My new home

I've gotten some great pictures from around here. This is from Memorial Day when we got about an inch and a half of snow.

Some wildlife.

My house, on Memorial Day when the snow started.

A more recent photo. Things are still brown, but the leaves are trying to come out!

Made it!

I know, it's been awhile since I posted. The move took forever (see Mama's blog if you want to read about the road trip and see some pictures). My computer and most of my household stuff is still in storage. Who knows when I'll see it again. So I won't be blogging a whole lot this summer. But I was happy to see that there have been a few visitors. I've got some great pictures of wildlife... this place is crawling with it. Wolves, grizzlies, caribou, moose, Dall sheep, lynx, and little rodents. And people to. The hordes have arrived. I'll try to get some neat pictures up later.

I got to Anchorage on May 4th. We had a week of training, 40 hours of shooting, wrestling around on mats (aka defensive tactics, or officer response tactics, whatever fad name it's going by now), shooting tasers (alas, not at each other, it's against policy to be tased as a part of training), some lecture, and taking our yearly physical test. Once that week was over, I finally made it to the park.

Since then I've gotten my patrol truck. It's huge. Even at my height I've got to hop into it. We had more training. We went to the range to shoot rubber batons and bean bag rounds at bear targets. One of the park biologists lectured us on all kinds of wildlife related stuff. They're doing some neat critter studies here. We also had a day of EMS stuff. Our park's physician sponsor was here to help with that. I really like her and I think she's the perfect Doc for our park.

This last week was filled with a search and rescue class. I got to practice skills that I haven't done in years like tracking and map and compass stuff. It was really nice to get all excited about this kind of stuff again. I used to volunteer with SAR groups. ESAR back in high school and WSAR when I went to college. I did some rescues at Acadia and Mt. Rainier, but those were years ago and didn't involve the search part. SAR planning and ops are fun to and the skills are ones that I'd love to develop.

I feel like a real Ranger again!

Farewell to Boston

The guys at work prepared a wonderful send off for me last night. I knew they were having pizza, but I was surprised with another Cookie Puss Carvel ice cream cake. It was nice that so many people were there and I was happy they'd gone to so much trouble for my last day.

I wasn't expecting a card. I definitely wasn't expecting a beautiful book of Boston sights that everyone had signed. I'll love it always. They were so sweet to do so much for me.

The guys I work with make it tough to leave. I won't miss much about Boston, but I'll really miss them.

The route?

View Larger Map

I'm trying to plan the drive to Alaska. I don't have any stops along the Alcan because I know it takes about five days (since we have to stop at Liard Hotsprings). We'll pick up Dad in Seattle and I won't have to worry after that. He'll do most of the driving.

The route I've chosen is approximately 5,820 miles. Mama and I are stopping in Buffalo to see Great-great Aunt Betty (and Niagara falls). We'll head to Minneapolis to pick up my trekking stuff from Nepal (one of my fellow hikers was kind enough to tote my bag back to the US for me so I didn't have to drag my hiking gear all around India or try to ship it back). We'll stay a full day in Regina, SK to visit my Dutch relatives. My cousin Iris used to work for the RCMP as a matron, back when there were matrons. She's in her 70's and I want to meet her while I have the chance. From Regina it's 549 miles to Banff. We've got to stop in Banff. In another 597 miles we'll be in Seattle. We'll hopefully have a good, solid day and a half to visit my brother and sister-in-law, Laura, The White Ranger, and my Aunt Pam (who's already emailed me to ask that I stop by).

Looking at the miles we have to cover, this isn't going to be a very relaxing road trip.

Pictures

I'm slowly putting the pictures online. So far I've got all the India pictures and roughly half of the ones from Nepal.

There are a lot. Sometimes I wonder what I was trying to photograph. I'm sure some of you will wonder the same thing. Just think, there'd be a whole bunch more if I hadn't been distracted with my film camera as well. These are just the pictures I took with my digital.

http://picasaweb.google.com/Adventurous.Lizard

I'm Back!

Yep, I've returned from Nepal and India. I had a great time and I've started a new blog. Go to my profiles page to get to it. Or just go http://sevendaysinindia.blogspot.com

Flightseeing of Mt. Everest

We saw Mt. Everest on our second day in Nepal. It was a great flight. 45 minutes of fantastic views.

A word about 3rd world airports. I found my leatherman in my carry on bag... after I'd been through security. My bag had gone through the magnatometer and no one was watching the screen. At the Chitwan airport there isn't a magnatometer so they open the bags and dig through them. The lady didn't open all the pockets in my day pack. I walked through the metal detector in Kathmandu with my digital camera so I set it off. A lady patted me down, but never looked in my camera case (and during the pat down she barely touched me).