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…