The Palmer Rail Trail

There is a trail near my house called The Palmer Rail Trail, named thusly because it follows the old railroad tracks that lead out of town and up towards Sutton. Back in the day, the trains carried coal from the Buffalo Mines down to Anchorage, to be shipped out for the war efforts. The railroad abandoned the line when the mines shut down in the 1960s, even leaving some cars tipped over beside the old tracks.

The trail itself is just around 6 miles, leading from just beyond my sister’s house out to the Moose Creek Campground. It’s a great trail, for the most part, but there are several “Washouts” that are quite tricky. Places where the gravel has avalanched down the sides of the cliff to the river below. They are passable, but you have to be very careful in doing so.

I have done parts of the trail numerous times, mostly on the Palmer side but also on the Sutton side. This was my first time doing the entire trail, though! I’ll be honest, I was a little nervous. I haven’t done a long hike like that in a while and had no idea what my head was going to think about it.

A local tour company called Revel Trek Tours organized the hike, leaving a van at the campground at the end to take us all back home again once we finished hiking. I have hiked with them before, and have enjoyed their company greatly – in fact, I particularly like the founder and hope to be able to call her my friend one day. It feels weird to pay somebody to hike with me – but that’s what I did. It’s all good…

We met at the trailhead at 9:00 on Saturday morning and headed on our way. The hiking was nice and easy, with our guide setting a rather brisk pace. We chatted amongst ourselves, getting to know each other: Stan, from Anchorage; Connie, from Palmer; Susan, our guide; and me.

We stopped a few times for a snack and/or a rest. We helped each other across each of the washouts (I could NOT have done that alone!). We shared our lunches with each other (I had carrot sticks, bell peppers slices, zucchini sticks, hummus, and almonds). We made sure we were each staying hydrated. We shared mosquito repellant. We told stories and shared experiences, both on and off the trails.

Finally, around 2:30, we made it to the campground. Susan got out a thermos full of nice, cold lemonade to share while we sat and enjoyed the fact that we had succeeded. After a quick drive back to our starting point where my car was parked, I was home before 4:00.

Yay me!

Garage Sale

If I ever again say I want to have a Garage Sale, just shoot me. Shoot me right then and there, and put me out of my misery, because I have obviously become deranged and have no idea what I’m doing anymore.

Oh. My. God. What an ordeal that was!

Mother moved out in January, and we have just been kind of chucking things into her rooms as we find them “to deal with later”. So when I say there was a lot of stuff, I mean THERE WAS A LOT OF STUFF. Some of it was good stuff, but most of it was just stuff.

Both Bryan and I were feeling very overwhelmed by it all, so I decided that we would just spend an hour each day after work, starting on Monday and going until Thursday. Friday was our regular day off, so that entire day was reserved for putting the finishing touches on it. Saturday and Sunday was the actual sale.

On Monday we tackled Mom’s Bedroom. We emptied out all her desks, dressers, and tables. We hauled most of it out to the garage where we had 5 big tables set up. We moved some furniture into his new office space to be used until he can get the furniture he really wants. We hauled several garbage bags out to the trash. We cleaned up and tidied up as we went. It was exhausting work, so by the time our hour was up, we were more than ready to call it a day.

On Tuesday we hit the Red Room. Bryan had to go to work in town that day, so actually it was just me. I emptied dressers, moved tables, hauled trash, and tidied up as I went. Unfortunately, this was the room that the mice loved best – probably because mom was hiding food all over the place in there. There was mouse poop EVERYWHERE. All over the place: in the closet, in the dresser, under the bed, in the sewing machine, on the picture frames up on the wall even.

On Wednesday we dealt with the kitchen. When we moved in, 7-8 years ago, we had combined three households together into one, so we had a lot of duplicates. Three sets of dishes. Three sets of silverware. Three sets of pots/pans/cookware. You get the picture. Since we were having a garage sale anyway, we took the opportunity to pare things down considerably!

On Thursday we dealt with the rest of the house. All the little nick-nacks and doilies and doodads that Mother had collected over the years. She would go to Bishop’s Attic on a daily basis and bring home the oddest things. She thought they were pretty, so she would find a flat surface somewhere that didn’t have anything on it yet – and there it would be.

By the time Friday rolled around, we realized that the 5 large tables I had borrowed from Noel were not going to be enough, so we got out two of our own tables. Then we had to rearrange things so that they could be easily accessible inside the garage since the weather forecast called for rain all weekend.

We moved larger, heavier items out onto the front porch. Bryan hung a pole from the roof for me to hang up some coats and dresses and such. He cleaned out the back shed and had a few tools & whatnots that wouldn’t mind getting wet, so he laid them out on the lawn.

Saturday morning we put up signs pointing the way to our garage sale! I ended up spending most of the weekend at the cash box while Bryan came in and out, putzing in the back shed or gathering up more stuff from the other half of the garage.

Amazingly, we did okay. We did not sell everything, not even close, but we did sell a lot – and were able to deposit almost &700.00 into Mother’s bank account!

My New Chair

For my birthday this year, he got me a new chair!

It was pretty cute, actually. He made a little toy chair out of Legos that he wrapped up in a small box for me to unwrap. I was going to take a picture of it for you all, but he dismantled it and put it away before I could get to it. Oh well.

The next weekend saw us heading off to the big city to find my chair. We looked at numerous chairs in several different stores, but no one had what I was really looking for: apparently wing-back chairs have gone out of style.

This is my old chair: which is broken, and I can’t find anybody who is able to fix it. Hence buying a new chair. I had hoped to find something just like it, to no avail.

I did eventually find one that I liked, both comfy enough to curl up and sleep in and will look good in the room it will eventually go in to. We paid for it and arranged for us to pick it up the following week.

With lots of help from Viktor, he was able to get it put together for me. We have it temporarily set up in our living room, but that will change as soon as the renovations to his office are complete.

I also got an ottoman thingy to go with it. My thinking was that not only can I rest my feet on it, but hopefully the cats can scratch on THAT and not on the CHAIR. They actually love it, but they also love the chair. We’ll see how long it lasts…

Matanuska Lakes Trail

It was such a beautiful day the other day, we just had to get out and take a walk. We chose to go to the Matanuska Lakes park and wandered around for an hour or so. Really a nice day!

Office Remodel Progress

He’s making quite a bit of progress on his new office! It’s been a long hard journey, but it’s beginning to look quite impressive! Just for reference, here’s what it looked like when we began this whole transformation process.

For the tongue & groove wall, he had 75 boards delivered to the house, each one 15 feet in length. He spent several very long nights prepping them for the contractor: first he had to sand them all smooth, then apply a conditioner/pre-stain on them all, then put on the actual stain, and then a poly-urethane coating. Once all that dried enough, he sanded them all again and applied the second layer of the poly-urethane coating.

Once the boards were ready, the contractor installed them in just two days, spending the third day working on the flooring and the trim. I must be honest here and admit that I was not liking the color choices that my partner picked out – but seeing it all in person, I fully admit that it looks fantastic! He did a great job.

Having added ¾” to the wall means that, of course, all the outlets need to be extended out to be flush with the new walls, so he has a week or so of work to do all of that. He also bought really nice wooden cover plates to match the tongue & groove – and they all need to be prepped before they can be installed. He is working on that at the same time that he works on the electrical stuff.

Happy Birthday to Mother!

The month of May has always been quite the busy month in our family. My niece Katy’s birthday is on the 14^th, my birthday is on the 15^th, Mother’s birthday is on the 18^th, and somewhere in there is Mother’s Day.

For her birthday this year, I got several of us together for a visit to Mother’s room at the Pioneer Home. My sister Noel brought her little corgi named Willow, my niece Tara brought her ginormous great pyrenees named Maurice, and my other niece Katy brought her two children Henry (age 3) and Eloise (almost 1). Mother really had a good time and had big smiles on the whole time we were there; but she had just taken quite a bad fall a few days prior, so she really did not feel well at all.

For Mother’s Day, the home held a Mother’s Day Tea which my sister and I got to attend together. They handed out big floppy hats and beautiful roses to each of the residents, so Mother chose a sparkly turquoise hat and a cream-colored rose. The treats they served along with the tea were all quite scrumptious and just small enough that Mother had a bite or two of three different ones, but did not really like the tea. She’s more of a coffee kind of person!

The Festive Dinner this month was a very well attended event – more so than the ones we’d been to earlier. Both my partner and I were able to talk Mother in to going with us, but she was very tired and would probably rather have stayed in bed that night. Regardless, she enjoyed the Halibut and Asparagus, but did not tough the potatoes and only ate half of her salad.  

Birthday Books

My partner has always said it is so hard to buy books for me because he never knows if I’ve already read them or not. Up to this point, he’s done quite well in piking out ones that I have not yet seen – but it had to happen eventually, and this birthday was the one. He chose three books (all in one series) that unfortunately are already sitting on my shelves.

So today we headed on into town to exchange them for ones I do not have. I was quite excited, truth be told. I put together a list of about 10 books to choose from, and the guy at the bookstore was very helpful. Here are the ones I ended up with!

In a tiny farm on the edge of the miserable village of East Grasby, Isabella Nagg is just trying to get on with her tiny, miserable existence. Dividing her time between tolerating a feckless husband, fending off snide neighbors, and cooking up “scrunge,” Isabella can’t help but think that there might be something more to life. When Mr. Nagg returns home with a spell book purloined from the local wizard, she What harm could a little magic do? As Isabella embarks on a journey of self-discovery with a grouchy cat-like companion, Darkshire’s imagination runs wild, plunging readers into a delightfully deranged world full of enchantment and folklore—as well as goblins, capitalism, and sorcery.

New Brunswick, 1934. When a cook in a logging camp finds an orphaned baby bear, he brings it home to his wife, who names the cub Bruno and raises him alongside her newborn daughter, Pearly Everlasting. During the Great Depression, amidst severe poverty and dangerous work conditions, Pearly’s family and the woodsmen form a close-knit community that embraces the tame, young bear in their camp. But when a new camp supervisor—who increasingly endangers the lives of the loggers for profit—arrives, he is less accepting of Bruno. When the supervisor is found dead, Bruno is blamed, and soon after is kidnapped and sold to an animal trader. Pearly, now a teenager, has no choice but to find Bruno and sets off on a hazardous solo journey through the forest—her first trip to “the Outside”—to rescue him. To make her way home again, Pearly will have to tramp more than fifty miles through ice and snow, elude the malevolent spirit of Jack in the Dark and confront the modern-day cruelty of villagers fearful of her family’s way of life. Over those harrowing miles, Pearly will discover what it really means to be family to a bear.

Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books and small comforts in a mint-colored house in Portland, Oregon. One morning on his daily walk he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior center that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he's known since retiring, he begins volunteering at the center. Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob, and following a happenstance brush with a painful complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed. Behind Bob Comet's straight-man facade is the story of an unhappy child's runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian's vocation, and of the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses. Bob's experiences are imbued with melancholy but also a bright, sustained comedy; he has a talent for locating bizarre and outsize players to welcome onto the stage of his life.

Happy Birthday to ME!

May 15 was my birthday: I turned 60 this year. It seems so odd to me; I don’t feel that old – but the person who looks back at me in the mirror each morning is certainly beginning to look it. But that’s okay. I worked hard to get here, and I welcome each and every one of those years.

To celebrate this year, my partner and I packed up the car and headed up north to the little town of Talkeetna. The cabin we rented is called Trapper John’s Cabin. It doesn’t look like much, but it has actual plumbing (even a nice bathtub!) and a full kitchen and everything. It was just perfect for us.

He is such a sweetie = he had arranged to have flowers waiting on the table for me and had brought along several gifts for me to open. I got several books to read, some chocolates to munch on, some tea to drink, and the promise of a new chair for my upcoming “library”. I am well pleased with all of it.

Our usual entertainment for the evening is a movie, and I had brought several Star Trek DVDs to choose from. The cabin did have a television, but we had difficulties hooking up our portable DVD player, so ended up playing cards instead. And yes, he beat me thoroughly.

The one thing we look forward to each time we go to Talkeetna is eating breakfast at the Roadhouse! The owner is a very sweet lady named Trisha, and she is an excellent cook. The meals are always very generous and tasty. Seating in the roadhouse is … well, darn. There’s a word for it, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it is. Basically, you sit at a long table along with everybody else, whether you know them or not.

The weather was great: not too hot, not too rainy – so we decided to check out a trail that we’d always said we wanted to try. It turned out to be a very nice one – a 3.5-mile loop, very well groomed and not muddy at all. The lake was very beautiful; he was checking it out with the though of coming back one day with a fishing pole!