Saturday in Anchorage

We're still getting set up for life in Alaska.  After a 8 am yoga class (just getting light now at 8 am), we went to REI and Alaska Mountaineering & Hiking to get "stuff!"  It turns out that you need Kahtoolas in Anchorage for hiking before it gets too late in the fall - they are microspikes, a little like crampons but lighter and lesser for footwear traction - good on ice or icy packed trails or maybe on a glacier, which is where we're going tomorrow for a hike.  Also better wind pants for biking, which some people do year-round here with heavier tires or even "studs" on bike tires!

It's a beautiful afternoon here, and between the blue sky and the mountains, we've got to go and get outside!  We might go do the hike again that we tried to do last week -- the wind was gusting so much when we got up to the pass that we could hardly stay on our feet!  And . . . we still don't have any pictures hung up on the walls, but I'll take the indoor pictures and post when we do.  In the meantime, I'm putting a couple of pictures on that we took on a routine hike that we often do after work from our house to Westchester Lagoon on the multi-use trail.

Brian took several pictures when he was on the ferry from Bellingham, Washington to Haines, Alaska - Judy joined him for the last 4 1/2 hours on the ferry by flying to Juneau.  The drive from Haines to Anchorage is really spectacular -- just when you think you've seen the most stunning vistas, here comes another one.  There's a book written about Haines that Judy just finished reading - "If you live here, you know my name" by Heather Lende.  Very interesting small-town rural Alaska.  So more pictures of the trip that we DIDN'T get entered along the way!  The guy with Brian in the picture is Lino -- originally from Mexico and living in LA -- he was ALSO driving a U-Haul that was on the ferry with him, transporting furniture to a buddy in Fairbanks.  Lino wasn't as impressed by the mountains -- yeah, yeah, yeah -- more mountains, more water!  Peter Molesky kept Brian company on the long drive from Utica to Bellingham, then flew back from Seattle once Brian was on the ferry.