Category: The DayBook

Long story short. I made it back home late last night. On United. Amtrak really didn’t have any viable options anytime soon. And, I really want to make my dentist appointment to repair my broken tooth tomorrow morning.

Going to see how well my GoPro does with fireworks this tonight. I don’t really have a vantage point for photographing fireworks. But hey, I am not getting paid to take pictures of fireworks. Just doing it for my own amusement. For the last 4 summers, The Orange Lord took over fireworks and I closed my shades. 

Added after fireworks. GoPro Experiment was not a success. Picture above is with my Pixel 2XL through double-pane window. 

Spent the train day wandering alongside the Mississippi and other rivers, lakes, swamps etc. Saw many Sandhill Cranes and lots of deer. And one beaver. Finished up an audiobook while doing all of this wildlife viewing. 

Most of the day spent wondering if I would make it to Chicago in time to make my connection to DC. I won’t. We almost had a chance, and then a drawbridge opened. Lost 20 minutes there. So, what’s to do but order chocolate tart for dessert. And take a nap. It’s 5:30 now and I suspect it will be another 2 hours to Chicago. And my train to DC leaves in about one hour. Amtrak will not hold a train an hour for me. Nor would I want it to.  

Plan B is to bail on Amtrak, scuttle over to the Blue Train to the airport, find a hotel, find a flight out tomorrow, etc. 

But first, let’s see what Amtrak has in mind. 

4pm, running about 1 hour late, ¾ of the way through Montana, waiting for a freight train to go around us. Freight is more important than people. 

Unexpected pleasure.  The food on the train is great. Apparently this run on this train is the first one to get the new vastly improved menu.  If they can serve great food on a train why can’t they do the same at the asylum?  Not fancy food just well prepared food.

Wandered around until it was time to train up. 

Underway. There is a bar. My dinner reservation is at 8pm. Better set an alarm to wake me up for dinner.  

The weather is getting back to normal. But it’s still too darn hot for the residents. They don’t have A/C.  Consider not having A/C a point of pride. And they live here because they like cool damp weather. But, I thought the weather was fine. Spent the day just wandering around. Me and my bus pass. Also logged 7 miles walking. I have 3 days on the train to rest. 

For no good reason I headed to the University of Washington campus. It’s big. It has a magnificent library, which is covid closed. Just off campus is a grocery store proudly announcing that it has the largest liquor department in Seattle. That was open.  

I rounded up some coffee and rolls and had breakfast on the hotel’s roof. And now I am off to round up some ice cream for dinner. Yesterday the ice cream places were closed due to the heat. 

I checked on my train. It’s in  Cut Bank Montana. Only 59 minutes late and looking good for tomorrow afternoon departure at 4:40pm. 

This morning I headed out on Seattle’s light rail system for some urban exploring.  No real intention of going anywhere in particular.  Mass transit is very inexpensive in Seattle and even more so for old people like me  light rail doesn’t go many places, but it runs every ten minutes. That makes it easy to hop off and explore a bit. I rode the train all morning until my phone said it was 100°. Then I hightailed it back to the hotel and my very cool room. Where I have been ever since. Since walked 5 miles today.

I hopped off the train to explore China town. But it was more like Japanese town. Found a great Japanese bookstore. Which had lots of origami paper. I now have more origami paper. No surprise there.  

Also happened upon a huge Japanese supermarket which sold sandwiches. The kinda sandwich’s that you find in a 7/11 in Tokyo.  

The sandwich made a great lunch when I made it back to the hotel.  But one last stop. The train station. I have come to Seattle on the train several times but I have never gotten on the train in Seattle.  Thought I would find the right stop.

That blazing blue sky. I haven’t seen a single cloud since I arrived Saturday afternoon. Or any fog or even humidity. Just hot. Lots of hot. 

Today’s air conditioned event was a trip to the Art Museum. Then I rested for a couple of days before heading out to look at clothes. I wasn’t planning on buying anything so, I looked at very fine places. Then I had an outstanding dinner at a Tokyo good sushi restaurant. 

That was dinner, outstanding yellow fin tuna and sea weed. Plus a little secret sauce. To die for. But, there was definitely room for dessert. And dessert calories are not to be spent at Japanese sushi joints. 

This gelato place isn’t pretty, but the gelato is fantastic. 

Inspite of the weather, I had a fine day and wracked up 4.75 miles. They are calling for 110 degrees tomorrow. There will be no heroics from me. If it is that hot, I will be in my hotel room sending up prayers to the patron saint of air conditioners. 

It’s not Seattle’s fault that it is 101 degrees at 6pm. But it is greatly diminishing my enjoyment of the city. I did make it out to see the Chihuly exhibit again. And I managed to get out of the gift shop without buying a six thousand dollar glass ball. 

People are stupid. These folk are waiting in a very long line in 100 degree weather to get into a Starbucks so they can buy hot coffee. One block away they could just walk on in. People are stupid. (Starbucks does pass out nice green umbrellas)

Haven’t a clue what I am doing tomorrow when it’s supposed to be maybe 110. What ever I do I will do it early in the day. 

That is the last cool thing on the agenda for a while. About 88 degrees in Seattle today which is blazing hot for this area and still hotter stuff expected. The heat will cut down on my adventuring, because I don’t do heat well anymore. My hotel is very well air conditioned as long as the power grid holds up. 

Leaving Alaska. Thinking about a Robert Service poem., The Spell of the Yukon.

Nothing much today except rain and chilly.  Even the residents were grumbling a bit. But I deployed my rain gear and my rainy day plan. Rainy day plan was to stay in town and do inside stuff as much as possible.  A couple of museums and a few shops selling locally made stuff. 

For the record, Allbird weather  repellent shoes aren’t. 

I got myself mostly packed and ready to head to the airport at 5:45am tomorrow. Also bought a transit ticket to get from SEATAC to pretty near my hotel.  We will see if that works. It will be great if it does. If it doesn’t, well then I am out 3 bucks.  And a nice early dinner at my favorite Sitka restaurant 

Sitka is very different from Skagway. It’s a more “real” town, not a company town like Skagway. Of course it is much bigger. Sitka thinks it is sophisticated. It has an art camp and classical music festival. Skagway has a rubber ducky race and a beer festival. But, in the end, I can say that I enjoyed Sitka. 

This is the local old folks asylum.  There are 5 or 6 of them in the state. 

Today’s adventure.  I was going to ride the public bus out to a bear rescue place.  The public bus system in Sitka is owned and operated by the Native Council. I find the bus. Hop on it and ask “do you go to the bear place?” Due to covid, the bus no longer goes to the bear place. The bus gets to within 2 miles of the bear place. Ok, sounds like a plan. I pay my one dollar bus fare and off we go. After about 30 minutes of riding around, I am the only person left on the bus,   The bus stops. The driver tells me to just keep walking down the road, about 2 miles, until I get there. And to stay on the road. And there is no cell service. And he will be back at quarter after the hour until 3:15 and that would be it for the day. And finally, he said that it would start raining at 2pm. 

A sensible little old lady would have ridden the bus right back to town. 

Actually, this is Alaska. There was a sidewalk. And a glorious wonderful sidewalk it was. (Down hill all the way to the bear place)

It was one of the best walks of my life, made all the sweeter by my years. And by last year of lockdown. Eagles flying overhead chattering in their little voices. Fishing boats in the bay. Cool. And, I was told that it would rain at 2pm, so I was safe. 

And, I found the bear place. Unlike the eagle rescue place which returns eagles to the wild whenever possible, these bears are stuck in their 3 acre refuge. Because in Alaska it’s against the law to return a bear to the wild. Alaska has plenty of bears. The island that I am on has 1.4 bears per square mile. The refuge does send bears south to zoos in the lower 48. 

I make it back to the bus stop two hours after I headed down the road. The driver was surprised to see me. He was sure that I would have gotten a cab back to town. And, the people at the bear place did offer to call me a cab, on their landline.  The bus driver told everyone who got on the bus about my trek. 

By now I have clocked 7 miles and 15,000 steps so off for a late lunch or early dinner of reindeer mac and cheese. When I left the restaurant it was 2:10 and it was raining. Nap Time! 

The blue sky didn’t last long. But I ditched Zoom yoga to enjoy it. Yoga class would have been problematic anyway do to defective WiFi and lack of space in the room. 

Today’s adventure was a trek to the Eagle Rehab facility and retirement home. Sort of like where I live. They have rehabbed and released 540 eagles in the last 40 years. Doesn’t sound like very many until you remember how few eagles we had in 1980. 

Eagles that can not be returned to the wild are sent to zoos and some are trained to go out with a handler to schools etc.  when these show and tell eagles get too old to stand the stress of meeting 2nd graders, they come back to Sitka to live out their days in the retirement home. Captive eagles live to be about 40. 

Walking on one of the well manicured trails I came upon a pile of bear shit that was fresh enough to have me humming a happy tune until I got back into a more civilized part of the refuge. 

When I was leaving the eagle place I see a doe with a tiny fawn.  The doe gives a whistle and bounces off into the trees. Apparently, the fawn hasn’t learned it is supposed to follow quickly when momma whistles So fawn starts heading up the road to visit with me. Not good. I try shooing the fawn into the woods. That didn’t work. I try continuing on my way to the highway. The fawn follows me. Not good. After about 10 minutes of shooing and yelling, I get the fawn heading towards momma. Hopefully she will reinforce “when I whistle don’t stop and visit”.

Enough excitement already. Loop back to town through the park to see if any one is working on the totem. They aren’t. 

Managed a real lunch today. Salmon chowder and an excellent scone. There  are a couple of places to get a little something for lunch. Plus two food trucks that look pretty good.  Haven’t broken the dinner puzzle yet. The food trucks are just lunch. This trip really isn’t about food and goodness knows that I haven’t lost any weight.