You, too, can drive to Alaska

We've been back from Alaska for a mere few weeks and I'm already plotting how to return to Alaska. My head is full of bizarre ideas, such as leading annual caravans up the Alaskan Highway for my friends, or sneaking into suitcases of unsuspecting cruise ship passengers, or maybe just heading off into Denali with a backpack and a dream to test my survival skills.

That last one would probably land me on a bush plane back to civilization within the hour. But the vastness of Alaska makes you dream big impossible dreams that are nowhere near your actual skills or abilities.

Our nearly month-long trip is almost too big to write about but I'll give it a shot for the sake of posterity, and in an attempt to maintain some sort of presence here on the blog. If I inspire anyone else to jump in a car and drive all the way to that gargantuan beauty of a place, I'll consider my work here successful. Contact me, I'll help you plan, and then I'll go with you.

The most important thing to know about driving to Alaska is you have to really, really, really love to drive. If you don't love to drive, this trip will be your personal hell. It's a lot of driving. A lot a lot. You should also probably appreciate trees.

I'm a long-ass road trip enthusiast, a well-established fact which has led Alex to often comment I should have been a long haul truck driver. There are fewer happier places for me than being behind the wheel of a vehicle, loved ones in tow, a jumbo sized can of Pringles in my lap, driving down a seldom-traveled road through incredible things. The Alaska road trip was made for me because you get a lot of that.

This is what the kids look like most of the time inside the Winnie B. 

There is a lot of sleeping.

Alex didn't drive for even one minute of this trip

because I am a road trip driving hog.

The legs are long. Our first day was 14 hours and we barely got to central-ish British Columbia, Prince George to be exact.  Our second day we drove another 11 hours to a town called Hyder, which is technically in Alaska but is not accessible from anywhere else in the state; you must enter it through British Columbia and go back through the cutest, tiniest little customs stop when you re-enter Canada.

We spotted four black bears on that drive to Hyder at various spots along the road. It's an exciting drive when every once in awhile you or one of your family members screams, "BEAR, BEAR, BEAR!" and you have to slam on the brakes real fast. I got a little jittery trying not to hurt bears nor us, but nothing a little coffee didn't make worse.

Hyder is charming in its friendly ghost towny kind of way. Maybe the best part of Hyder is the drive there, especially the 45 minutes spent cruising the Glacier Highway. You turn a corner and bam, Bear Glacier.

Bam

We got out of the Winnie B and flew kites for a bit along the Glacier Highway because the winds were favorable --

Entrance to tiny Hyder from Canada --

There are lots of abandoned structures in Hyder, remnants of the town's heyday as a mining hub --

We had a nice snack at the only open establishment in town, a bar/restaurant called The Glacier Inn. The server asked Alex and me if we wanted to get "hyderized" and we said, "Yes, of course!" before we knew what the hell she was talking about. It turns out getting hyderized involves doing a shot of Everclear up at the bar in front of all the locals. The instructions were serious -- we were not allowed to sniff it nor sip it and had to shoot it all in one shot without a chaser. If it came back up, we owed everyone in the bar a drink.

I hate Everclear, which is a hardcore grain alcohol between 150 and 190 proof depending on the bottle. It's like gasoline in an even less drinkable form. It's way too strong for my beer-loving body. My palms were sweaty as the shot was poured and the locals stared at me intensely, some smirking, all pegging me for the one that was gonna owe them drinks. I knew they were probably right, which didn't make the experience any more comfortable. Getting hyderized is proof peer pressure exists for adults, too.

Alex had no trouble but I did that shot and my entire body rebelled. I was on fire in my face area. It was a close one, a very, very close one, and it took several minutes to ensure I'd truly been successful as I rested my head on the bar and mentally invented lots of new swear combinations like "mothershit fucker fuck" while everyone watched and waited. That Everclear wanted badly to come back up but I held it down, didn't vomit all over the place, so my pride remains intact in Hyder. The locals looked a little disappointed but gave me high fives anyway. Then we got these little certificates --

(mine should say "just barely.")

We tried to teach the kids how to play pool at The Glacier Inn for awhile, the only problem being Alex and I both suck at it --

The locals then advised us to head to the food truck at the end of the road for "the best fish tacos in Alaska." That sounded like something we very much wanted to try so we walked through Hyder, appreciating its odd little self, feeling enthusiastic for fish tacos.

We walked up to the fish taco truck but the woman working there stretched her arms out towards us as we approached and said, "I'm sorry, we're all out, Ed ate them all." This struck us as funny and we threw up our arms and yelled stuff like, "It's always goddamn Ed! Dammit, Ed, you stop eating my tacos, Ed!" It may have been the Everclear talking.

No tacos for you, Coco.

After a night spent near Hyder in Stewart, B.C., the third leg of our trip was a very exciting one indeed. We took the Cassiar Highway, which at many points dissolved into a gravel road with no shoulder and little warning, and we saw lots of bears.

It's important to note here that no drive to Alaska should be attempted without the Bible of Alaskan travel, the Milepost. The Milepost is the most amazing thing you've ever seen, giving mile-by-mile information on all the most popular and most remote roads to Alaska and throughout Alaska. It's a traveler's best friend when you're in the middle of godforsaken nowhere. At the very least it's comforting to know somebody has been through there before you.

The Milepost is most crucial when it comes to finding gasoline. I mapped out our gas stops as fastidiously as I mapped out the rest of the trip. Calculate the miles, know your tank's limits, and for the love of God, stop for gas if the Milepost tells you to, even if  you have half a tank and it's a middle-of-nowhere nobody-around gas station that seems likely to be operated by grizzly bears.

The drive up the Cassiar Highway took us past a few glacier-fed lakes. Glacial runoff water is damn freezing cold but that didn't stop Alex from stripping down and jumping in. He just kept yelling, "I'm from Quebec, bitches!" as he floated around out there. I then turned to the children and said, "So we need to be prepared for when hypothermia sets in, which should be any second now, and we're gonna have to jump in there and drag him out before he dies."

Coco is saddened by the thought of losing her father

as he floats around behind her yelling,

"Is this all you got? This is nuthin'!"

By the end of the day, maybe 10 hours later, we had arrived in the Yukon. It was a triumphant moment when we crossed that border. It was also the moment mosquitoes the size of Volkswagens began attempting to devour us whole. Lucien grabbed our insect zapper racket thing and was very attached to it for the remainder of our trip. We should start him in tennis; the kid now has a vicious swing.

We stayed in Watson Lake, Yukon that evening, finally joining up with the mecca of Alaskan road trip travel, the Alcan Highway. Our campsite that night was a gravel parking lot with little going for it, yet was the most expensive of our trip at 50 bucks. They can really gouge you along the Alcan when pickin's are slim and you're desperate for a real shower.

There is only one thing to do in Watson Lake, Yukon, and that is to visit the enormous sign post forest. The sign post forest is a landmark along the Alaska-Canada Highway. Travelers from all over the world making the trek up the Alcan bring a sign from their home town to hang on any one of the hundreds of wooden posts to mark their crossing.

I had read about the sign post forest while researching the trip so came prepared with our Seattle sign. The four of us signed it, dated it, drew smiley faces on it, and prepared to leave our mark in the immense "forest" composed of over 90,000 other signs.

pleased to see my original hometown of Toledo, Ohio representin'

All the posts were full. The town cannot keep pace with the number of people who want to hammer the name of their hometown into a piece of wood and have fallen behind in their new post installation. The only place we could find to hang our sign was up very, very high and the only way to get any of us up that high to swing the hammer was to stand on Alex's shoulders. I was the only viable candidate, as Lucien and Coco were too short plus lacking in hammer skills plus it is our job to "protect them" or whatever.

This was a tense moment in our relationship. As you can maybe tell by my face below, I was getting serious with Alex and saying, "I swear to God, if you drop me, you won't live to see morning." He swore it would be OK, that he could do it with little trouble because he works out a lot. I've never appreciated his hours in the gym more --

Those were some stressful moments balancing on Alex's shoulders like an unskilled circus performer while hammering our sign into the post. The kids held their collective breath below, as did several other visitors. As I held that first nail in place with one hand and swung the hammer with the other, unable to hold onto anything else for stability, I seriously wondered if this damn sign had been worth the grievous bodily injury I was about to inflict upon myself.

It was. We did it. We left our mark as Alaskan travelers in the Yukon. 

The kids applauded enthusiastically. 

And Alex lived to see morning.

Trip thus far, for orientation's sake -- the arrow down in the lower right is Seattle. First leg was to the second arrow above it at Prince George. B.C. Next leg was driving west to the arrow at Hyder, AK. The third leg was driving north to Watson Lake, Yukon --

I really love to drive.

It's a looong trip and we're only three days in. These blog posts shall stretch out as large as the state of Alaska itself.

Everclear is the worst but Ed is a close second,
MJ

Alaska or bust. I hope we don't bust.

I took Lucien to see Les Miserables his first week of summer vacation. It was my 10th time seeing the show. I'd see it again tomorrow if I could. I will never stop.

I remember my parents returning home after they first saw it in the 1980s. They raved about it, and brought home a souvenir, a Les Miz documentary called "Stage by Stage." I didn't go with them that first time but I watched the first few moments of that video and I was hooked. I was obsessed. I remember a warm feeling coursing through my body and a sense of "I now know what love feels like." Don't you dare tell me a musical can't love me back because I know it does.

I was very happy to share my favorite story with my son date.

The Loosh asked about twenty minutes before we left for the theatre, "Mom, what's the story about?" and I said, "Oh! It's a super short story written by Victor Hugo about love, redemption, compassion, rebellion, you can read it quickly before we leave!" He nodded enthusiastically and I threw my dogeared copy of the nearly 1,500-page novel at him. He looked so shocked.

READ, LUCIEN, READ LIKE YOU'VE NEVER READ BEFORE.

This was my least favorite production I've seen of Les Miz. It's become something of a soap opera up there, with most actors throwing themselves all over the place in melodramatic fashion. They were being VERY SERIOUS actors but honestly, the story speaks for itself, you don't gotta sell it so hard.

The staging has changed, too. The sets used to be minimal and understated, which added to the charm of the thing. There was a revolving stage, so when people walked somewhere "far," they really walked in the same place as the stage rotated and props passed them by. Now there is no more rotation. When Jean Valjean gets Cosette at the well and takes her off for a better life, they just kind of wander all over the stage in lazy S shapes. What the hell are you guys doing up there?

One of the most effective scenes in the musical used to utilize the rotating stage to perfection. When Enjolras is killed at the barricade and falls off the front, the barricade later turns to show him laying upside down on top of the giant red rebel flag as music swells. That scene is gone without the revolving part; now they just kind of wheel a dead Enjolras across the stage in a cart. He's still with his big red flag but... what? Where's my big crying moment? It's gone, as gone as Enjolras.

I'm not done complaining yet! Another point of contention: Marius sings "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" while limping around in the darkness instead of sitting at the bar with all the chairs and tables he's singing about. How can you sing about empty chairs at empty tables when there are zero dang chairs and zero dang tables? Sit down in the damn bar and mourn your dead friends properly, Marius.

Don't even get me started on how audiences have changed. I swear half the audience was late so had to be seated at the first scene break, about fifteen minutes after the show began. Then there were just streams of people walking in carrying wine cups, and chatting, and blocking our view entirely for the next ten minutes of the show. Lucien didn't even get to see Fantine become a prostitute properly.

I'll distract myself from my crabby old lady Les Miz mutterings by showing before and nearly-after pictures of our master bathroom project. It's still not 100% finished but I sure like looking at it. It brings a little circa-1900 character to the space at last, and is even better than I'd envisioned.

Before:

we had no bathroom.

Almost After:

we very nearly have a gorgeous bathroom.

So gorgeous, we have decided to do all our entertaining from now on

in our bathroom. 

With the bathroom project nearly finished, our six years of Banister Abbey renovations are almost kinda complete. There is still a long list of small things to do but this, aside from the landscaping, which we hope to get to someday, is our last major undertaking in bringing this pretty old dame of a house back to life. Banister Abbey has been a labor of love. There is so much love. But as is involved in most labors, there has also been a shit ton of pain.

Summer is going well. There have been many water gun fights and buckets of water dumped on each other on the hot days --

And lemonade stands --

brilliant idea to offer the lemonade for free

but "except" donations.

They made a killing.

And kids running wild in the streets of Seattle --

And my beautiful sister, who is showcasing her art in her very first solo show in West Seattle. Her talent is astounding and I'm so happy she's getting the recognition she deserves.

That's Coco in front of "her" painting with Cecil the lion.

And finally, a fun event at the grocery store. Coco came with me to load up on the essentials for our big road trip. In the checkout lane, Coco loudly announced to the checker, "My mom and dad have a drinking problem." And I froze, and the checker froze, and we looked at each other, then both looked down at the items I was buying. There wasn't even any alcohol. So.... what's happening right now.

I said, "Umm, what?" and Coco said, throwing her arms into the air in exasperation, "You guys drink, like, twelve bubbly waters A DAY." True enough, I had five cases of La Croix on the belt and they're not likely to last a week. I've never loved a beverage so much in my life. It has actually replaced coffee as my morning drink of choice, it's that serious of a relationship.

Then the checker laughed and I laughed and the checker said, "Oooh boy, it got real awkward there for a second." Yes, yes it did. Coco can't come to the grocery store with me anymore.

I gotta go, it's crunch time, we're leaving for Alaska in t-minus not many hours. We'll be gone a long time, just shy of a month. Imagine the insanely long posts I'm going to write when I return! I'm really gonna write this trip into the ground, I can feel it.

Our journey to the Great North involves a stop in Watson Lake, in the Yukon. Watson Lake is known for its "Sign Post Forest," a labyrinth of almost 80,000 signs brought from the hometowns of people making the trek up the Alaska Highway. We have our sign ready. We will leave our mark at Watson Lake, as nearly 80,000 people have apparently done before us.

I hope it's the best road trip of our lives,
and I hope they put Les Miz back the way it used to be.
MJ

Storing fat for Alaska

This good girl doesn't know

we're fixin' to leave her for three-and-a-half weeks.

I'm eating, sleeping and breathing Alaska to plan our upcoming road trip. So much to know to plot the route and plan the itinerary, so many internet searches like, "Is such-and-such a road safe to drive in an RV or is it another Tiller Trail?" There are also novels to read to get into the spirit of the place, tour companies to contact, and purchases to make such as bear spray and warm lined rain boots and mosquito nets that cover your whole head. Do you know how many ways there are to die up there?? Hundreds!

The kids are using my intense road trip focus against me. I found Lucien eating a secret bag of potato chips in the TV room this past week. He looked guilty for a second but thought fast and said, "I'm storing fat for Alaska." I took the chips away and said, "You know there is plenty of food in Alaska..." but he followed me out of the room saying, "No! We're gonna have to craft our own bows and arrows to shoot deer, and do you know how to cut down a tree yet? We're also gonna have to fish, lay traps, and forage for berries!"

He was on a roll then. He entertains himself thoroughly when he thinks he's onto a juicy joke. (apple, meet tree...)

".... but we'll have Coco taste the berries first, obviously, to make sure they're not poisonous!" I gave him a severe "Mom look" after that comment and he said, "She's the youngest, Mom, if anyone's gotta die out there in the nothingness of our summer vacation, it's gotta be her. And if anyone's gonna live, it's going to be me, because of the chips!"

Lucien is now, at this very moment, musing aloud we may have to resort to cannibalism. I guess anything less than that will be considered a smashing success of a trip.

I took the Winnie B into the RV shop to fix everything that needs fixing. There's always a lot on such a complicated vehicle but as of now, all seems to be in good working order. I pretty much told the guy, "We're driving to Alaska, just replace everything with new things." I'm being extra cautious because I can't imagine much worse of a disappointment than suffering RV failure in the middle of the Yukon.

Good luck, us.

(Good girl still doesn't know...)

In these few weeks remaining before we drive off towards the Arctic Circle, we are caught up in the whirlwind of end-of-school-year chaos. The performances, presentation nights, carnivals, etc. are really stacking up but we're knocking them down one by one with rapidly fatiguing fists.

Lucien's big end-of-year Humanities project involved an in-depth report on biodiversity's role in healthy ecosystems, a subject for which he organically feels much passion so it was a natural choice. As part of his project, he had to take an "action step." For his action step, he decided to print up flyers and educate the public by handing them out and starting conversations one-on-one and in small groups. His original plan was to do that at the beach on a sunny day but we're a little tired here at the end of the school year so instead it took place at a friend's party the day before the project was due. Our closest friends were all there, and had been drinking beer and eating tacos for hours.

I had to document the action step to include in his PowerPoint presentation. I told this group of friends to look natural, as if Lucien was educating them about the alarming rate of loss of species at that very second and it was the first they'd heard of it.

Nailed it. 

Totally natural.

(I love this photo, and you bet we used it.)

I volunteered to work a couple booths at Coco's school carnival this past weekend. First shift was at the Fish Pond game, where Coco acted as assistant by sitting hidden behind the screen and attaching toys to the end of the fishing pole whenever some little tyke tossed his line over the side. The prizes were mostly very small so came grouped together in Ziploc grab bags. Coco didn't understand the entire bag was the prize and instead opened all the bags and began attaching teeny tiny toys one at a time.

You should have seen that four-year-old carnival enthusiast's face when he handed me his ticket, threw his line over the booth, and received a mini doll shoe the size of his pinkie nail. His eyes were big sad adorable question marks when he looked up at me and I said, "Oh hell no, not on my watch," threw his line back over the side and whispered around the corner to Coco, "Give him the whole bag, give him the whole bag, for the love of God!!" The volunteer working next door at the "Dig in the Hay" game had a good laugh about that one.

Not sure what she's laughing at, that volunteer had her own questionable game going on. The "Dig in the Hay" game is usually a big pile of hay kids dig through until they find a prize. But this year, to the confusion of many, there was no hay, only a small inflatable pool filled with plastic balls. The "Dig in the Hay" sign still stood boldly behind the pool, which left many scratching their heads. I guess carnival organizers didn't feel compelled to rename "Dig in the Hay" to "Dig in the Balls" and who can blame them for that.

I worked the ticket booth second shift with two of my favorite friends. We thought it would be fun to do it together because we could chat and catch up during lulls. That's a laugh of an idea; there are no lulls at school carnival ticket booths. The ticket booth is mayhem with people swarming you constantly waving fistfuls of money and asking questions like, "why can't I use this food ticket to play games?" As you tried to explain the intricacy of the school's ticketing system, some errant wanderer would inevitably walk up and order a cotton candy. I'd be like, "Does it look like I got cotton candy back here, buddy?" while punching furiously at iPad buttons because I was three reported ticket sales behind.

I'm still around for a bit but for the record, I'm hoping to post some short blog updates during our weeks of driving through the mountainous abyss of the great North. Not surprisingly, I hear there's not a whole lot of WiFi nor cell phone service in Northern British Columbia and the Yukon. We may have better luck once in Alaska, but by then we may have eaten each other so there may not be much to post about.

If the grizzlies don't get ya, the other grizzlies will.
MJ

Awesome or scary

Lucien just walked up to me and said, "Hey Mom, I think "Ukraine" sounds like a do-it-yourself crane company, kind of like U-Haul, only no hauling and with cranes....." and then he walked off to continue thinking deep thoughts. I'll be damned if he isn't right. Why did I never think of that before.

The Loosh has also become interested in horror movies recently, a development that could possibly be genetic. I grew up on horror movies. It wasn't exactly my choice, my family just likes them, my brother especially. It may not be normal to grow up with The Shining and The Amityville Horror playing on the regular in your TV room but I must say, it's raised me to anticipate many of life's terrifying calamities, like serial killers and vengeful demons and zombies and killer clowns.

I am just now considering that watching many horror movies as a young person may be a root cause of my terrible adult anxiety. Sorry in advance, son.

I started Lucien on the classics, primarily Hitchcock films. Our first foray into mother-son horror movie nights (while Alex dangled shiny objects in front of Coco in another room because she was pissed off not to be invited to scary movie night) began with The Birds. An hour into the film, Lucien turned to me and yelled, "Mom, WHERE ARE THE GODDAMN BIRDS?" He's got a real potty mouth these days, that one, but I have to agree classic horror movies move agonizingly slow by today's jump scare standards. There were no birds for a long, long time. Then there were lots of birds. Then it was over.

I also took The Loosh to see A Quiet Place in the theater that weekend (as Alex grew increasingly frazzled trying to entertain an increasingly pissed off younger sibling who doesn't like to be left out of anything, ever) and we both agreed that movie is pretty perfect. We've also watched Get Out. Lucien quickly picked up on the racial themes of that movie but I wasn't surprised. He's pretty socially aware, is the kid who said about his sister's Barbie TV show, "You shouldn't be watching this, it's pretty much the complete dismantling of feminism" and Coco responded, "It's not up to boys to decide what is and isn't OK for girls to watch" and I like them both so, so much.

The Fremont troll clutches a VW Bug in one hand and a child in the other.

In keeping with our current family horror theme, we did a "murder mystery dinner" at a friend's house recently. We were all assigned characters beforehand and had to come dressed as our character. My character was a jazz singer/contract killer in 1930s Chicago. Alex was a golfer who wore argyle socks pulled up to his knees. We arrived to many other festively dressed friends and immediately got down to business determining which of us was a cold blooded killer.

I am not an auditory learner so all the information sprung on us in the beginning of the evening did not seep into my consciousness even a little bit. It just went in one ear and out the other, no way I'm keeping all those dates and train schedules and relationship triangles straight. I spent most of the evening whispering to "Silky," the mysterious brothel owner and bootlegger to my right, "What the hell is going on?"

During the course of murder mystery evenings, you have to ask many questions of other players to uncover the killer. You also must ad-lib when people ask you information about yourself you do not want to reveal. I am not great at thinking on the fly, which is why, when asked where I went all those nights I left my jazz singing job early (I was out killing people with my Tommy Gun) I replied, "My mom has been very sick. With leprosy. She has only two toes left" and when asked how I made all my extra money to afford my extravagant evening gowns, I said I sang at birthday parties and bar mitzvahs, picked up the odd babysitting job, and mowed lawns.

As the night went on and I lost the plot more and more, I would usually answer, "I dunno" and occupy myself with errant threads on my dress. I now know I am not good at these kinds of games and bow in respect to friends who were able to weave believable responses on the fly. Though I now suspect they are always lying to me in our daily lives.


In big summer news, this year I will cross an item off my bucket list. To anyone who's met me or read much of this blog, they know I'm a roadtrip enthusiast. I love crafting roadtrip itineraries, the bigger the better. We've done many through the Western United States, one through Costa Rica, and our most recent was through Mexico.

Those were easy trips compared to the most recent endeavor. This year we're doing the granddaddy of them all, the Holy Grail roadtrip for RV owners, the one that makes people hesitate slightly before responding "I don't know if that's awesome or scary" upon hearing our plans. (The answer is "both.")

We are driving to ALASKA.

(the real Alaska, not Roslyn, WA)

This will be my finest success if everything goes well, and my worst failure if we get a flat tire in the middle of the Yukon with nobody around for a hundred miles.

Alex and I have been busy prepping the Winnie B for the trip and unfortunately discovered we have a water leak behind one of the walls. It's likely a cracked pipe, a vexing result of our disastrous frozen winter camping attempt at Sun Peaks back in February. We're scrambling to get it fixed before our planned departure date at the end of June but RV service places are jam packed with people itching to ready their rigs for summer trips. If we can't get it fixed in time... well I'm going to need to process it at length if this trip has to be cancelled.

We are crossing our fingers and moving ahead with plans. I've prepped the children for the Alaskan wilderness adventure by showing them Into The Wild and Grizzly Man. They are now very scared to get anywhere near a car with me at the steering wheel.

And Coco has been dressed as a hot dog for two days.

Yukon. U-kon.
U-con.
It's a do-it-yourself company for murder mystery dinner parties.
MJ

Northern Exposure

We spent a long weekend at Suncadia with friends at the tail end of Spring Break. One of those friends put the wrong kind of soap in the dishwasher, squirted liquid dish soap into it instead of the stuff made for machines. Our friends are a smart and savvy group of people but when we all get together, it gets kind of chaotic and we're often just trying to get through the day without somebody ending up in the ER. "Details" often become "details schmetails."

Here come the happy little bubbles

escaping out the bottom
while we all stand around staring at it.

The adults said "shit" but the kids said "cool."

My search history for our time in Suncadia reads as follows on my iPhone: "wrong soap in dishwasher" followed by "squawking sound coming from refrigerator" followed by "what is Supertramp's greatest hit" and that is a surprisingly good summary of the weekend.

Suncadia is a resort community outside Roslyn, Washington. Roslyn is a textbook "sleepy town" whose claim to fame is being the filming location for the '90s TV show Northern Exposure. The show is supposed to take place in Alaska but that was a TV falsehood, it is downright Washington around here.

There are no moose in Roslyn. The famous shot of the moose in the Northern Exposure opening credits was created, so we're told, by "borrowing" a moose, building a fence around the entire town, and letting the moose wander around. And wander he did, straight past The Roslyn Cafe at one point, a business that still exists, which straight up told the audience they weren't looking at Alaska.

Our group took a few hikes together during our days in Suncadia/Roslyn, including this one where we went offroad and walked 'round and 'round in the forest somewhat disoriented, joking nervously about how no one had come prepared with backpacks, bottles of water, food, that kind of basic hiking survival stuff --

What are we even doing? 

Buncha city people

 wandering around with no trail and no water.

Again, details schmetails. We had been grateful just to get everyone out the door and into cars and accounted for at the trailhead.

It's no joking matter with these people, really, we should have been better prepared. These are the same people with whom we have weathered intense windstorms, terrible injuries and disgusting hot tub rashes. We should be careful when we're together. There is something about the energy we put out into the universe that makes the universe want to do things to us.

Looking at this pic, who can blame it?

We're just begging to be taken down a peg.

It's like The Beatles crossing Abbey Road but more Twilight-y.

Since our older kids are capable babysitters now, we left the mess of kids (or is it a tangle of kids?) at the house with some mac-n-cheese and went out for grown-up dinner in Roslyn.

We went to the town tavern, The Brick, after dinner to play some shuffleboard. The Brick is rumored to be the oldest operating tavern in our state, established in 1889, but we were more impressed with the unabashedly phallic sign out front.

well hello there, fella.

The Brick has a "running water spittoon" still operating in front of the bar stools --

These water-filled floor troughs were originally installed for tobacco spit but soon enough men began using them to relieve themselves pee-wise so they didn't have to get up from their stools. I think it was a wise decision the TV people focused on the moose and left out the piss trough for the Northern Exposure opening credits.

I wonder what gross secondary use they devised for the shuffleboard.

Likely butt exfoliation.

Alex went back to Mexico City for work soon after our Suncadia trip. I took the kids to another area of Washington while he was away, the northern part, where tulip fields bloom like Holland in the Spring. It's quite a draw for the people of our state -- such a draw, in fact, the kids and I had to wait in a car line for over an hour just to pull into the parking lot from the main road We all agreed it was good Alex wasn't with us at that point; he would have lost his damn mind because the man has no patience for sitting still.

The tulip fields are gorgeous, like paintings come to life plus hundreds of tourists. I tried to take nice pictures of my children but they soon made it clear I'm never going to have a normal picture of them ever again.

...for the love of god, children.

Sometimes I would think I had a good one of both of them smiling at the camera only to zoom in and realize Lucien was giving me the middle finger. I am really enjoying the age of 12.

whoomp, there it is.

Unabashedly Phallic would be a good name for a band.
Seems fitting for heavy metal,
but would be funnier for a classical string quartet.
MJ