Rocky Point – Page 9 – The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

Memorial Day

Ahh well, the flag is a bit fuzzy in this photo, do you think when I get that new DSLR I will have no more fuzzy photos??

It felt good to put up the American Flag this weekend, for many reasons, not the least of which is to show support for our troops and especially for my two grandson’s who have both served in Iraq. Patriotism means many things to many people, and each of us has our own definition. Looking at this flag flying in the spring winds reminds me of being twelve years old in the school playground, crying with emotion when they played the Star Spangled Banner and I saw that flag waving against the blue sky. Unencumbered by political discussions and partisan arguments, I loved my country, and was proud to be living in the United States of America. I still love my country, with full knowledge that it isn’t perfect, I would not choose any other. If you want to read an excellent story about the origins of Memorial Day, go to E-Squared and Mui’s blog here. You will also get to see an amazing photo of the American Flag to help remember the reason for this holiday.

(Most of you blog readers know that you can click on the photo to zoom in and see more detail)

The Alaska planning is moving forward in earnest. My daughter and her husband have done the highway in their big rig several times in the last year, and her one bit of advice was, “Take extra headlights”. Mo is attempting to offset the broken headlight thing with a bit of ingenuity, and hopefully it will help a bit. This morning she was looking through her photos of her last trip on the highway and found a shot of her last attempt and they never had a broken headlight. I think there was a lot more gravel on the road in 1974 than we will encounter this summer, but all it takes is one good hit.

We also have ordered the Protect-a-Tow recommended by Linda to try to offset some of the damage from flying gravel between the rig and the Tracker. There are several options out there, but this seems to be the favorite of many folks doing the highway with a toad. Rain, of course, is a given, even if we have some good weather, it is just about certain that we will have rain. Living in the northwest mountains, we already have plenty of fleece, boots, rain gear and flannel, so the trip should feel just about like the past few months of cold, wet springtime at home. I am especially grateful that we will be in the cozy MoHo, unlike Mo’s first trip in the Scout, hiding out inside with mosquito coils burning while it rained.

We do plan to have campfires whenever possible, but will not be taking any firewood. The “Burn It Where You Buy It” rule is in effect in most places in the western forests, and while I haven’t read the full rules yet, I would bet we couldn’t take firewood into Canada anyway. Instead we are packing plenty of firestarter and Mo is taking her baby chain saw to take advantage of whatever may be found locally en route.

And yes. Rather than borrowing my daughter’s very expensive professional Nikon equipment, I ordered my own camera, the Nikon D5100 with a metal mount 55 to 300 lens, which Al says will probably pull my arms out of their sockets. The 18-55 will hopefully get those great wide angle views that I will need in the vast expanses of the north country. I read everything I could find comparing Nikon DSLR’s and appreciated Al’s link to Ken Rockwell’s site, a truly amazing resource.

Of course, the biggest job seems to be thinking about and planning our route. I have played and adjusted and researched and am still fiddling with the thing a bit, trying to get an idea of the time we will need to really do all that we want to do and yet still leave some loose, unscheduled time to take advantage of whatever amazing moments choose to present themselves to us. According to the “Streets and Trips” plan, we are now up to 39 days and approximately 6500 miles for the MoHo, with some possible side trips in the Tracker that aren’t included. Since I am still working part time, I can’t have a completely open-ended trip, and besides, Rocky Point in summer is one of the best places in the world and we don’t want to miss all of it.

I have been sitting with the hard copy maps, Mo’s favorite, the laptop, and the 2011 Milepost, trying to get an idea of where we might stay along the way, how many miles a day we can expect to drive, and what we don’t want to miss. I really do love the planning part, and hope that all the planning won’t interfere with the spontaneous, wild moments I hope to experience as well. I’m following along right now as several RV’rs travel through Alaska, and it’s really interesting to see the different perspective of people who are even traveling together on the same route. I’m sure our trip will have it’s own flavor as well.

In the midst of working my regular job and planning for the upcoming trip, I have been gardening, planting goodies in the greenhouse, and watching tiny seeds sprout. The days are still about 20 degrees below normal, and when I open the door to the greenhouse, my glasses fog up immediately with warmth and humidity. At night it stays above freezing, even though we have had frosts in the more open areas of the property. I planted a row of new roses along the driveway to replace the sad twigs that couldn’t handle the hard winter. The new roses are a hardy shrub variety that are grown on their own root stock and are reputed to bloom with as little as 4 hours of daily sunlight. With our big forest, sunlight is always an issue for blooming plants. I also bought a killer 4 gallon backpack sprayer so that I can saturate the property with nasty smelling “Liquid Fence” to thwart the deer and rabbits. I’ll let you know how it works when the summer is over and the dry fall brings in those ravenous critters to eat everything in sight.

With snow in the mountains, 4-wheelers in the forest, and traffic everywhere, I am grateful to be spending this holiday quietly at home after an overnight visit from my daughter and granddaughter. For a couple of girls often plugged in to electronic stuff, a game of dominoes last night on the dining table was a bit different, and I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe with some of their antics. A bacon and waffle breakfast was just the send off for them to return home and enjoy a much deserved day off.

The sun does come out now and then, the grass is getting much greener, and I even spent most of the day outside yesterday enjoying the colors of spring.

Building the Greenhouse and Spring Comes to Rocky Point

I am still learning how to embed a SmugMug slideshow, without much luck. Yeah, I know I can do it with Picasa, but I am stubborn. So you can try out this link if you want to see the process greenhouse slideshow on SmugMug

Spring has finally come to Rocky Point. Even though we have fits of snow and hail predicted for tonight and tomorrow, the fact that the daffodils are blooming is a sure sign that spring is winning. Maybe. Mo actually started up the big mower this week and mowed all the lawns, so that is another good sign. It has been a long, cold spring most everywhere in the west, I think, with temperatures averaging 10 to 20 degrees lower than normal, and most flowering plants running 2 to 3 weeks behind their normal schedule.

One more sure sign of true spring is the bursting of the aspen leaves, and there are huge drifts of aspen along the lowlands bordering Upper Klamath Lake. I saw a faint hint of green yesterday, just a breath of a cloud of green on the tips of the aspen branches. Ahhh. Finally.

I am truly excited about the greenhouse. The raised beds are 12 inches deep, and I have a good amount of square footage to attempt some close cropped, raised bed gardening. Because the soil is thick and rich, you can plant veggies much closer together, and that also keeps the weeds down a lot. I just discovered another lovely little treat, I can sit on a 2×12 bench and have access to just about everything without having to be on my knees all the time. I’m tickled.

On another note, a recent commenter thought the greenhouse was a great idea since produce was going to get more and more expensive with the huge increases in fuel costs. Hmmm. Wondering just how much my tomatoes will cost this year. We didn’t build the greenhouse to save money, but so that we could have any kind of veggie garden at all in our cool, forested, animal infested environment. Did I say infested? Oops. Wildlife in the forest is supposed to be one of the benefits, but as a lover of gardens, I am not quite sure about that.

Back to the cost of the tomato. The greenhouse cost 699 on sale at Harbor Freight. (Do I count the gas to drive twice over to Medford to buy it and then pick it up?) The 2×12 untreated fir we used cost 71. (We couldn’t find a local supplier for cedar or redwood and didn’t want to use treated lumber). The gravel was part of the load Mo purchased for our road, so I guess I won’t count that part. The soil cost a total of 130 for composted dairy waste and topsoil. Labor? well, we won’t count that at all, but safe to say it was more than going to the store to buy a tomato. I spent about 23 bucks on some heritage seeds and about ten bucks on starts, and who knows how much more I will spend. I’m an impulsive crazy spender when it comes to plants and gardens. But for now, lets just say we are into the greenhouse to the tune of $935.00. Since I have six tomato plants, and can expect maybe a max of 5 pounds per plant, I am paying about $31.00 per pound for tomatoes, with some lettuce, spinach, herbs and other stuff thrown in. I really don’t expect to get 30 pounds of tomatoes, but who knows.

All I know for sure, is that it is a deal at any price and worth every single penny. I will have all the stuff for fresh salsa, and basil to my hearts content, one of my most fragrant favorite herbs. I won’t waste a bunch of lettuce because I buy too much because it is too far to town, and that will certainly make Mo happier. I’m awful about buying too much produce. I haven’t had a real vegetable garden in years, and have no desire to return to the Toro Tiller days when I gardened in a 2 acre plot. This is just perfect. Perfect. Well, at least hopefully it is perfect. I guess I’ll find out after a summer of trying it out.

While we worked on the beds yesterday, I also decided it was time to move the bird feeders away from any and all lawn and hung a wire from two big firs out in the National Forest just beyond our property. I now have about 6 feeders, with different kinds of food to hopefully attract a few more songbirds. The blackbirds and squirrels were making quick work of my bird food stash and they loved throwing seed everywhere for the chipmunks and rabbits to find. Too much scratching going on out there, for sure, and the flowers were suffering. I keep trying for bird photos, and am embarrassed to put anything up at all, but just so you have an idea, here is the bird feeding station. Gotta get that camera soon! So far we have lots of grosbeaks, chickadees, finches, blackbirds, jays, and some other little ones that I haven’t identified yet. Time to get out the binoculars and the Sibley bird book! After all, we are in the Klamath Basin, one of the birding capitals of the country.

The daffodils are blooming, the birds are singing, and the veggies are growing. What more could I ask for? No snow?? hah, not a chance.

Spring snows and off to the beach!

It’s been a week and a half since I had the chance to sit down to my personal computer and think about writing something about the passing days. They have been so full. The sadness in the southeast, and the devastation and lost lives was heartbreaking. With no time for blogging or reading blogs, the news about Al and Kelly’s Max still came in through Facebook and I was saddened again. Somehow when sadness intervenes I go quiet, it’s hard to write about my “stuff” when others are going through so much. This morning the sun is shining, and Mo and I are packing the MoHo for a trip to the Oregon Coast, and it’s time to start writing again!

Of course, as mentioned in the last post, I have been working three weeks straight through, with last week requiring a trip to town every single day. It was time for the formal Progress Review for the Klamath Soil Survey, and I couldn’t manage that one from home. I loved every minute of it, long days going over all the details of years of mapping the basin, and this time I was only a participant, with no stress, no management responsibilities. Yeah, I am still working after retirement, but I don’t have any of the stress of the job. Chris is a great project leader, had the review well prepared, and the regional specialist who reviewed us is one of my favorites. We have a long history going back many years.

The daily trip to town was a bit daunting, for a couple of reasons. Spring keeps trying to show up around here, but as the joke going around the internet says, it isn’t installing properly. I woke up on Thursday to an inch of frozen snow and ice, and slid all the way to town on that stuff. Ugh. Since I left early, I had time to slow down and appreciate the gorgeous skies and blue waters of Klamath Lake, and even pulled over a few times for photos. I kept thinking, “Just slow down and appreciate the beauty instead of complaining about the snow”. Then I slipped on the ice and managed to keep from sliding under the car with some fairly weird body moves. I was rewarded for my efforts by suddenly looking into the eyes of a blue heron right in front of me, trying to fish, and wondering where the snow came from. Of course, 30 miles each way isn’t bad when the weather is good and the sun is shining, but when gas is at 3.95 per gallon and I am driving my Dakota it gets a bit depressing. The Dakota gets about 15 mpg, so you do the math.

While I was intently focused on work stuff, Mo was valiantly working away on the greenhouse. We had a bit of a funny start with the project, funny unless you are the one wielding the shovel. We decided on a location for the house, and my job was to remove the sod from the 10×12 space. Took me a couple of partial days to get the job done and I was extremely proud of myself. Mo came in the house after I was done, looking sheepish. Seems as though we had located the house straddling the official property line, and half of it would be in the “road” if the county ever decided to enforce the rules. We thought the house would be something we could move around at will, but after reviewing the complex directions, Mo decided that she didn’t really want to ever move it once it was built. So, I got out the trusty sharp shooter spade, and once again lifted a 10 x 12 square foot area of sod. This time, Mo helped move it all after I did the cutting and it only took us a day. When I came home from work the following night, Mo had faithfully replaced all the sod squares in the original site. By mid summer, no one will ever know we tried to build a greenhouse in the road.

The rest of the week, while I worked, Mo patiently fiddled with the instructions and put that thing together. I swear it was like some sort of evil erector set. The directions were ok, but the drawings were a bit weird. I think Mo spent 3 hours trying to understand just how to put the top beam together. The kit is all screws and bolts and straight pieces of aluminum. It’s a good thing I wasn’t the one doing it, or it would still be in a pile somewhere!

I am excited about the project, though. When I got home from work on Friday it was completely finished, and now we are going to town today to buy the raised bed materials for the interior. We also decided to put down a floor of 1/2 inch hardware cloth wire to try to keep out the voles and rabbits. The sun was shining beautifully yesterday, but the wind was cold. I stepped into the greenhouse and reveled in the warm, humid air. I will have at least one 10×12 space of deer free, frost free gardening, at least as long as I remember to never leave that wide door open!

Last weekend we took some time out from work and greenhouse building to celebrate Easter with family. My daughter and son-in-law, my two grandkids, and my sister and niece all came out to Rocky Point for a celebratory brunch and Easter Egg hunt. We had a great time, and I made Mo’s favorite orange walnut coffee cake to go with the zip-lock bag omelets. I love those crazy things, always perfect for fun and laughs in a crowd. The kids then colored all the eggs and Kevin and Melody played Easter Bunny hiding them in the yard. We had some moments of snow flurries, but the sun came out warm and bright in time for our festivities. Then the kids decided to hide the eggs for the adults and we had lots of laughs together over that one.

I think the funniest moment of the day, however, was trying to explain to my daughter’s Thai exchange student why a rabbit would lay eggs. It’s hard enough to explain to our own kids, but when you add the cultural differences it’s even funnier. We finally went to the internet to discover that the tradition goes back to the middle ages and morphed into the Easter Rabbit sometime during the 18th century in Germany. It was perfect family time, even though I rarely manage to get all my family together at once, I am still so grateful for the ones that live close by.

The sun finally came out and in spite of the cold temperatures, Mo managed to get the MoHo all washed and shiny and I cleaned out the interior. The MoHo is five years old, and now and then something needs replaced. We had the original CO2 detector that is supposed to only last five years. Sure enough, it started screaming at strange moments having nothing to do whatsoever with CO2. The problem is that the original unit is no longer made, and the new one is a different size than our original. Mo had to cut out a bigger square in the wall to install the new one, but now all the green lights are on and there are no weird screams in the night. She had to find the replacement on the internet, since the local RV shops only carry the type that have both CO2 and propane detectors in one unit. Dumb. We already have a propane detector near the floor and the refrigerator, where propane might actually show up. Now we are all good to go, with safe detectors. I remember the explosion in an RV at the Sands RV Resort in Desert Hot Springs last winter that was caused by leaking propane. Good detectors are important!

I now have a whole week without work, and Mo and I decided it was a perfect time to head for the coast. We miss the beach, and this time we are going to Brookings, where Mo once had a condo overlooking the ocean. We will camp at Harris Beach State Park for a few days, and then drive north to South Beach where we will meet her brother and his wife for a couple of days of more family fun. Of course the kayaks are going on this trip, and we hope to test the waters in the Chetko and Pistol Rivers and maybe Brookings Harbor. The best part of this plan is that we have sunshine and temperatures predicted in the 70’s! On the Oregon Coast!! Some of our fellow RV’rs haven’t been so lucky lately, so our timing is perfect.

Kayaks on our lake at last

The weather has been so changeable lately, but the change that hasn’t yet happened is warm sunny days. Often we have our kayaks in the water as early as March, but this year has been long and cold. We even hauled the new boats to California in February, hoping for some good estuary kayaking, but it was not to be. The boats got lots of miles on top the Tracker, but not a single dip into the water thanks to high winds and low tides.

In the midst of soaking rains and occasional snow flurries, we had a day of brilliant sunshine, with temps maxing out at 50 F. At first I thought about trying to get out on the water around 11, good time for a lunch break from the home office for me, but a short step outside indicated that 40 degrees and a 10 mph wind wasn’t exactly conducive to being on the water. I finished my day of work, and by 4pm, while the sun was fading into the clouds of a coming storm, the winds had died to practically nothing.

Home for us is just south of Rocky Point in the forest.

For the first time since we got our new kayaks, we loaded them up in my truck and drove the long 1/4 mile to the boat launch at Rocky Point Resort just down the road. When we got the new boats, we also bought new lightweight Werner paddles, and during the first few minutes on the water, they took a bit of getting used to. It felt like there was nothing to hold onto as I paddled, but after a couple of hours out on the water, it was wonderful. The new Swift Adirondacks are a foot longer and maybe a couple of inches wider than our old Perception Acadias, but they are 15 pounds lighter. We did manage to launch them last fall right after they arrived, but this was the first launch on our home territory, and my first launch of the replacement boat delivered by Swift in January. I wrote about why I needed a replacement boat back here in November.

Ahhh. I can’t explain that feeling of gliding silently, and rhythmically along still water, surrounded by mountains only accompanied by the water birds. The sandhill cranes are hollering in the marsh along with blue herons. The Canada geese are everywhere, and many types of ducks. My little camera isn’t so great at the long bird shots, and as I slid along yesterday, I really looked forward to my coming ‘DSLR with a telephoto’ days. We spotted an eagle not far from shore, and some ospreys were fishing for their evening meal.

This time, instead of traveling north along Recreation Creek to the springs, we took a southern route into Pelican Bay along the western edge of Upper Klamath Lake. It has been a great water year, and the lake is higher than I have seen it in many years. We kayak here often, but everything looked completely different with the high water. The snow on Mt McLaughlin was thick and deep, and looking up, I remembered the hot August day that Mo and I hiked to the top of that mountain.

Even though McLaughlin is only 9450 feet tall, it stands majestically above the surrounding Cascade Mountains and is visible from Medford, from Klamath Falls, and even from California along Highway 97 north of Weed. It’s the remnant of an old volcano, glaciated to it’s current shape, and most of the time, has a snow-capped summit.

Back in 2003, Mo and I had only known each other a few months when we decided it was time to climb that mountain. My sister just laughed out loud when I asked her to join us. “I’m not crazy enough to even THINK about trying to climb that mountain”. That summer Mo and I were of course just young things, of course, and we were up for anything. At 63 years old, Mo was younger than I am now! It was a long day, and a gorgeous climb. Many people say they have climbed McLaughlin, but often they only go to the last landing before the steep rocky summit to the peak. From the landing, there is no trail, only huge boulders with faint arrows painted here and there. The forest service tries to remove those arrows since McLaughlin is in the Sky Lakes Wilderness Area, and they don’t help much anyway.

It was a daunting climb, and about 200 feet from the top, I got sick and weak, and gave out. Mo climbed on ahead of me to the peak while I tried to recuperate. A couple of climbers came along, one of them saying, “You should go down now, because you will only get sicker if you go higher and altitude sickness lasts for hours”. Another one said, “You should go to the top, because you will hate yourself if you don’t”, and gave me some Gatorade. I decided that I was going to do it, no matter what, and just about that time Mo returned from the summit and said, “Sure, I’ll go up with you.” You gotta remember, Mo is almost 6 years older than me, and even though I worked outdoors in the field for most of my career, she was a PE teacher, so often is in the lead on these kinds of excursions!

So we hiked over the huge, room sized boulders to the summit, where I crawled out across the dizzying space to sit with Mo for our summit photo. The 360 degree view was amazing in all directions. The mountain is visible from the road very near our house, and often we look up at the sharp summit and say, “Gee, I’m glad we did that and don’t have to do it again.” It took us 12 hours round trip, and our knees didn’t much like the down part on the return trip.

Yesterday as we kayaked across the bay with McLaughlin towering over the landscape, we thought again, “Gee, I’m glad we already did that!”

Cameras, computers and other such stuff

It’s been a busy week for me, working a bit more than 40 hours like real folks, although I still managed to do more than half of that time from home. Working with the current project leader for a soil survey project I managed a few years ago is actually a lot of fun. Chris is a great guy, a smart and savvy soil scientist with good ideas. We spent two full days this week putting our heads together to refine the detailed descriptions of the geomorphology of the area.

Understanding the landscape and how it was formed is crucial to understanding the soils that form on those landscapes. Part of the data associated with a published soil survey is detailed information about the landscape for each soil that occurs in the area. After our review, my job this week is to get all that information in NASIS, the big database in the sky. It keeps my brain running at full speed and makes it a bit hard for me to sleep at night.

But now it is the weekend, and I promised myself I would refrain from firing up NASIS and trying to keep looking at all that data. Yeah, probably boring as heck to anyone but the few of us involved in the process, but it explains why I speed read blogs and sometimes don’t take the time to comment. Sorry folks, really, I love your blogs. I am praying that I never need a knee replacement after reading Laurie’s detailed account of what she and Odel have been doing after his operation. They are doing a great job, both of them, I just hope I never have to do it. I have been enjoying the migration of the Canadians back to their home territory and the folks still wandering across Texas trying to avoid the fires. There are several women RV’rs who are departing on their big full-time journeys, and several buying new rigs. I love reading about their adventures. I can’t possibly link to all my favorites without missing someone, so I won’t even try.

It is wonderful to have the MoHo safely at home again.

I love Rick’s detailed instructions and comments about the state of the current computer/internet world. I searched his blog to find all his posts about Windows 7. One of the comments that he often makes has to do with all the new software that will only run with 7 and won’t run on XP. I had to pay big bucks to take my old computer from Vista back to XP so I could run the government software that will ONLY run on XP, so I have been missing out on some of the newer bells and whistles that Rick discussed, specifically the new Live Writer and Internet Explorer.

While we were traveling last month my Dell Inspiron kept feeling really hot, and I worried that if that computer goes (it’s five years old) I would be in big trouble. Ahhh. Solution. Buy a new laptop with Windows 7. I have a great friend here in town who is an IT dude and he put me on to a business machine, a lightweight Dell Vostro, with all the bells and whistles and a shiny cherry red exterior to boot. Also, when I got home from our trip I discovered that the government has updated NASIS to a new version that will run on the XP that is hidden inside the Professional Windows 7.

Bingo! I ordered the new machine and decided to keep the old one just for NASIS, but if it dies, I’ll have a backup. Whew! Of course, a new machine always means more computer time, and I have been moving programs and photos and documents and re-installing programs and trying to find old disks for programs that I forgot I had. I do love Picasa, and immediately downloaded the newest version to my new Windows 7 computer, only to discover that all the “people” tags did not migrate to the new Picasa with the 60 gig of photos that I have been tagging diligently. Big sigh on that one. I wonder if anyone knows anything about that? Rick?

Lots of lawn to rake

I am working as much as I am allowed as a retiree, and saving up the bucks for our big trip to Alaska this summer. It’s only two months away now, with a departure date of July 6th, after the Fourth of July holiday.

Klamath Falls is having a huge celebration this year, with some changes to the parade and a big family bbq in Veteran’s Park before the fireworks. I am so glad to be here for that to share with my kids and grandkids. I love that holiday, and always insisted on family day picnics where I made the teenagers do three legged races. They always rolled their eyes and thought I was nuts, but it was a holdover from the church picnics of my childhood. Melody called me up all excited. She is on the town committee planning the picnic and said, “Mom, we are having three legged races, you HAVE to come!”. I’ll be there and will race with my daughter and probably laugh till my sides hurt.

Lots of trees makes for very few sunny sites to locate the greenhouse

Sitting here at my desk this morning, I see dirty patches of snow on the shady part of the road, but bright sunshine on the grass. I raked a lot last weekend, and Mo finished up all the lawns during the week. It’s beautiful except for the vole damage. Those dang little critters just make a total mess of the grass when the snow load is heavy, deep, and long lasting.

One area they tore up especially is the 10 by 12 space where the greenhouse will be. We are going to stake that area off today, and my job will be to get what is left of the sod up and leveled. The chickadees are here in force, and the squirrels are already raiding the feeders. Big sigh again. One more year of squirrel battles, rabbit battles, and deer battles are ahead of us. Hopefully we can keep all those critters out of the greenhouse!

Like many of us out there, I read Al’s (The Bayfield Bunch) often, gleaning information about all sorts of things, not the least of which is photography. If you search his blog for the word “camera” you will get 8 pages of posts about this topic! I once was a “photographer”, darkroom and all, but now I just “take pictures”. My old fabulous film camera Canon A-1 lies buried in a case in a cabinet. I haven’t had it out for years now. Al’s photos inspire me, though, along with lots of other great blog photographers, and I decided that I can no longer be satisfied with my little Nikon point and shoot. It takes nice photos, but the fine detail and perfect focus isn’t there, the telephoto isn’t enough, and the lens bends ocean horizons on the edges. No amount of Picasa fiddling will fix that. My choice of camera was the same as Al, I decided on the Nikon D90, and have been searching for the best price, hoping to manage a purchase before we travel the wide open landscapes of Canada and Alaska, hopefully filled with wildlife that will require a telephoto and vistas that will need a wide angle lens.

I fertilized the rhodies a lot last year, looks like we have flower buds

Talking with my other daughter yesterday, the one now driving airplane engines all over the country with her husband, yielded a surprise. In one of her other lives she was a professional portrait and wedding photographer and she offered her high end Nikon equipment to me for the Alaska trip. Whew! I can’t even remember what the models are, but it’s top notch, one with a metal body that will be heavier than the D90 but will give me the chance to see if I really want to lug a DSLR around while traveling.

She also made very clear that her telephoto lens is an auto focus anti vibration thingy that is about $2,000 worth of fancy. Whew again! I just hope I don’t get mugged while traveling. She laughed and said, “Now Mom, the only bad part is that you have to drop it off on your way back from Alaska.” Well, Duh! But at least I don’t have to come up with plus or minus $1,000 bucks for the D90 before we leave. Yay!