Alaska, Day 2

Day 2: Still flying!

So after four flights to get us from Medford, OR, to King Salmon, AK, we got to sleep one night in King Salmon before taking a float plane to Brooks Camp to see the bears. Darcy got to be co-pilot and had a blast! Rain, which would follow us for most of our trip, didn't stop us from seeing the tundra on the flight. These float planes saw service in World War II, so they don't fly high or fast.

NaBloPoMo

Ah, November. The air gets cooler (and wetter, here). The days get shorter. And National Blog Posting Month once again rears its head. I had only the vaguest thought about doing this because, um, I'm starting a new job on Friday. "But," I thought to myself, "we DID just go to Alaska. If I posted a photo a day with a brief description, it wouldn't be THAT much work."

And then a friend asked me on Facebook and reminded me that I got her involved last year. 

So here I am. And here you are. Let's just do it, shall we?

Picture #1: One very happy Alaskan-born chicklet very, very early in the morning, waiting to board the first of four flights to get us from Medford, OR, to King Salmon, AK, on the first day of our Alaska adventure. As you can see, she is sporting an Alaska shirt for the journey.

Resiliency

That's our word for today: Resiliency. 

When we picked Darcy up on her last day of school at Klamath River Early College of the Redwoods (KRECR), she came with bags of gifts from her class and after-school program, and a pea seedling in a plastic cup. The pea had five or six leaves at most and barely peeked over the top of the cup. We didn't have high hopes of keeping the pea alive as we drove straight from KRECR to Ashland, OR (Bed #2 for those keeping track), and beyond across this great nation.

The pea mostly lived in one of the back seat cup holders, where it got a little sun most days. On the first desert-y days, we watered frequently and took it into hotels at night to prevent freezing. In St. Louis, it found a cozy kitchen window with our friends for two days, high above the reach of curious cats. It lived for almost a week in my parents' south-facing windows and for a week and a half in the shadowy light of Bed #16 with the great view.

Over the five weeks (FIVE WEEKS) since the pea joined our traveling circus across the country, it has survived and occasionally thrived. It wasn't getting enough sun at Bed #16 and had grown pale, but it is soaking up the rays in abundance at Bed #17. I expect it to make a full, deep green recovery.

Like the pea, the pea's caretaker-in-chief has also demonstrated her resiliency over the past five weeks. She misses being in school and we hope to have her registered next week, as soon as we know which house will become our next permanent bed. She has put up with all 17 beds with grace and (mostly) good humor. She has entertained herself with a limited collection of her own things and has taken opportunities as they've been presented (anyone else been massaging fan-tail pigeons recently or riding their bike around a hotel's empty parking lot?).

We hope to hear today whether our offer on our first-choice house is accepted and then the pea and the girl can settle in for the long haul and put down more permanent roots.

So. About That Blogging Daily Business...

Bed number 16 is quite comfy and has a beautiful view in the morning:

It has its own bridge that leads from where we can park to the house:

And it has more beautiful views from the dining table. The first day, Darcy and I watched an osprey flying around while we ate lunch:

This view includes my car (on the left) and the bridge (on the right). And of course, the stream. I think we figured out what the stream is, but I've forgotten again. 

What our house does not have, most unfortunately, is internet service. It's supposed to and it has a wireless modem that flashes its seductive lights at us around the clock, but there is a password required for access and nobody seems to be able to tell us what that is.

Although it's hard to be completely sad that I have to come to the lovely Patisserie Fauchere for internet, there have to be some limits on how many of their pastries I consume for the sake of using their free wi-fi. This morning, I tried to be restrained and had one of their homemade English muffins. A revelation of crispness! But I can't pretend that I can still blog every day when I am constantly seeking internet connections. The patisserie isn't open on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, for instance.

I'll blog when I can and enjoy the views of bed number 16 while we search for bed number 17, which will hopefully be our own!

More St Louis

We went to the St Louis Zoo while we were hanging out in the old 'hood. I left to drop bags at our hosts' house and Michael and Darcy continued on to the Insectarium and other joys. I missed going to see the penguins, which made me sad, but they had a great time. Darcy loved identifying the butterflies and getting up close and personal with them.

In case you are reading this and have never been to St Louis, let me share one of my favorite things about the city: many things are (or at least were) free. I once stood behind a family of four paying for their afternoon at the Museum of Natural History in New York and their bill was $84!! There are an awful lot of families in New York who could virtually never afford to take their kids to the museum at that price.

But when we lived in St Louis (and I believe at least some of this is still true), the Art Museum, the History Museum, the children's Science Museum, and the Zoo were all free. When the most-amazing Van Gogh exhibit came to the art museum, you had to pay to see that. Unless you went on the free day each week, which I did. Twice. The Missouri Botanic Garden wasn't free, but for St Louis residents, it was only three bucks.

When I first lived in St Louis, the zoo, the art museum, and the history museum were all within (long) walking distance of my apartment. On nice days, when I had to get away from my books for a short time, I'd sometimes walk over to one of these fine institutions and wander around for 15-20 minutes and walk home. It was awesome. If I'd had to pay to get in, I'd never have done that, but it gave me a great destination for a break without feeling like I had to get my money's worth and stay the whole afternoon.

We did pay when we went to the zoo on this visit because there are extras that aren't free: the zoo train, the carousel, the petting zoo, etc. For ten dollars each, we got a pass into all those extras for the day. 

In other words: Go St Louis!!







(I could also get a ticket to a Cardinals game for under 10 bucks. I'm guessing that's not possible in the new stadium.)

Ok. Guilt Works.

So I had said that I was doing daily blogging in October and NOT in November, but now two of my fellow bloggers (see my blog roll on the right side of the screen) appear to have taken the leap for NaBloPoMo. And I feel that it's partly my fault. I obviously did not blog yesterday (and I missed a couple/few days in October, too), but I'll try to keep blogging daily through November. 

It is after 11, I just helped paint a ceiling while my laundry dried (isn't that what you do when you're doing laundry at 10 o'clock on a Friday?), and I'm feeling very, very sleepy. So here are a few pictures to get you through until tomorrow:

(Oh. And for those keeping track, we are now at my parents' house for the weekend, we do not have temporary housing for our return to Pike County on Sunday, and we have not looked at a single house for our permanent residence either. It looks like the Dingmans Ferry Post Office pegged us right: We are transients!)

On our drive east from St Louis, we stopped to see our friend Jim and Karla and their boys, L and BabyL. We were terrible about getting a picture of the whole family and photos are loading very, very slowly, so these are my offerings for tonight. WashU folks will recognize Jim showing Darcy how to shoot a bow and arrow, with BabyL's legs just visible on the right of the photo. BabyL very nicely fell asleep in my arms while we were outside. In the bottom photo, L was throwing leaves at Michael while Darcy was playing with Paddington. Yes, Paddington and Nutmeg, dogs formerly of St Louis, are alive and well in Indiana. 

It was too short a visit, but much better than no visit at all. We had never met either of their boys and now we have! Hopefully, there will not be time for two more children to be born before we see them again!

Sandy's Results, According To The Glores

Whew. Sandy has officially welcomed us to Pennsylvania, or perhaps exactly the opposite. We have been hunkered down in a very wet Pittsburgh while Sandy tried her best to destroy the lower part of Manhattan island. We had a great day, with 4.5 hours of fun at the Children's Museum (awesome art options!) and dinner with my cousins. The rain was light, the winds mostly non-existent.

But then we started trying to figure out what we do next. We haven't been able to get in touch with anyone at the new park, but know that the park itself is closed at least until Thursday. The vacation rental house we were planning to stay in for the next ten days doesn't have power and doesn't expect to have to have power restored for 7-10 days. Ooops. There are 19 road closures in our new county, including the main road in sections. Not so good either.

Our decision? We're going to move closer to our new home, but not quite there. Officials are asking people to stay off the roads except for emergency travel, for one thing. And for another, we're assuming that no hotel will take new guests if they don't have power and that any hotel in the immediate area that does have power is probably full of storm refugees.

So we're going as far as Scranton tomorrow. They have power, there are only minor road closures, and we found a hotel with a lot of vacancies. Also with a true one bedroom suite with a door between the bedroom and the rest of the suite just in case we end up staying there for several days while power is restored to everything closer to where we'll be living.

Ah, Sandy, you really know how to make people feel welcome in their new home! We could have done without this particular welcome mat.

Life Is Exhausting

I had this misconception that driving across the country instead of flying would minimize our experience of jet lag. But our driving schedule (and socializing schedule, to be honest) has meant that we haven't been able to take advantage of the gradual time change and keep Darcy's bedtime at a normal hour. And so, having crossed into Eastern Daylight Time earlier today, it was a struggle to get her to sleep by 10:15. Hopefully, we can start to fix this problem in Pittsburgh. It now looks like we may be there three nights, as all park employees are being told to ride out the storm at home rather than at work. We'll get updates about power outages, downed trees, and flooding and make that decision on Tuesday morning, I think.

And that's my extremely exciting blog post for the day. We had a great time in St Louis. Saw many, but not all of the folks we'd hoped to catch up with and some, but not all of the places we wanted to show Darcy. Pictures tomorrow unless somehow Pittsburgh is without power!

My Network Administrator Prevented Blogging

You know how your computer sometimes gives you an error message that ends, "If this problem persists, contact your network administrator." My network administrator is Michael. When we get to a new hotel, he's the one who figures out how to connect us to their padlocked wi-fi. If there's a problem, he takes care of it.

But last night, he failed me for the very first time and couldn't get me internet access in our friends' home. So you all went blog postless and almost did tonight as well. Luckily (?) for you, Hurricane Sandy is disrupting our travel plans, so I had to have access to cancel a couple hotel reservations and make new ones to keep us out of the storm for a couple days. We'll reassess depending on how widespread the power outages are on Wednesday.

We are having a great time in St Louis. Good friends, good food, almost no driving, and beautiful places to hang out. What could be better? 

That's all I have tonight. Hope those of you reading on the eastern seaboard are prepared for whatever ends up coming your way. Stay safe. We're hoping to get to western PA before the storm really arrives and then stay put through the worst of the driving conditions. I'll keep you posted unless all of PA loses power!

Arches!

We crossed another time zone today. We have been out of our house for eight nights. Driving 350-400 miles a day since then. We're tired. And so, I am especially grateful for the amazing natural beauty of Arches National Park, which needs no captioning:

Hickison Petroglyphs

As mentioned yesterday, one of our stretch breaks along the "Loneliest Highway in America" was at the Hickison Petroglyph site. I had read about it as one of the few possible stops during that drive and it couldn't have come at a better time. We were all ready to get out of the car. There were beautiful views and beautiful lichen (if you didn't already know, I'm a huge fan of lichen and I know I've posted lichen pictures on this blog before, but I can't find them):

In this picture, as you can see, I've combined the view and the lichen...clever, huh?

If I was more ambitious, I'd get the pictures from today off the camera and show you all the mind-blowingly beautiful scenery in and around Arches National Park. But my child is asleep, my husband is well on his way to asleep, and I'd like to get there, too. Tonight, we are all sleeping in Denver, after a lovely visit with our friend Gretel for dinner. Last time we saw Gretel, she had her lovely dog Tule with her and they got a mention in this blog post about Darcy and animals (Gretel, there is a picture of Tule).

Tomorrow, we drive the rest of the way across Colorado and much of the way across Nebraska. It's been a lot of driving and I have to say that I am looking forward to TWO NIGHTS in the same place. Two more long days and one very short day of driving left until we hit St Louis and stay put for 48 hours!

Moab!

We made it safely to Moab while it was still light yesterday, but the internet was so slow last night that I skipped posting. This is a cheat: I am post-blogging for yesterday.

Top photo: Darcy and Salmon with the kokanee at the stream bank viewing windows. Most of the kokanee in this stretch of stream were spawned out and dead, unfortunately, but we saw plenty of live ones in the stream. Bottom photo: Darcy and Michael on top of the scenic viewpoint at Hickison Petroglyphs off Route 50, the loneliest road in America.

Honeymoon Nostalgia

Here's the thing: We're driving across the country. Our stuff is in a million different bags. We try to stay organized, but the emphasis is definitely on the TRY. So I managed to bring the card reader for the camera but not the cable in from the car. In other words, no NEW photos tonight. Lucky for you, today was in part about a little nostalgia visit to Lake Tahoe, where Michael and I went for our honeymoon almost exactly seven years ago and I had Michael put a couple pics of that on the desktop for me a couple days ago.

As a theme for our honeymoon photos, we took the salmon Michael gave me from Katmai with us and posed him in many pictures. The same salmon came with us this time and recreated a number of them, but due to the lack of cable, you only get to see the originals:

This is the time of year that the kokanee salmon (miniature sockeyes descended from sockeye introduced to Lake Tahoe in the 1940s) spawn in Taylor Creek. The forest service has a great streambed viewing area, but today, we had much better views of the kokanee from above than below.

From Lake Tahoe, we drove the "Loneliest Highway in America" (Route 50) almost all the way across Nevada. We're in Ely, NV, for the night, with Great Basin National Park on tap for a morning visit, followed by a drive to Moab, UT, the base for visiting Arches National Park. Saw lots of great stuff today -- so sorry I can't share the photos!

Michael's Day

The shortest route between Crescent City and Pennsylvania goes through southern Oregon to meet up with Interstate 80 at Winnemucca, NV. That is not the way we are going because Michael has some issues with leaving California without seeing the Sierra Nevada mountains (I know there's some redundancy in that phrase; just want to be clear). So we dipped south along I-5 and then across to Lake Tahoe where the granite peaks are naked and the air is crisp and scented by Ponderosa pines.

To make the day truly Michael's, we stopped in Chico to visit the Sierra Nevada Taproom so Michael could inhale the smell of cooking grains, try several different beers, and we could all eat a delicious, but crazy-big meal. He peered through windows into rooms full of hops, saw lots of copper kettles and pipes, and bought a couple new beer glasses. You'd think I didn't just give him a new pint glass a few weeks ago.

Unfortunately, we arrived in Lake Tahoe too late to do much except enjoy the heated pool, eat some leftovers for dinner, and hop into bed. But we have big plans for tomorrow. Darcy thinks it's hilarious that we can walk to Nevada, so we'll do that. Then we have big plans to see the kokanee salmon before heading out after lunch.

No photos tonight -- sorry about that! I could have given you a picture of the perfectly-poured pint of beer Michael enjoyed at lunch, but I decided not to.

Thanksgiving In Bend

In case it hasn't been clear, we spent Thanksgiving in Bend, OR, and arrived home safe and sound a few hours ago. We didn't want to broadcast our absence too much, because you know that house-breakers spend their days reading obscure blogs to see who's out of town. We didn't want to invite them back to steal our hand-me-down chairs or Moomintroll books.

Now that we're home again, let us talk of Bend! We love Bend! How I lived forty-two years without knowing how great Bend is, I'll never know, because I feel very at home there. We went with a family of friends, so Darcy had a play mate and we could all take turns with child-wrangling. Thursday, we had a more or less traditional Thanksgiving meal with our friends from Crescent City and our friend Kathy who worked with us in Katmai and is now living in Bend. Michael and I got a date night on Friday and spent it in downtown Bend eating lovely Thai food, browsing used bookstores, and previewing a few stores for after Buy Nothing Day was over. We decided that buying our meal couldn't count -- it was date night!

Michael and our friends all skied on Saturday. Bend -- amazing Bend -- has a drop-off play center/day care, so for twenty bucks each, Darcy and H played in an indoor play ground for almost four hours. This was because two kids and a baby was more than I was willing to take on by myself. I know that many, many people do it all the time, but there is a reason Darcy is an only child. They had a great time, the skiers had a great time, and once two of the skiers came back, I got to wander downtown and do a little Christmas shopping at the local toy store and an Etsy collective store. Fun! 

Today, in order to wear out the small beasts for the drive back to Crescent City, we all started with a trip to Juniper Pool, the site of Darcy's summer stitches. Although it's much smaller, the indoor kids' pool was just as big a hit as the outdoor one was. We splashed around for over an hour, with a few adult trips to the hot tub and steam room (my first -- it was insane! I felt like a boiled lobster). And the ploy worked. Darcy stayed awake and apparently very hungry while we went back and cleaned out the last of the rental house and went to a fun pizza place that lets kids make their own pizza. It was very cute. They brought the stretched dough over to the table on a peel with bowls of sauce, cheese, and the kalamata olives Darcy requested for her topping. She put it all together and then we sat at the "pizza bar" so she could watch them put it into the wood-burning oven. 

Ten minutes into the drive home, she was sound asleep. So was I, for that matter. It turns out that three children, five and under, in one house leads to less-than-wonderful sleep for everyone. Darcy slept for half the ride home, which was perfect.

Now we're all gearing up for a totally insane week. Darcy is taking swim lessons two days a week for the next two weeks. Her first is tomorrow. Tomorrow night, Michael has a read through for Willy Wonka! Tuesday is Food Council for me in the evening. Thursday, we're going to do some sort of complicated switch-off with Darcy in Orick in order for Michael to teach a training there during the day and for me to be able to make an evening meeting of the Humboldt Food Policy Council. Whew! We'll be all tuckered out for the weekend just in time for a birthday party Saturday and a bead party on Sunday.

Life doesn't stop.

The Roads Less Taken

I don't know about you, but I really hate driving the same exact route both coming and going to a destination, even a local destination, like from home to work and back each day. For someone with this particular pet peeve, I live in a brutal place. Only two paved roads go in and out of our county, one north-south along the coast and the other, north-east away from the Ocean into Oregon. For most other towns we go to, there IS only one route to choose from. 


The one exception is when I head south to Arcata or Eureka. Southbound, there's a great scenic by-pass that winds through old-growth redwoods AND saves gas because it's significantly flatter than the highway. I take that most of the time, even sometimes in both directions. But recently, it's been unavailable because of this:

There was a massive tree-fall across the by-pass several weeks ago. This picture comes from the Redwood National and State Parks Facebook page. I've been reduced to stealing photos because of the whole business of the computers in the hands of thieves and the hard drive in the hands of the sheriff. It's annoying.


I have to admit that I'm ok with the trees having fallen -- even though a couple of them were massive old beauties -- because it's a natural process that occurs to trees. It's not as if someone cut them down. But I was definitely not ok with having my alternative driving route taken away for weeks. It's almost ready for action now, after massive efforts to remove the enormous amount of biomass these trees hold. You can watch them on this YouTube video, also courtesy of the amazing media specialist Park Ranger at Redwood National and State Parks.


And you? What are some of your favorite drives?

Snow! But No Snow.

Poor Darcy! Colds linger forever here on the North Coast and just as she had two days of virtually no coughs after a MONTH of endless coughing...she's sick again. Feverish and just all around sad. The worst part is that her preschool is having a carpooled trip to a snow park tomorrow and she was so excited about going to play in snow with her small friends. It's not going to happen.

But lucky Darcy did get to play with snow on our drive home from Christmas visiting. We stopped at an overlook and she and Michael threw snowballs at me. They had fun, I stayed warm, and we all get the memories caught on film.

Darcy was very, very proud of the snowball sliding off my window.

And I managed to catch Michael right at the impact!

A Day Of Travel

5:29 am, Medford, Oregon:

I rounded a sharp curve in the middle of my drive to Medford this morning and saw bright, shiny stars ahead of me. It shocked me because on the other side of that curve, I couldn't see more than two dashed center lines ahead of me in the center of the road. Most of my two-hour drive this morning was through dense fog, which just added to the fun of driving US Highway 199 along the Smith River.

I pulled out of our driveway at 2:50 and I was very glad for that 10-minute cushion when I realized that the fog was NOT going away as I got further from the coast. I always have an out-of-time experience when I travel for a full day, but usually, the sensation sets in much later in the trip. But when the world closes to a car-length of visibility with a wall of white all around you, time doesn't mean much. Except that I had a plane to catch, of course.

(So I spent time in Denver, but it went really fast and I didn't get a chance to open the computer. The flights were both on time, which made things easier.)

8:13 pm, Arlington, VA:

I keep thinking it's really, really late, but then I look at the clock and realize that it's not late HERE and Darcy and Michael might not even be home from work/preschool back at home. Crazy. I'm trying to stay awake long enough to be sure I'll sleep straight through the night.

I stopped at the conference hotel when I got off the metro (after the shuttle and the train and the other metro) and spent a little time at the meet and greet. There was a small group heading out to Adams-Morgan for Ethiopian food and I was very, very tempted to go with them, but I'm too tired and too traveled-out to get back on the metro.

I was forgetting that most of the people at this training would be farmers' market people, but it seems like a good group of folks are here. It will be fun to hear what kinds of projects people are funding with these grants.

Day One: Where Did It Go??

As previously mentioned, I have decided to participate in National Blog Posting Month, requiring me to blog every day during the month of November. It has not been an auspicious start being that it's almost nine o'clock and I just now remembered that I need to blog today!

I spent more time than I like to admit trying desperately to make travel plans to Washington that make any sense at all. I gave up. They will not make sense. I will drive to Medford at 3 in the morning on the way there. I will change hotels on the last day of the training so that I don't have to take the Metro to the airport at 5 in the morning on the way back. Now I just have to hope for a cancellation at the training hotel so I can actually have somewhere to sleep that doesn't require a commute.

On the other hand, I also got to talk to my community about a project Michael and I have been a part of for a few months. Preschool and childcare options around here are limited in both quantity and quality. Darcy loves her preschool now, but there are parts of it that don't work for us. We've been working with a group of parents to start a new preschool (that should open in early 2011) and two of us described at a public meeting how this came to be -- in other words, how this community of parents became organized to actually solve a problem we see in our daily lives. It was part of an evening of celebrating "early wins" in something called the Building Healthy Communities initiative. The future Little School of the Redwoods is considered a win!!

And that's my blog post for today. Most of the other 29 -- with any luck -- will include what you really come here for: pictures of Darcy Jo.

The Portland Report

A couple weeks ago, we went to Portland for the weekend. It was in place of being able to be with family for Christmas, and we had a good time (and saw family!). The drive went quickly and we arrived in Portland well before we could check into our hotel. So we stopped at a kids' salon on the southern edge of the city (I had looked these up ahead of time) and Darcy got a quick haircut and shampoo. Then we headed to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) where the main attraction was a T-rex fossil that did not photograph well. Their science play room, however, was where we ended up spending the most time. Darcy had a great time playing with water in the waterproof smock and crocs provided by the museum.

She also loved playing with the baby raccoons. Although I suspect they're supposed to stay near the hollow log, she dragged two of the four babies all over the play room. They took rides in a pulley-powered bucket and saw all the sights.

After that, it was time to go check into the hotel. We had splurged on a suite because it guarantees more sleep for all and Darcy, to our surprise, chose to have her bed set up in the living room/kitchenette room. After getting settled, we headed out in cold, heavy rain for sushi for dinner.

The next day was drier and we started out with doughnuts at Voodoo Doughnut. Someone had the great idea of letting Darcy choose her own doughnut and she ended up with a monstrous doughnut covered in FrootLoops. Yum! Then we wandered around the downtown area with a long stop at Powell's City of Books. (Yes, ok. We did some very tourist, very Portland things.)

After heading back to our hotel for a forgotten phone number, we then met up with my cousin Tina for lunch at a vegan place within walking distance of her house. This was after a very enthusiastic reunion with Mimi-cat. It was after lunch that things got very exciting. Tina, being the most excellent cousin that she is, had agreed to babysit Darcy! We dropped them off at the light rail stop so they could go explore the Children's Museum. Michael was tearing up just a little as we watched them walk away from the car:

With Darcy safely in the hands of the world's most well-qualified babysitter (Tina having a Master's degree in early childhood education and all), Michael and I painted the town red! Well, maybe not. We went back to the Powell's neighborhood and Michael browsed at a used record store and I browsed at kitchen stores before we met up at Powell's for some toddler-free book browsing. Neither of us bought anything, but it was very nice anyway and I discovered that a book I got really cheap sells for a hundred and thirty bucks at Powell's!! I practically own treasure. Or an obscure archaeology book. Your pick.

Following our window-shopping, we went out for an early dinner at Toro Bravo, a tapas restaurant. Oh, it was tasty! We sat at the bar after getting there when the website claimed they opened to find not a single free table because they had opened half an hour earlier. The bar was fine. We had, of course, papas bravas, plus the Singing Pig salad (no pig involved), a cheese board, and the salt cod fritters. We were feeling slightly peckish after that and the bar tender recommended the braised leeks with (the unpronounceable) salbitxada sauce. It's a romesco-like sauce of deliciousness. We ate that with a good bread and couldn't quite finish it. I think it would take a third person to finish that many leeks.

We were both anxious to see our girl (one of us maybe more than the other), so we drove back to Tina's house. The anxiety was not shared. It took a while for Darcy to even come downstairs and then she was wrapped up in her conversation with Tina rather than showing any interest in our re-appearance. Tina reported that Darcy was extremely thrilled about riding the "dinosaur train" to and from the museum and that she shouted "Wheeeee!" as it started through the first dozen stops.

The thrill has not worn off. Earlier today Darcy asked me, "Do you remember when I rode the dinosaur train to the children's museum? Do you remember?" She very fondly calls Tina "my corythosaurus" when talking about that afternoon. For some unknown reason, she calls all babies corythosaurus, and she made the leap that Tina, as a babysitter, must also be a corythosaurus. Personally, I don't see the resemblance.

The next morning was the wrap-up of our Portland trip. We spent almost an hour in the hotel's pool, which Darcy loved. After packing up, we drove half a mile to Portland's Ikea. Darcy usually just loves running around the children's section and trying out every kids' bed. This time, though, she was eligible to play in their supervised play area (Smaland). It has a lot of stuff including a big pool of plastic balls. She went there while Michael and I dreamed of furnishing a future house and bought a few small things we needed. We all had lunch there (oh, how we love their hard-boiled egg and shrimp open-face sandwiches!) before starting the drive home.

The drive home was mostly uneventful. We stocked up on Trader Joe's products in Eugene and then crossed over the coast part of the drive. It took a longer, but it inspired a day-time trip back up the coast the following weekend to see what we had missed. It's gorgeous and we can do nice, easy sections of the Oregon Coast Trail within half an hour of our house.

Now we're gearing up for the start of my job. Darcy will be going to her day care for the first time tomorrow, just for a trial run. The plan is for her to be there long enough to get the first lesson in "mommy and daddy will always come back to get you". Wish us luck!