The Palmer Wine Walk

The Palmer Wine Walk was this past Friday, and I joined my friends Heather and Tammy for a fun evening of wine & conversation. It’s hosted by the Palmer Museum and a bunch of the local shops around town.

Entrants to the Wine Walk all got a wrist band that allowed them 8 pours along with a beautifully hand-painted wine glass they got to keep. I was the designated driver so did not drink anything (my head doesn’t like wine, anyway). Each stop along the route offered up a glass of wine paired with some tasty tidbits.

We started off at 5:00 and ended up quitting early at 8:30 so Heather could go pick up her daughter. We thoroughly enjoyed walking around town and visiting all the little shops along the way, some of which we’d never been to before. It was a lot of walking, too! All the way from one end of town to the other and then back again.

We had a great time, and are already making room on our calendars for next year’s walk.

Baby Shower

 My niece had a Baby Shower yesterday up at her parent’s house. Lots of fun & games, good food & conversation, and apparently even the baby wanted to be there (she’s starting her contractions).

We don’t know just yet what the sex is so you’ll just have to wait along with the rest of us to find out what the name is.

Playing with Macro

I’ve had this phone for months, but I’m only just now getting around to playing with the Macro features of the camera. My brother Stewart would be so proud of me (at least, I hope he would have been).

This spider was barely the size of a dime – but the macro just zooms right in there, with no shaking or anything!

This bee was kind enough to allow me to shoot a few shots of her while she worked.

And who doesn’t love fireweed?

Sheep Mountain Trail System

We both got the day off (4^th of July) so decided to spend the day together out hiking! We had been up at Sheep Mountain over the winter and had been talking about going back during the summer, so that’s what we did.

We got there around 9:30 and ordered a yummy breakfast to fortify ourselves for the hike. He had an omelet while I had scrambled eggs. Each plate came with some homemade bread and homemade jam!

The trail head was just up from their cabins and was a very nicely maintained multi-use trail.

We started off on the Serpentine Trail, then hit the Thriller loop up to the top where we veered off-trail until we found the creek.

After a brief rest, we headed back down the other side of the Thriller loop until we got to the Corkscrew.

I’m thinking in total we hiked maybe 3.5 or 4 miles, give or take a bit. It was a gorgeous day: clear blue skies and just the slightest of breeze.

I Won! I Won! WooHoo!

Guess What!! I won a drawing!

I enter them all the time, and most times I don’t win – but this time I did. This one was hosted by both the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Premier Auctions and was their Father’s Day Give-Away. The winner (that would be ME) got to choose between either a $500.00 gift certificate at AllureDay Spa or a $500.00 gift certificate with the Kenai River Cowboys.

Can you guess which one I chose? That’s right: The Fishing Charter!

Bryan is working with our schedule, the fish’s schedule, and the Cowboy’s schedule now – trying to pick the optimal time to go. 

What we’ll most likely do is head down after work one day in the middle of the week, camp out somewhere in our tent, fish all day the next day, then head on home after that. 

He says we’ll be pretty wiped out after an entire day on the river, so we may end up camping out that night again and heading home the following day. If he can schedule it for one of our Fridays Off, that would save me a vacation day, too.

My Cousin Paul

We had a very pleasant visit the other day with my Cousin Paul and his wife Karen. They live in Montana but had come up to spend a week with their son Chris and his family up in Fairbanks.

This was my first-time meeting Karen, and I am happy to say that she was great. She fit right in and had no problem chatting with us all for a good 4-5 hours.

They were here on a Wednesday, which meant that most of us were working. But both Kelly and Noel managed to take time off during their lunch break to come over, so that was good. Sadly Reed was not able to make it – but maybe next time he can.

Vic & Anthony's

Apparently when you own a timeshare, the resorts treat you as a V.I.P. – a special speedier check-in, your own concierge, a “Welcome Home” dinner, and lots of other perks. This time, the Cancun Resort gave us a $200.oo gift certificate towards dinner at a place of our choosing: we chose Vic & Anthony’s, an up-scale steak house at the Golden Nugget Casino.

The restaurant was nice – quite beautiful, actually – but in my opinion it was too dark. Every patron in the place had to use the flashlight on their cell phones just to read the menu. That gets very annoying to one who is over-sensitive to bright lights.

But the food was VERY good: We started off the evening with some Fried Calamari and shared a Caesar’s Salad.

For our main course, Bryan had steak (of course) while I had their vegetarian special. His Red Wine and my Muscato were the perfect accompaniment.

Then, to finish off our meal, we shared the most scrumptious Chocolate Mousse Cake!

This was probably the most expensive meal I’ve ever had, but it was definitely worth the extra $100.00 we spent on top of the $200.00 gift card.

Freemont Street

The one thing that he wanted to do with me while we were in Las Vegas was to walk the strip. He chose Freemont Street for our Saturday after dinner entertainment. My guidebook says that Freemont Street is the “second most famous street scene, following the Las Vegas Strip.

Suspended 90 feet above Freemont Street is Viva Vision: the world’s largest video screen running 1,375 feet long and 90 feet wide, with 16.4 million brilliant pixels! They had some mind-blowing visuals going on while we were there. These pictures do not do it justice.

In addition to the giant video screen, they also have a zipline: called The Zoomline, it takes off more than 10 storied up (114 feet) and whisks flyers 1,750 feet to a landing platform at the city’s most historic casino, Golden Gate. The upper Zoomline provides even more thrills by sending flyers prone, or “superhero-style,” for an unprecedented view of the party that never ends at Fremont Street Experience. Flyers travel down the zip lines at up to 40 miles per hour.

The day that we were there just happened to have free concerts at pretty much every intersection, blasting loudly over the cacophony of the gazillion people crowded onto the street and spilling out of the casinos. The zipline had people zooming overhead. The individual street performers were displaying their talents. Artists had their easels set up for portraits. There were people dressed up in all manner of costumes roaming the street. There were even girls with practically nothing on standing around in the middle of the street (I have absolutely no idea why they would do that).

It was truly a bizarre experience.

Caesar’s Palace

His conference got out about 5:00 each day, so we would go out and explore the city together of an evening. It was way too hot during the day, so that worked out quite well actually.

Caesar’s Palace was a must: the artwork alone is worth the effort to go see. It’s all copies, of course: not the original statues from Greece or Rome. But I could not tell the difference, so I was quite happy.

It was really interesting how they designed this place. The shopping mall was called The Forum (in keeping with the Roman theme) and the shops were all designed so that they looked like what you might see walking down the streets of an ancient Roman village. The ceiling was painted so that it looked like the sky, reinforcing that illusion.

I can’t even begin to calculate how much this place cost to build. The detail work was amazing – they went all out making it look as original as possible! I can only guess at what it might be like to actually stay there.

SHARKS!

Since he was there for his conference that weekend, that left me with each day to myself to explore. My brother told me about the Sharks of Mandalay Bay, so of course I had to go there.

This first picture is actually a Selfie Station, designed to allow people a chance to pretend they’re underwater with the Great White Shark. It looks real, doesn’t it? I was by myself, so couldn’t get the selfie to work well enough – so you get just the cage & shark.

The facility is 95,000 sq. ft. and displays numerous species of sharks, rays, fish, reptiles, and marine invertebrates. It features a shark tunnel where you can walk underneath the water with the sharks swimming above you. That tank is huge: 1,300,000 gallons of salt water (third largest tank in North America) full of numerous species of sharks, rays, fish, sea turtles, and marine invertebrates.

They had a Jelly tank – really cool, and so alien looking.

They even had a Komodo Dragon.

And a giant octopus, too.