September - A Look Ahead

As you can see, I got a jump start on the fall season already with decorating my blog. We can’t say goodbye to this summer heat fast enough! And I figured I might as well get a jump start on planning September’s activities.

Of course, we’re spending the first part of the month in British Columbia, Canada. (Marty looks way too much like a bear appetizer, so he will be minding the cottage for us.) Between the house sale, building, moving twice, and my knee replacement, vacations have been a bit scarce for us the past couple of years. So it’s good to be finally cutting loose in our retirement years. I’m sure that I will be boring you with adventure tales and photos in the days and months ahead, LOL. Hmm, maybe I’ll even be going through one of those new-fangled security scanners at the airport that scans right past the underwear!

Once we get back home, I’ll probably spend the rest of the month doing laundry from the trip. Just kidding! Isn’t funny how dirty clothes tend to expand in size, especially after traveling? In addition to household chores, I’ll be resuming work in my “not-so-part-time-at-all” job. The work is pretty tedious and dull. It is also very time consuming and takes away from my coveted retirement time. Ah, it’s the age-old dilemma of time and money!

Further progress on organizing and decorating the house will be on my to-do list. But I also plan to get more sewing time in and start to have some fun with my handicraft hobbies. Christmas will be fast approaching, so I’d like to get a head start on some handmade gifts. With cooler temperatures, we’ll also start walking in the subdivision and getting some exercise besides an occasional visit to the local fitness center.

A significant milestone will occur this month. Marty whispered in my ear and reminded me that the 400th blog post will happen in September! Good grief, that’s a whole lot of blabbering. You can anticipate a little giveaway as part of the celebrations. After listening to me ramble on and on and on, someone deserves a prize!

I’ve got comments turned off for now. I’ll talk with everyone a little bit later! Best wishes to all my blogging friends!

Getting Ready

Earlier today, we were reviewing our checklists and the reading material for the tour. And the book “Don’t Get Eaten” was not on our recommended reading list. But we do have a copy of this book - HA!   Never fear, folks.  We will be quite safe and observing wildlife from a distance. 

It was a nice and unexpected gesture for our tour company representative to call us the other day to make sure that we had all our questions answered. This is the first trip we have taken with Natural Habitat Adventures, and their pre-tour level of service has been outstanding. Unlike other tours we have taken, we’ll be traveling in a very small group. There will be a total of 9 travelers (including us) and an expedition leader.

We’re in the midst of gathering our camera and electronic equipment, clothes, backpacks, suitcases, shoes, raingear, etc. After finishing all the planning and packing work, and then enduring the indignities of modern airline travel, we’re going to need the serenity of the mountain wilderness to unwind!

Outback Fever

After an extended wait, my red metallic Outback arrived! I finally have WHEELS!

It’s got a lovely, smooth ride and plenty of room and features. With all-wheel drive, it has great ground clearance. But it doesn’t sit too tall for me, so I can easily get in and out. I’ll have to study up and read the manual when I get back from our trip so that I can figure out all the controls and navigation system. This sweet thing will be my traveling companion (along with hubby, of course) for many years to come!

P.S. The pretty covered bridge is a modern one that spans a meandering country creek. We live up the hillside on the left, behind the forested area. We can see just a tiny sliver of the bridge’s roof from the back of our cottage!

Grazing Pinto

I was cleaning out one of my camera’s digital cards this past weekend, getting ready for our upcoming trip. Along the way, I saw some of the pictures I took during the spring of the beautiful horses that live down in the valley below our new cottage. I couldn’t resist playing around with the image of this particular pinto and applying a digital imaging filter to brighten the colors and give it a bit of a watercolor look.

I hope that you are having a lovely week!

Tweedsmuir Video

Here’s a little taste of what we’ll be seeing on our upcoming trip

 to Tweedsmuir Provincial Park in British Columbia!

Grizzly Bears at Tweedsmuir Park Lodge in Bella Coola BC from Tweedsmuir Park Lodge on Vimeo.

British Columbia Wilderness & Urban Adventures

The countdown in ON! Hubby has prepared a vacation checklist, and we are starting on the many tasks of preparing for our first big vacation of the year. Our upcoming trip will be our first Natural Habitat Adventures tour. We know others who have used this tour operator, and the company also has a great reputation in the travel industry. They bill themselves as the world’s premier nature travel company, dedicated to providing their guests with the planet’s greatest nature expeditions.

Along with seven other travelers and a tour guide, we will be visiting one of the best wilderness destinations of British Columbia to see wildlife and stunning mountain vistas. After initially flying into Vancouver, we’ll fly up to Bella Coola (located about midway between Vancouver and Ketchikan, Alaska - see the map below), and then travel by road to our base destination. We’ll be staying at Tweedsmuir Park Lodge, nestled on 60 acres of private wilderness land within Tweedsmuir Provincial Park. The lodge is situated near the base of an 8000 foot rock peak, suitably named Mt. Stupendous, and adjacent to the Atnarko River.

Thanks to glaciers along the vast mountain peaks, the park area has plentiful rivers which trace a path through ancient forests of cedar, hemlock and fir. The region has abundant wildlife and is known for salmon, eagles, and bears. Of course, we will have our cameras handy throughout the trip! We are especially looking forward to seeing grizzly bears feed on salmon, while we safely share the rivers in a boat. Growl!!!

This is NOT your typical tourist vacation. But we adore adventure travel and want to do as much of it as we can while our senior bodies still allows it. As Saint Peter calls our name for our final trip, we are determined that our last words will not contain the phrase “if only”. We want to be saying “wow, that was a blast!”

On the second half of the trip, we’ll be touring on our own in the heart of Vancouver, home of the last Winter Olympics. A beautiful downtown hotel will serve as our “base camp” while we explore the area and soak up some urban chic-style wilderness.

Our trip will be at the end of the month. It’s oh-so close now!

Dreaming of Fall

We’re itching for cooler temperatures and fall colors. This summer has been awful in terms of heat and humidity. Thank goodness we didn’t have to take care of the acreage this summer! Let the youngsters who bought our country homestead late last year do the honors! (hee, hee)

Our first vacation of the year is unusually late, but it will soon be here. We’ll certainly be enjoying cooler weather during our upcoming adventure in British Columbia! Remember the Seinfeld episode when Kramer announces that he’s going out to California? George asks him if he was really going. With a roll of his eyes and a fluttering finger point to his noggin, Kramer replies, “Up here, I’m already gone!” Yep, in my brain, I’m already there!

Now that August is wrapping up, I’ve been inspired to work on my new seasonal background and header for my blog. Above is a crop of a picture I took a couple of years ago at one of our local shorelines. And below is a modified image, thanks to a Topaz Simply filter in Photoshop. I’ll be loading up a new header soon that uses this spectacular fall scene.

Waiting for Wheels

Never have more children than you have car windows.

~ Erma Bombeck ~

I would really, really, REALLY like to get my car. Yes. Really. It’s not here yet. It was supposed to be here on Monday. Now the salesman is saying this Saturday.

Hah-rump!  I’ll just have to amuse myself in the meantime…

First Sewing Project for 2010

This isn’t my first sewing project ever. But it’s the first one of the year, and the first one in my new studio room! With the record heat wave, the only way to keep cool is to stay inside and dream about cooler weather. So I decided to make some double-sided holiday napkins!

I finally got all of the boxes for this area unpacked a couple of weeks ago. Thanks to my hubby, the storage closet got reassembled last weekend. The room is not organized yet to my satisfaction, and there are no pictures hanging on the walls. (The big reveal of this lovely space will be later on down the road.) But it’s “done” enough for me to jump in and start making some crafting/sewing messes. It’s time to start a few handmade projects after a very long hiatus of moving and living in temporary quarters!

Finding the fabric was the easy part of rounding up the necessary supplies. Finding the other supplies - thread, needles, Bernina feet, rulers, rotary cutter, scissors, and fray check - took at least an hour. See? I told you it wasn’t organized!

Aren’t the napkins pretty? Now that I got these done, I’m ready to start on some more!

Photo Challenge: Dirt

It’s time for another Brenda Photo Challenge! The current theme is Dirt. That’s right, we’re digging up dirt today and taking a really good look at it! And some of the prettiest dirt I’ve ever seen is out in the western USA states. Instead of plain old drab brown, it has color, texture, and grit. For this challenge, I immediately thought of Bryce Canyon National Park, where the dirt is about as colorful as it gets!

Bryce is famous for its hoodoos, which are spires of rocks created by years of erosion. With base skirts of colorful clay and minerals (aka, “dirt”), the hoodoos are a sight to behold as they pose along the canyon floor. In this picture, you can see part of a hiking trail that winds its way through the hoodoo maze. The park is named after Ebenezer Bryce, a Mormon pioneer. His famous quote about the place is that it was a “hell of a place to lose a cow”! The camera settings for this image were f/5.6, 1/500 second, and ISO 200.

While we were taking sunrise pictures, we saw a few brave hikers on a trail below. If I had a good knee at the time and proper hiking equipment, I would have ventured into the magical countryside to get another perspective too. Ah, maybe we can go back again sometime! These young folks were coming back up from the canyon bottom, and they were trying to hurry along. Even though our visit was in April, it was a very brisk 18 degrees that morning! After about an hour, we practically ran back to our cabin for some hot coffee. The image was taken at f/5.0, 1/100 second, and ISO 200.

The park features such primitive beauty, with wild, expansive vistas all along a rim trail. Time stops. The usual clutter of your thoughts vanishes. You feel the wonderment of how the landscape was created. You notice the quiet, the wind, and yes, even the dirt at your feet. And before walking away, you tuck away an image in your mind, like the one below, to forever keep in your memories and your heart. Scenes like this are what make the journeys worthwhile.

The camera settings were f/10, 1/400 second, and ISO 200. A background layer was applied during the image processing to give it an antique look.

A Little Civics Lesson

It's time for everyone to gather around the computer monitor and have a little civics lesson! This is a young (and old) person's guide to the U.S. Constitution!

Blooming Fun

I stayed out of the summer heat and had a little fun today with Photoshop. With the reality of August weather, our daylily blooms are a distant memory. But it is nice to revisit pictures I took earlier this year.

A study in contrasts is a comparison between the original photo of a delicate pink bloom (from the Barbara Mitchell daylily) and a charcoal version. To create the dramatic black and white image shown below, I used Topaz Adjust. It is a plug-in program that works with the various Photoshop programs and others photo imaging software such as PaintShop Pro. Right now I am using their free 30-day download, and I’ll definitely buy it after the trial period is over. I have already used their Simply program for several months and love it for painterly transformations. 

Goodbye, Red Truck!

I said goodbye earlier today to my faithful red pickup truck! I am going to miss its sporty good looks, peppy personality, and rugged dependability. It is finding a new home with a sweet gal who appreciates its rugged charm, reasonable price, and super-low mileage (6-1/2 years and 35,000 miles)!

Hubby sold his truck last week and I sold mine this week. We got out of the truck business very quickly once they went up for sale. Now I have to patiently wait for the availability of an Outback of my dreams!

Happy trails, red truck! Thank you for keeping me safe and comfortable all those years! I know that you are going to a good home and will have more adventures ahead.

Thinking Cool Thoughts

When summer days are hot and oppressive, I try to think of cool thoughts, like a beautiful stroll that we took in the summer of 2005. This vista is in the Caribou Mountain range of Alberta, Canada. Surrounded by glaciers, we hiked up to the ridgeline above the large patch of snow on the right-hand side of the scene. From there, a helicopter picked us up to take us back to the mountain lodge.

I hope that looking at this gorgeous landscape helps cool you off too! Below is a painterly version, using a Topaz Adjust filter.

August - A Look Ahead

August? Are you kidding me? It’s August? The thermometer says “yes”, but my brain says “no, it can’t possibly be here so soon”. Well, all my plans for organizing the master bedroom closet and hanging pictures last month did not pan out too well. Okay. Not one little bit. The month was a fast and sleepy blur. With this temporary job, I have become less acquainted with my pillow and my sweetie!

We still have a few remaining items on our home’s punch list, and those tasks have kept us a bit busy. Hopefully, the punch list will be toast by the end of this month. At least, our fingers are crossed on that score. I finished up with unpacking the remaining boxes in my studio room. Everything was put away, but not necessarily organized. But then I was able to get a good quote from the finish carpenters to change the closet door around in my studio, so it would swing out instead of in. That job got done last week to my gleeful satisfaction. It was the ONE mistake we made on this house, and that is finally rectified. But now my studio is a bona fide mess, with the closet contents stacked up in the room. Hubby has already caulked and filled the nail holes, but the trim and walls still need touch up painting and then the wire shelving needs reassembly. So I dearly hope that my beloved studio room gets presentable and usable before too long.

I am looking forward to much less business travel this month. Last month made me quite weary, with traveling three weeks in a row to a long distance office. This whole working thing has been a rude adjustment to my slovenly retirement ways! I’m now set up for telecommuting and I’ve been desperately trying to get a little zip-and-go energy back.

It’s not easy to explain what I am doing, but let me give it a whirl. My former employer is a big utility (one of the biggest), and it is currently on a new mission to get better organized. A significant environmental event helped it discover that more emphasis was needed on complete, up-to-date procedures, among other things. Quite simply, I am assisting them clean up some of their old procedures and develop some new ones. I have already helped get them on the right path and they are feeling a bit relieved.

We had a very exciting end to our month of July, with the successful sale of hubby’s truck. He bought a new Hyundai Sonata and it is positively gorgeous. Since those selling and buying tasks are now accomplished, we are getting my truck ready for sale. It has very low mileage and is quite a beauty, so I am hoping that it will sell just as quickly as my hubby’s vehicle. I plan to replace it with a Subaru Outback. These sales are part of our overall downsizing and retirement plans. Since we don’t have acreage anymore to tend, we no longer need trucks and now want vehicles more suited for road travels.

Later on this month, we’ll be venturing off on our first vacation for the year: Vancouver and the wilderness of northern British Columbia! We’re getting very anxious now that the date is finally getting closer. I will have a post about our wilderness destination in another week or two.

So that’s it for August: more working; additional sleep; completion of our homebuilding punch list; a little organizing around the cottage; vehicle switcheroos; and a much-needed vacation adventure!