Christmas

Merry Christmas to Tyler from Jen and Jeff!

Me and some glacier ice

the Alaskan

This photo is from the Alaskan's website. It's very cute from the front, and has awesome woodwork inside. The Alaskan hotel opened in 1913. It's been renovated, but the back entrance reveals the underpinnings, I guess you could say.

This first photo is of the parking lot, with the stairways down to the back entrance that I used. The hotel is the grayish building on the right.

These are the awesome and relatively safe-feeling stairs that access an apartment building and the hotel. They were more intimidating when I first arrived at 10pm on Thursday, but no big deal in the daylight. And once I got the code to open the door figured out.

I liked the Alaskan-- because it's right downtown, easy to walk all over. It's a little loud at night-- but just a dull roar. It only kept me up when I woke up at 2am on Friday night, and by 2:40 they were closing up the bar and the band had stopped playing.

I'm thinking I will either visit the Prospector next time or go back to the lovely Silverbow.

Juneau, the first day

These photos are on Facebook, but Mom can't get to Facebook. Yet. This is the view from the tram up to Mt Roberts. You can see the cruise ship in town, it dwarfs the city.

Here's me at the top of the peak!

This is my obligatory glacier pic. Mendenhall was looking good-- with lots of ice chunks in the river this year. More than I usually have seen.

Fourth photo down is a photo of GLACIER ice. Iphone didn't really do it justice, but it was filled with tiny cracks and crystalline looking edges.
Last photo is the walkway up to Thunder Mountain HS. I like the way the walkway echoes the idea of a river leading up to the school. They are doing a yearbook at this school this year, which is great! I was worried, but there are two enthusiastic girls who will do a good job.

Juneau Visit

I ended my day in the Juneau City Museum. A small spot, but with quite a lot of displays and content. I watched a video about the origins of the city-- I didn't realize Douglas, across the Channel, was the largest city first and rivaled Juneau for many years. There was a cool display about basketball in Juneau and Douglas, when there were two high schools. The display was primarily created from yearbook photos.

I was too busy yesterday to visit the Capitol Building-- next time. I wandered by on my way to the museum.

I did visit the Alaskan Brewery, and sampled some IPA. The old guys there that were doing the same said I had good taste. That's right!

Monroe Fair

Posted via web from jenngreg's posterous

Checking out the cows

At the Evergreen State Fair

We really are next door to the press box!

It's 7-3 so far.

Aquasox game

In the press box with the Walter family!

Car commercial

I'm on a tour of south lake union, looking at sustainable urbanism
projects. We saw a Lexus car commercial being filmed.

New kitty!!

She doesn't have a name yet, but she is sweet and nice! She came from
Paws this afternoon. She was a stray, picked up near 112th St in
Everett.

Guts of the Year

I went to the closing ceremonies of the Get Your Guts in Gear charity
bike ride with Marko today. These riders biked 213 miles in support of
crohn's, colitis and other irritable bowel diseases. Marko passed a
bill for restroom access this year in Oly. Here he is welcoming the
riders back- he received an award for having the "Guts of the Year."
Also, we saw Peter Z. He biked with his daughter.

Homeagain

The kids are winging their way back to Seattle. See you soon!

Catch totals

Anne - a silver and a pink
Jen- a king and a silver
Dad- 2 King's, a silver, couple throwbacks, lost 3 others.

Fisher girl

2nd fish in the boat

A big king! 7:24am

Beach visit

We walked down to the beach after dinner. Anne got all dressed up to
ward off the wind. It wasn't too cold. Afterwards, we hung out in our
cute house and watched tv, and of course made our sandwiches for lunch
tomorrow! Everything is packed, and it's time to get some sleep.

Anne hanging out in the living room

Westport welcome

We are staying at an adorable rental house of the captain of our boat.
There was a framed photo on the wall in the kitchen- Dad's big catch!
This place is super cute, with three bedrooms, great woodsy vacation
decor. We are relaxing before dinner.

Checking out the casino

Tree

Our big tree is keeping our picnic table dry. It's awesome. And it's
raining a lot! And thundering.

Baker Dam

I don't know if this will work, but here's a video of us going across
the dam.

Beautiful Lyman City Hall

Flyover

Fly-In

Some of th planes we saw- there were lots more!

Campin' Trip

We have a cozy two bedroom cabin near Burlington. It's actually only a mile and a half from the Skagit Valley Casino and the Skagit Speedway.

Today Anne and Alex trekked up past Deming on 542, and we toured Concrete. We saw a bunch of planes at the Fly-In, and a fly over of some small planes.  There were some sweet classic cars there as well. The farmers market had the same selection of crafts as we saw last year.

Jeff and I wandered on our way back through Hamilton and Lyman. They both feature taverns, a post office and Lyman had a sweet town hall that Joe M would be jealous of.

Our trip over the Baker Dam happened when I suggested we check out Baker Lake. We never made it there, but 16 miles later we did run into the dam.

It's an Edmonds kind of day

We wandered down from the kids house to Edmonds Marina Beach to check
out the sand castle competition. We saw some great sea monsters and
mermaids, as well as castles with moats.
We are now at Rory's for lunch- still planning to swim at the Lynnwood
pool.
Good sister day.

Spelunking

We visited the Cave of the Winds for a 5pm tour today. Jeff wasn't
going on the old people and babies "Discovery Tour." We took the
lantern tour. Our guide ran (that's fairly literal, it was a very
brisk pace) through the main tour sections and we used little kerosene
candle lights in buckets to meander through a different part.
It was supposed to be an hour and a half, and our guide may have
walked fast, but he talked slow. Our tour was an hour and 45 minutes.
Right at the beginning we went through a 150 foot section that was
only maybe four feet tall. I had a "Descent" (movie I saw with Anne a
couple years ago) moment and freaked myself out by the end of it.
Luckily, we paused for 20 minutes to hear the story about the cave
mummy. I recovered after that.
Cool small places, if you like that kind of thing, and interesting
little stories and legends about the cave.
Jeff liked the lanterns- because he could play with them and it was
more authentic. Its definitely as close to the experience of going
down with a couple people and some candles. We had to swing the
lanterns around and get close to the rock to see the molds and
formations.
We paused for a bit in "Lovers' Lane" and blew out our lanterns. Our
guide proceeded to scare people with his story and flashlight. I just
stayed behind him, and was safe. :)

iPhone worked well to grab a pic of the $10 posed photo at the end.

Garden of the Gods

Some scenery...

Garden of the Gods

It's the Wakeman family! We checked out the visitor center and drove
through to some of the rocks.
Now, Jeff and Larry are window shopping in Manitou Springs and Cindy
and I are relaxing in the shade at a park. (yes, that's right- dad and
son are the shoppers today)

I think this is a different expression from Jeff?

Cherry Juice

As we came down out of the canyon, we stopped at the Cherry Tree to
get Jeff some cherry juice. They had raspberry cider, too.

It's warmer down here already! We had a good lunch at Local's Grill in
Estes Park, and browsed in the shops. I just bought one thing- a pair
of fleur de lis earrings.

Jeff in Estes Park

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARKO!

By the river

It's cooler now.
We saw a golden lab clambering on the rocks with a dad and some kids.
It looked like it was having fun.
We are ready for lunch- have to eat soon, so we're ready for steak
dinner tonight, yum!

On the way to Estes Park

We're heading into the mountains, where it's cooler.

Getting ready for yearbook camp

Balloons are filled with some solution to make them stay full all
night. We shall see tomorrow!

Mussels decorating the ferry piers

Mussels taste good

But these look gross. Goo oozing out.

Iphone camera is back!

Anne and I went down to Edmonds Beach for low tide. Saw lots of sea
anemones, mussels, star fish and a big crab.
Awesome.

sunny saturday

Jeff and I had a lovely day today! It was sunny and warm all day, and we spent most of it outside. We visited the cats, they were pretty happy to get to run around outside. We had some lunch, fed the fish, and sat out in the yard. We wandered around, came up with some landscaping ideas for the side of the house. We think Mom and Dad should have a tree cutting party to take down the tree that's leaning against the neighbors fence, and clean up the garden on that side of the house. It would be pretty cool.



A funny moment- we were in the backyard and saw Gary by the woodpile on the side of the house. He ran off, and next thing we knew, he was inside the family room, looking at us through the sliding glass door! Tricky little cat.

Sebby got lots of petting, he was shedding like crazy. He also defended the house! Apparently, for about an hour, there was another cat in the trees near the neighbors fence. Annie wandered by (right behind my lawnchair) and got scared! Sebby came running and hissed and meowed at the other cat until it slowly backed down, and jumped up and back over the fence. Sebastian was very proud.

We were there for about two hours, and the cats were actually ready to go back in when we left! We had to hunt for Gary, but he came back in through the family room once Jeff found him in the backyard.
After that, we meandered down Mukilteo Boulevard. We drove around in the View Ridge neighborhood area and stumbled upon lower Howarth Park.
We walked around a bit, and then continued on- to Lowell Riverfront Park. It was even warmer outside now. We went on a little walk, watched a little four year old pedaling as fast as he could to keep up with his dad on another bike.

We made our way into downtown Snohomish and walked and shopped up and down First Street. Jeff and I had fun browsing through some antique shops. I love the old desks, Jeff liked looking at old Coca Cola stuff, old advertising, and more. I think the place we were in was staying afloat through ebay sales.
We were very jealous of Snohomish, for Mukilteo. It would be lovely to have a four block area with four or five bars and restaurants. Can't even imagine how nice that would be.

We drove back along Riverside drive, on the other side of the Snohomish River, and finally found an onramp to the trestle. We grocery shopped at Fred Meyers (man, much cheaper than QFC!!), and came home for cheeseburgers, macaroni salad and baked beans! We used the camping grill we borrowed for Cama Beach. We're excited to cook on it all week-- got some hot dogs (and extra buns for $0.39, crazy!!), burgers and are ready to have dinner all week.

Now, it's time for an evening nap before we go out. Arizona sounds fun, where Anne, Alex, Mom and Dad are, but we made a pretty good day out of our Saturday!