schools in Weston, one town over from Wayland. It's a short commute and the kids are excited to be there. Can you believe I have been doing this for 10 years? This begins my 11th school year.

NORTHERN ADVENTURES. Frank and I, still chipping away at our "Visit 50 States Lists," got to visit North and South Dakota at the beginning of the month!

We flew into Bismarck of North Dakota and drove west...there is one main highway across the state, and we drove it. At the western edge we visited "Theodore Roosevelt National Park" and hiked that evening some. This is North Dakota's portion of "badlands." Very unique rock and sand formations!


The next day it rained. A lot. So we started the day inside, at a "Dakota Proud" kind of fair, with local artists and jams and jellies and lots of wares for sale. Friendly people and a nice distraction from the rain.

Then a drive through TRNat'lPark, stepping out periodically to take raindrop-dodging photos of
Prairie Dogs
Bighorn Sheep

Do we look cold? We're cold :0

blocking traffic!
(The bison were VERY concerned about our
convenience and welfare...)

coming out for dinner after the rain

Bison
Deer
Coyotes

We drove south to...South Dakota! South Dakota has

Mt Rushmore
Crazy Horse Monument
Badlands National Park

BIGGEST FACES EVER. We learned some about the history of Mt. Rushmore, and the context of events in our country that were going on during its construction/creation.

George by himself

squinting into the sun

Mt Rushmore is pretty amazing art--I can't imagine how someone could just blast away some rock from the mountain, then start carving and get the proportions correct! Crazy.

Which leads us to Crazy Horse monument, another gargantuan feat! Crazy Horse was an influential Lakota war leader in the Badlands area. He fought to preserve the traditional way of life of the Lakota people.

This area includes an entire complex, run by the family of the original artist who passed away in 1982. They started a college just for Native Americans, and the sculpture continues to be worked upon.

The whole sculpture will be Crazy Horse's head, arm pointing into the distance, torso, and the front half of his horse. It's pretty amazing but 70 years after the artist started, they only have his face done. I don't know if they will ever finish it.


BADLANDS. This is a very unique and beautiful national park! Of course by going in September, we avoided major crowds, and the wicked heat that prevails in July and August.

We had some mist at the beginning of the day, then later the sun came out and it was a completely different view. Great photo ops!

If you are still awake through this whole long summary, hopefully you can see that South Dakota really does have some interesting sights! We went to "check off" the state, but I'm glad we had the excuse to go. National Parks are still on my list of "Great uses of taxpayer money." I'm so glad Theodore Roosevelt's priorities included preserving these great areas of U.S. land when he was president!

Happy October! :)
Kari

Glaciers, Dogs and Salmon

Hello, Family!

I can't believe it's not only August, but that we are into the LAST WEEK of August!!?

The month has been a blur...a positive blur, but a blur nonetheless.

Last entry, Frank and I visited West Virginia and Kentucky, on our quest for "visiting 50 states by age 50" (or therabouts). At the end of that trip, Frank was down to having 5 more states left to visit, and I was down to 9.

hiking in the sunshine (glacier behind us)

The 2nd week of August, we took a loooong weekend and visited Alaska for the 1st time!

Frank and I planned this trip, and the kids stayed at home and worked. Kara only had a few more days left in her internship, and David has been working outdoors with the Dept of Public Works for the last few weeks. He mows a lot. The city's ride mower is more fun than our little push mower, tho... :) :) :)

We flew to Seattle first, then into Anchorage. It's not a huge airport, but it's nicely decorated. Lots of fish and wildlife displayed.

A common sight for people who live here

ANCHORAGE. We landed in Anchorage at some ridiculously late time, like 1:00 in the morning or something. Next, we took a shuttle to our hotel near the airport.

Be my friend! :)

Off to see the sled dogs

so many birds!

the "4th of July" glacier
where the sled dogs spend the summer

think about getting up...NAH!

blurry photo but puffins have that
distinctive orange beak

Next day, took a shuttle back to the airport and picked up a car. Walked around Anchorage a little, had lunch at a yummy Crepe place: Alaska Crepery!

church building in Seward

Then we drove south. We ultimately went to a little port town a couple of hours south of Anchorage, called Seward. Stopped at a couple of picture-taking spots, next to the water with grand mountain backdrops.

SEWARD. We got to Seward and checked in to our motel. You know, the kind where you park right in front of the door to your room.

KAYAK MORNING. First outing of the day, we drove to the kayak rental place! It's on Kenai Fjords National Park, and we started out in a 2-person kayak to take in the views. It was a beautiful morning. We had sun and promises of temps in the 70s.

The guides had us park the boats and we hiked some. We saw eagles, and lots of salmon. Cool salmon observations at the end of the trip.

DOG SLEDDING AFTERNOON. That afternoon we took a helicopter up to the "4th of July Glacier," to meet the dogs! They train for the Iditarod race all summer up on the glacier (actually they train all year, but in the winter they come down from the glacier and train in the regular snow in town).

There were 22 dogs in this group, all of them mutts, and all owned/bred by the same family. I say "mutts" even tho to run in the Iditarod, they need to be mostly Siberian Husky or Malamute for keeping warm. Otherwise they could have some golden retriever for demeanor, greyhound for speed, or a variety of other dog species mixed in.

They were all so excited to be hooked up to the sleds! We drove the sleds, with first 4 dogs, then 1/2 way through they gave us another 2 dogs.

In the REAL race, they can start with 14 dogs. Then by the end of the grueling 2-week race, the minimum they can have is 5 dogs.

What an amazing world they all live in, that I did not even know existed. Glaciers, dogs, and more dogs.

CRUISE AROUND the FJORDS. We had a 5-hour cruise the next day, visiting more glaciers and looking for wildlife. We did see:

Sea Otters
various gulls
Sea Lions
Eagles

Otters really do float on their backs and eat

Jumping Fish
Puffins

Then the last day, Sunday, we went to the branch for Sacrament Meeting in the morning. Lots of visitors--they never know how many tourists there will be, coming to church :) Some people who live there, drive an hour one way for church.

HIKING TO THE SALMON. A highlight for me on Sunday afternoon was hiking to Russian River Falls. We caught the end of the salmon run season, and people said that was a good place to watch.

One of them made it!

It's kind of sad, because so many salmon try to jump the waterfall and they hit rocks and bounce back into the pool. They use the momentum of the falling water into the pool, to curve and JUMP up again! And sometimes they make it and you cheer for them.

Other times they actually swim upstream, UP the little waterfall.  They 'hop' up a few inches, and swim-and-wiggle-and turn-and-wag-back-and-forth SO wildly, they make progress upward and into the next pool.

3 puffins

I don't know how this species of fish has survived. Really. The process is exhausting, just to watch!

luck of the shutter: I caught TWO
in one picture!

All in all, it was a whirlwind but a very nice taste of Alaska. It was light most of the day, making it fun to still be out and about until 10:30 and the sun is just barely going down. One man at church said it is hard in the winter, not so much because of the cold but because it's so dark most of the time.

We also lucked out because we had sunshine every day. Usually it rains and they have a lot of clouds. We definitely want to return!

Have a great week, Kari

Visiting New Places

Hello, All!
I am going through pictures, and thought of putting some on the blog. Somehow half the summer has zipped on by! Today is definitely in the "summer" category, with temps in the 90s and the humidity is almost that high. Phew!

GOAL FOR THE YEAR. Frank turned 50 this year, and he is following the example of some of our friends who had a "50 by 50" goal. Visiting all 50 states by the time you are 50 years old.

Of course, his birthday was already in March, and he still had a few left, so we are modifying the goal. "50 states by the end of the year I TURN 50," maybe it should say...? He had 6 states left, and I had 11.

WV AND KY. To help us with that goal, last weekend we went to West Virginia (for me) and Kentucky, a state neither of us had visited before. It was a fun long weekend!

yep that's our plane, and Frank's sleeve

Ha. That is, after rescheduling when our first flight was cancelled because of thunderstorms. It bumped us a day so the trip was shortened, so that was lame.

Women Veterans monument

But we flew in to West Virginia, this tiny airport.

CAPITOL BUILDING. Then we drove to Charleston, the capital of W.V. Their capitol building is being renovated so we got a cool shot of us in front of scaffolding :D

Charleston also has some really touching and elaborate war memorials. Vietnam, WWI, WWII, Women Veterans. It was awesome.

Then we drove to Kentucky--we started with Mammoth Caves, a national park that is very cool.

dome in the back is wrapped in white

HORSE RACING. Then back up to Louisville, where they hold the Kentucky Derby...that was also a fun tour and museum. It's a pretty big deal, a 2-week festival at the beginning of each May. It ends with the horse race.

All horses who race must be 3 years old.

All horses age to the next year on January 1, no matter what their actual birthday is. So they aim to have horses born early in the year, to give them more time to grow, mature, and train.

race track

LINCOLN's BIRTHPLACE. Can't forget about this cool national monument! Lincoln is someone I would like to meet and talk to in the next life. Such a pivotal part he played in the shaping of our country.

steps leading up to the monument...

inside is a replica of the cabin where
Abe Lincoln was born

SLUGGER MUSEUM. And it's also home of the Louisville Slugger, where you can tour the manufacturing plant and see the museum and history. Family-owned for 120 years! Very cool.

nope we don't know these kids but you can
see the size of the glove!

I just looked it up, tho, and they were bought out 4 years ago by Wilson Sporting Goods, which is actually Chinese-owned. (Of course it is)...they didn't include THAT in the tour... haha!

before they are carved into bats

"Bat Vault" -- these are famous
or something

120 FOOT TALL BAT!

Anyway they have a gargantuan baseball bat in front of the museum.

We had a nice stay at a Bed & Breakfast in Louisville, and went to church in one of their congregations there. Flew home, so Frank could turn around and go to Denver for work the next day.

Kids update:
We get to see Teresa in a week! She's coming to visit. Her job in Salt Lake will go through August, and she's taking a few days to come visit us in humid Massachusetts :)

David finished his internship downtown and now has a "seasonal" job for a few weeks, with the Wayland Department of Public Works. Basically landscaping, on town projects for the 5 (or 6?) more weeks left before school starts the end of August. His LAST semester at BYU is approaching!

Kara will work through August too, same job. This week she had her orientation at USC, a 2-day overnight program where they stayed in dorms for 1 night, and also met with counselors to figure out class schedules.

I get to spend 3 days at camp this week, helping cook meals for 180 youth! It's a big group since we combined stakes.

Have a great week!
Kari

Sunshine and Blue Waters

Hello!
Well it is June; not sure how that happened, but it did :)

lighthouse at the end of
our UTV tour, Aruba

I can't NOT write about our family vacation, even tho it was a little while ago now. We took the family on a cruise vacation, and returned almost 4 weeks ago (gasp!)

*Reminder: if you click on the photos they show up bigger. On a pc, anyway. Don't know about on a phone.

We chose the week right after BYU finals, since David and Teresa had tests to take, finishing up the semester. One day AFTER their last test, they flew home to arrive at midnight, then we flew to Panama the very next morning! A whirlwind for them, but we all managed.

In a nutshell, I got my wish, of sun, sun, sun. Temps in the 80s and glorious sun :) :) :) Stop in Miami, then on to Panama City. We stayed the first night in a hotel in Panama, then we drove to the other side of the country to get on the ship in Colon, Panama.

David's bag stayed in our layover stop, Miami. Bummer! And blah. It took many phone calls and pleadings and very complicated arrangements, since we were actually not staying in Panama, at that point--we were leaving in 12 hours to then be at sea for a week. They had to put the bag on another, local airline and were going to attempt delivering it at our first cruise stop, the next day, in Cartegena...Bottom line was "success," (yippee!) but not without lots of drama/damaged bag anyway leading up to it.

CARTEGENA. The first stop after the ship left Panama, was Cartegena, Colombia. We disembarked and checked out all kinds of animals native to the area. They had an outdoor zoo, of sorts, with colorful parrots, anteaters, lots of birds and other small mammals.

Monkeys kind of roamed around. They're like stray cats, over there. The bummer was, they ate trash. Like goats! Not just tasting it. They totally ate the trash.

Teresa had just finished her orinthology class, so she was on "bird watch!" She had all kinds of bird facts and behaviors to share with us throughout the trip.

Then we took a "highlights tour" of Cartegena, with castles and markets and the touristy statue I had found on tripadvisor..."Los Zapatos Viejos," or the 'Old Shoes.'

tricky posing for these, since the metal of the statue
was pretty hot...the sacrifices we make :)

Had to take some token touristy pictures. (This was while Frank was on the phone, trying to get David's bag delivered to the ship. He missed most of Cartegena, boo :( -- but the bag did get delivered.)

Back on the ship! Next stop, the island of Curacao.

Snorkel Success photo! All faces can be seen,
all looking in the correct general direction.
(Photographer is also underwater, slightly
disoriented: not exactly sure what's
fitting into the viewfinder at that second)

JET SKI ON THE OCEAN. Our outing on Curacao was jet skis! I have never

Fun photo op:
Teresa sitting in the "R"
David on top of 1st "A"
Kara in the 2nd "C"
Frank in the 2nd "A"

done this on open ocean waves.

Teresa dives down to the ship

The waves were choppy and it was wild and exhilarating, and I thought I might actually die -- haha, kidding kind of!

Our guides took us around the island so we were on the wavy part for maybe 20 minutes.

Then inland a little, to calmer bays. Check out interesting houses and hear stories of the history of the island.

Then we got to snorkel over a sunken ship, in about 15 feet of water--not too deep, so visibility was good.

Next stop, Bonaire.

SCUBA AND SNORKEL PARADISE.

Iguana friend crossing the road

didn't take the camera on the actual dive.
But this is walking back: here is the
WATER we were diving/snorkeling in!

Here was where we had booked a morning with a dive shop; David, Frank and I (Kari) are scuba certified, and Teresa and Kara did the Discover Scuba course. The reef is pretty close to the shore, so we walked out and they call this "shore diving." No boat necessary, to take you out to the reef.

It was a sunny day with good visibility, and even when you are in warm waters, a wet suit makes a dive comfortable. This part of the island was protected from wind and big waves, so it was calm. It reminded me how much I love the ocean, and why I like diving and snorkeling so much.

bandanas a MUST for all the DUST :)

Next stop, Aruba.

UTV TOUR OF THE ISLAND.
Aruba is actually a lot of desert, and rocky or lava-like coastline. We took UTVs (2 people per vehicle) on a bumpy, dusty tour of the island. We stopped at one point for some nice coastline photos. We also had suits on under our clothes so we could climb down into the "lava cave"
area, and jump in.

Teresa takes the plunge

Each day was sunny. Our New England sun-deprived bodies were not quite sure what to do with all that Vitamin D! It was awesome.

yep, it's windy

Kara climbs down into the cave

We got back to Panama and rented a car, to then check in at our airbnb house and spend some time sightseeing Panama.

large ship, coming through

THE CANAL. Of course we had to visit the Panama Canal! I had no idea, really, what a feat of engineering this amazing place is. The museum showed how so many countries contributed money, equipment, labor...thousands of workers building the locks. And to maintain it...wow, a strict schedule of cleaning and deep-cleaning while not in use, closing some parts, periodically, to give it proper maintenance so it will continue to function for decades to come.


HIKING. We also found Soberania National Park, and hiked one morning there. Panama has even more wildlife than Costa Rica.

We saw birds (Teresa had us stop and listen, at one point: "do you hear that? It's a toucan"),
little tiny frogs, leaf cutter ants

leaf cutter ants

marching across the road and up a tree, lots of lizards and we even startled a 6-foot long snake who bolted as soon as we came around the bend.

There was also a sloth sanctuary closeby. They rescue sloths who are abandoned or injured. We toured the sloth sanctuary, butterfly pavillion, and frog center.

Kara and the butterfly: eating :)

shhhh...sloth sleeping

visiting the Panama City temple

The place we stayed (a man had 2 homes on his acreage) was just a stone's throw from our church building. We could see the steeple from the kitchen window. The man was super-nice, and he had a 12-year-old son. We told him we would be going to church Sunday morning there, and he said, "Oh, you're Mormons? I've met missionaries as they walk around the neighborhood. The Sister missionaries helped my son with his English lessons. My wife keeps telling me we should visit church there, and we never have gone." We invited him to church with us, and he came :) He is Jewish, and his wife is Christian. It was a fun connection to make with him.

Whew! Well there you have it in a nutshell.
I won't write the volumes that I could, on the fiasco of getting back...

*Frightening thunderstorm weather in Miami that ended up getting our flight canceled, along with thousands of other passengers on dozens of flights.

*At 2:30 a.m., still in the airport, we finally booked flights back for 2 days later, leaving from the OTHER side of the state! Ha. (laugh or cry: take your pick)

*We did drive to David and Diane's for one night (Frank's parents), so that was one happy unexpected visit they got from some grandkids.

All in all a glorious break. I am still so happy we went, and we had sun and warmth. (And did I mention sun? and that it was warm?)

Back to reality, but still floating from the vacation!

All 3 kids have started their internships/jobs at this point. And yes they are all getting paid, best news :) David and Kara take the train (public commuter transportation) into Boston for theirs, and Teresa is back in the Salt Lake area for the summer.

Frank is in Barcelona at the moment for work, and I have a little over 2 weeks left of the school year, to tutor my kidlets at the elementary schools.

Have a great week! :)
Kari