Good News/Bad News/Hopeful News

I have no photos to share. My expectations were to be able to reconstruct our journey to Alaska when home to show what we saw at each port of call or stop along the interior tours in Alaska. Well, my husband suffered a mild "silent" heart attack on our first day back home in Arizona, necessitating a trip to Urgent Care, followed by an ambulance trip to the hospital Emergency Room, to be followed by a stay in the ICU, followed by a stay in the Telemetry Unit where he underwent dialysis, monitoring, etc. to arrive at the point tonight, where we do not know how long he will be away from home, but we do know he is making progress so I rejoice! No photos have been harmed in this exercise, they are downloaded and awaiting my time and attention to enter them in an organized fasion on this blog and in my Flickr account. Once I have my husband back at home, I will be able to stop running back and forth to the hospital and pay attention to things I HAVE to do and WANT to do here at home. I beg your patience and understanding as we do the immediate, high-priority things that must be done. In the end, I promise you photos of great beauty and links to many photos of such diversity and beauty that will share with you some of the beauty that we saw firsthand.

Blessings to all...Susan

Still in Alaska

We are still in Alaska, having difficulties making our laptop computer work with WiFi and with the limited time on the hotel's computers I haven't added anything to the blog for a while....sorry. I have thousands of photos to share so will do that when I can settle down for awhile and get it done. We will travel by train to Anchorage tonight and be there until Monday, when we we fly to Seattle, collect our van and head for home. the weather so far has been sunny this week, rainy for the cruise portion of the tour, and overall better than expected for here at this time of the year.

Until I can download some of my photos here and at Flickr, I bid you adieu and will check in later.....Susan

Washington - Day One

We arrived across the Washington State border this morning fairly early from Oregon. We chose to go toward Portland along the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge. Two years ago we traveled the length of the Gorge along the Oregon side and found the WA side to be interesting, also. One of these shots is near the Portland end of the Gorge, another is across the river from Multnomah Falls. We saw this up close and personal two years ago on the OR side and it was magnificent.
Even though we saw it today across the expanse of the river, it was still impressive.

The Bonneville Dam is the other photo. This is remarkable due to the fact that at this time there is controversy between the Feds and the Environmentalists over the trapping/killing of seas lions who camp out every year at the base of the dam and eat a ton of salmon who use the fish ladders to go to their spawning grounds up river each year. It was so interesting because as we stopped alongside the river/dam to take these photos we saw lots of sea lion heads pop up for air, so they were there in force. I don't seem to have caught any of them in the photos, but they were there, probably munching away underwater on the many salmon.

We are staying two nights at a nice Best Western motel in Tumwater, WA (home of Olympia beer and their Artesians!) and then early Saturday morning we will head for Sea-Tac airport to fly to Vancouver to begin our Alaskan adventure. It is nice to be back in the Northwest again!

In Oregon

We have encountered some laptop/WiFi difficulties so far but found a good connection today, no trip blog entries so far, but I hope to do better now. This is a photo taken while on the road in eastern Oregon. There were many mountain peaks with snow such as this and there was a cold wind blowing. Tomorrow we hope to be at least as far as Portland for the night, and then on to Seattle on Friday. Good trip so far, but we sure miss having the convenience of a motorhome! Until next time...

Last HOT day for awhile.....

Ernie has asked if he can go along with us on our Alaskan adventure to provide personal commentary to his friend, Aubrey, and show her where we are visiting on this trip. I guess the rest of you will have to settle for keeping up with us through this blog.

You all stay well, we will try to do the same, and will check in through this blog as we travel along. Excitement rising....

South Carolina Marshland WIP

This is where I am with this painting. I am not sure whether I am submitting it now when I am pleased with it so far because I am afraid that once I start putting the water reflecitons I will ruin it or just to show a work in progress. It has lots to be done but I don't want to do more with shading, etc. until I get those dreaded water reflections done.

The ref photo was taken while we were driving along a highway on the way from Edisto Beach to Charleston, SC last summer. I don't know if this is cultivated grassland, marshland, tidal flats or what since I am unfamiliar with this area, but everything was such a nice green color and the water reflections were what prompted me to take the photos, so I guess I had better do them justice.

I don't know if I will finish this before we leave on our Alaskan adventure, but we'll see. Stay tuned for the upcoming travelogue as we journey toward our cruise fun.