Happy Birthday Dad!

I am fairly certain you are turning into Benjamin Button and actually anti-aging in your retired life. Traveling, going on overnight adventures, not getting eaten by bears (glad you are still safe on these adventures) are all so fun to hear about and and an inspiration for those of us who spend these weekends working endlessly...It lets me know there is an end in sight (even if retirement is still 20 years away for me).

I hope you have many more years of adventures!

Happy Birthday Dad!

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!

So, turns out today is July 25 not tomorrow (Sunday).

Glad I got this in just under the wire, but I still don't get to win daughter of the year points.

Anyhoo,

HAPPY 45TH ANNIVERSARY MOM AND DAD!!!!

It seems like you too have been together forever (at least my forever). Keep up the good work, you are awesome role models for what love and commitment should look like.

What a wonderful family you have created just by coming out of a closet...

LOVE YOU!

Welcome to Miami

This post is late but here goes. 

Last month I got to attend a conference in Miami. I was pretty excited 1) because February is a great time to go to Miami 2) I have never been to a Southern state and 3) beaches!

I also got to attend the conference with my work bff. We had one slight bump in the trip when we showed up to the conference hotel and our reservation was missing. Turns out when I called to make the reservation it was scheduled for the same dates in March - not February. LUCKILY, they had a guest check out early and we waited an hour for the room to be cleaned and it was ours! While we waited another guest tried to check in and the front staff turned him away. We actually got the last room. 

We stayed in Coconut Grove. It is a great neighborhood next to several marinas, city hall, and a great downtown area within walking distance of our hotel. 

Something I did not know about Miami is that it has LA-level traffic. We were 5-6 miles from the conference venue and it took 45 minutes to get there from the hotel. We spoke to staff at the venue and they said living 10 miles away took 75 minutes to travel to and from work. It was pretty crazy. 

Something else I hadn't thought about was the palm trees. Or maybe I never considered AZ palm trees and the difference between desert palms and tropical palms. All of the palm trees are totally different than the AZ trees. I always thought it was weird when a student visited campus and was blown away by the palm trees, but I was in awe of just how different the palms were in Florida. 

We were at a university in Miami and the campus was beautiful. They just built a fancy conference center on campus. It was fun because we were at a vendor conference, so we got to meet other people from universities also learning how to use a software program we have started using and we even got a free dinner from one of our vendors. It is fun to be the client. 

The conference was only a day and a half long so in the afternoon of the second day we decided to check out South Beach! We had brought bathing suits but figured we wouldn't get in the water so didn't put them on. We were both a bit sad that we hadn't - because the water and outside temperature was perfect! We still walked along the surf, and it was worth it just for the people watching! We also had to get a selfie in front of the Kardashian store Dash - we even went inside and bought some candles (cheapest thing in the store). 

And the food was amazing. I had seafood at every meal I could. The paella in South Beach was delicious! I had Salmon and ceviche another night. Yummy!

It was a great trip!

Happy Birthday Ariana!

It is your Golden Birthday!

You are turning 7th on the 7th...how lucky! Enjoy your day.

Happy Birthday Julian!

I can't believe it has already been two years and only two years. 

Happy Birthday Nephew!

Super Bowl in Town

I don't know if you know this but the Super Bowl is in Phoenix this year. (Actually, the Waste Management Phoenix Open is this week too, so we have had fans of football and golf in town all week! roughly 1 million people are expected to be visiting the Phoenix Metro area in about a 5 day span of time) We have hardly noticed a difference...

Yep, it is as if the Super Bowl...or more likely Bud Light and Pepsi exploded on the city. My friend Eliza and I took the lightrail downtown and it took about an hour, packed like sardines. We were happy to do it because when we got downtown anyone in a car was in a standstill trying to park (where? I don't know) But I will say the organizers of the Downtown Super Bowl Central space are excellent. Although there were hundreds of thousands of people downtown you could still move around, the lightrail ran smoothly, everything was clean and there was definitely a strong police presence so you feel safe too. 

We did a quick walk around some of the sites and tents. There was a line for everything but it was all free and you could get free stuff, or a picture or video of you doing something funny. We got our pictures in front of the roman numerals (the "it" thing to do) and then headed over to a volunteer shift at our university tent. 

Our tent was pretty fun. You could get pictures with our mascot, play solar-powered electric football and watch videos. We had free swag too like eye-blacks, water bottles and foam fingers. It was fun but man am I sore after standing for 8 hours on asphalt. 

We had a Flat Stanley sent to our office so I brought him along to our tent.

I will safely be watching the Super Bowl from a friend's house, away from the crowds. As dad said, it might as well be happening anywhere since I will watch it on TV as usual. 

Monsoon - pocalypse 2014

Officially the last 24 hours have been called a monsoon storm with tropical storm influence, but what that means is we got the remnants of Hurricane Norbert from the Pacific Ocean beginning around 2:30 am and raining (with thunder and lightening) until about 10:30 am. About 5 inches of rain hit Tempe. Officially Sky Harbor got 3 inches which.makes this the wettest day in Phoenix since 1895 when they started measuring such things. School districts closed or delayed school. I-10 and I-17 were closed in both directions and morning commutes (for those of us who had to go to work - my roommate not being one of them) were 30-90 minutes longer than usual. Even the grocery store next to my house had the roof cave in. It has been a spectacular day. (Pictured: lawn outside my office building at work, intersection in my neighborhood, I-10 at 38th Ave, my "rain" boots, and the view from my office at 2pm today)

Happy Birthday Dad

You are as cool as Route 66. You have some age, make interesting stops along the way and create many fun adventures. Here to to another year on the road less traveled.

Happy Birthday Dad!!

Tours

One of the fun things to do in Skagway is to take a bus tour into the Yukon. I know it is one of the fun things because my dad drives one of those buses. But he isn't the only one who drives those tours, so bright and early Mom and I get up to take his coworker Bryan's tour. We have been told it is very entertaining and dramatic. It is about a 2.5 hour tour up to the Summit (so you just cross over into Canada but don't get as far as customs. The tour is meant to see wildlife and hear the story of the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush and quite literally, put Skagway on the map.

Bryan gave us VIP seating

This is Bryan...and his bus. He is fun.

We have to wait for Bryan to pick up the rest of his passengers. Although we are VIPs, Bryan is actually waiting for a tour group off of one of the cruise ships. It turns out to be a group of Malaysians on vacation as a company! 200 people from the company are on the cruise and about 20 of them are on our tour. (I don't know the company or who is running it back in Malaysia. But they were a really fun group of people who liked to make fun of each other and to my benefit, spoke English, so we could all joke and have a good time. (These bus tours aren't as much fun if you need an interpreter to go along).

Panaramic view of Skagway (our trailer is on the far far left side, it is visible but hard to explain where it is)

This is the Malaysian group that was on the bus with us. They were a lot of fun.

Bryan was indeed dramatic and theatrical in his telling of the gold rush - it is a sad story where a majority of the "stampeders" die enroute to the gold fields because they were ill-prepared for the journey. They had to hike inland about 25 miles but the Canadian Mounties required each person to have 2000 pounds of gear to safely make the journey. Many brought horses to carry that load, but the trail was only a footpath and not big enough for the horses, so thousands of horses died falling (or being pushed by greedy prospectors) off the trail and consequently tens of thousands of prospectors died as well. And, turns out after 5 months on the trail to get 25 miles, by the time the prospectors from Skagway got to the gold fields (hundreds of miles further away, but travelled by boat quickly) all the claims had been staked and there was no more gold to be had. Still, Skagway became a boom town due to all the people heading up the trail.

Bryan was excellent and our tour group was fun too. Just as we returned to town Dad was taking a tour group up to Carcross for lunch and dog sled mushing. So Mom and I hopped on his tour too! The first couple hours of the trip are the same (there is only one road out of Skagway) but Dad doesn't discuss the gold rush on his tour, so he points out interesting sights along the way and describes why certain mountains, or islands got their names. This time we do go through British Columbia into Yukon to get up to Carcross. I get to use my passport and we get to lunch and dog mushing. I get to sit in the front of the dog sled (it is actually a wheeled cart for running through dirt paths but it was tons of fun.

Me in Canada by a lake - there are lots of them here. Water is everywhere!

I really like this picture of Mom and Dad, although, they are both looking at nothing - scanning for goats that aren't there

I am on a dog sled! (ok a 4-wheel version since there isn't snow)

You can't make up views like this. This is Emerald Lake.

On the way home we spot a man with his camera on the side of the road. Dad pulls up to him to ask if he sees an animal and he points about 8 feet away to a black bear in a berry bush (we decided a currant bush). We loved the opportunity to take pictures of it but what an idiot that guy was for being so close to a bear!! Sure the bear was really into eating berries, but he could just as easily decide to be really into eating a person.

This is how close we are to the bear (think of the guy on the side of the road - IDIOT!)

He could not care less that we are there

Perfection

All of us on Dad's tour! We are in Alaska

Sitting on a bus all day is tiring! We all get home and head over to a friend's house so he and mom and work out a tour for Friday (mom would be the guide, he would be the driver). The client doesn't answer her phone so we leave to borrow bikes from another friend and have dinner. Then we go out to the Eagles Club (reminds me of the American Legion) to watch some live music. The entertainment was great - what some people can do with a guitar and a loop machine is incredible!

Modes of transportation:5
Vacation days: 3
Wildlife count:8

Alaskan Vacation 2014!

I haven't been on an extended vacation in quite sometime, usually a long weekend is the best I get. But not this summer. This summer I get 10 days in Alaska! My parents are up here working for the season, as usual. OK, Mom is not working, she is playing, but Dad has to keep his day job driving tours into the Yukon. They invited me to come visit since they have been coming up here for 6 years and I had yet to come up too. My last excursion to Skagway was when I was 9 years old. The family came to Alaska for my parent's 25th anniversary.

Well, the day after their 44th anniversary we all set out to come to Alaska again! Mom and Dad have been up in Skagway already but came home for a week, so I flew back with them, and do not come home for a week and a half!

Saturday I drove my car, to Tucson, then took planes from Tucson to Salt Lake City to Seattle to Juneau. It was a looong day, but not without it's...charms surprises sights that can't be unseen.

A 40-50 year old woman (it is hard to tell when you try to look so young) wearing an altogether inappropriate outfit, both in the items themselves and the fashion rules about strips/polka dots/animal print

 We got to Juneau and had about 8 hours to before we had to be up and ready for the ferry to Skagway. Luckily that is just enough time to get some sleep.  (if you are keeping up, I have taken a car, plane, and now boat to get to my destination. I have goals of adding bus, train, and helicopter to my modes of transportation while on vacation)

The ferry ride was about 6 hours (with an hour long pit stop in Haines).  I took lots of pictures of the countryside as we passed. Of course it never looks as good in a photo. We also saw a couple bald eagles, some dahl/dall porpoises (proper spelling is up in the air and I can't be bothered to Google it right now), and Dad saw a bear through the binoculars. I saw a dark speck but will take his word for it.  So my current wildlife count is at 7. At one point I decided to read instead (it is kind of my thing when traveling in Alaska) and my parents were having none of it, as evidenced by Mom engaging me in conversation so as not to let me get into my book, and Dad coming up and telling me I had to stop reading and look out the window. So instead I took more pictures as we approached Skagway.

a glacier

a lighthouse

Mom wanted this picture so I could showcase that I was not on an Alaskan cruise. So this is a picture of me in front of a boat while on a different boat :)

Skagway!

This map shows where we started on the ferry (Juneau) and Haines and Skagway. It also shows Carcross and Whitehorse which I may or may not get to this trip. (Carcross yes - on a bus - Whitehorse, no. But Mom and Dad go there often enough it is nice to see where it is on a map)

Also, I have been in more rain the last 24 hours than probably all year in AZ. But it is light drizzle mostly. until it isn't and you need a hood. Good thing mom had an extra rain jacket for me!

 We got to Skagway before 2pm and got to our trailer and got situated. I am sure Dad will discuss our first "adventure" in his blog (see side panel of my blog for link to his) when we got to the trailer. I got to meet some of their friends, and Heath even had a staff barbeque at his house, so I met most of Dad's coworkers too. After that we had dinner with more of their friends at the Brew Co. We will be back at the Brew Co for a cribbage tournament on Wednesday. (It is nice to know I can still be nerdy and competitive even in a different city). Mom already has my cribbage partner lined up so I am pretty excited.

Skagway at 6 pm on a no-ship day

 Oh, and Mom and Dad say hi too!

Mom and Dad proving that you walk in the middle of the street in Skagway
 

Vacation Days Count: 2
Wildlife Count: 7