Blogs from Anchorage, Alaska, United States, North America - page 32

Sunday August 5, 2007 It wasn’t raining when we got up, but the clouds were heavy and slate grey so it was still a possibility. Based on the advice of the Campground Hostess, we headed for the Alaska Botanical Gardens. She recommended the nature hike for the chance to see bear or moose within the city limits. The Gardens were very pretty and the Garden Club had had a show yesterday and the winners were still on view. The flowers in the garden were wet and combined with the cloudy sky, the colors of the plants were saturated - great for photography. We enjoyed the nature walk. There were lots of berries (autumn is coming to Alaska) and different birds. We actually saw a bull moose. He had run across a road and then up the ... read more

***IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE MY PREVIOUS JOURNALS, PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOTTOM AND CLICK ‘PREVIOUS JOURNALS’*** ***PLEASE CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE*** ***MY PERSONAL EMAIL ADDRESS IS Colin.d.snowdon@hotmail.com *** **PLEASE FEEL FREE TO FORWARD MY DIARY ONTO ANYONE YOU FEEL MAY BE INTERESTED*** ***PLEASE NOTE THERE MAY BE MORE THAN ONE PAGE OF PHOTOS - TO VIEW THE OTHER PAGES SIMPLY CLICK THE PAGE NUMBER AT THE FOOT OF THIS ENTRY*** Howdee folks. Okay, there has been an amazing amount of things happening and my head is literally spinning. I have not had access to the internet for ages, so I am going to be pounding out the diary entries to bring everyone up to date. These will not be in order, but I don’t think that this will make any difference. In ... read more

Server Crash Sorry republishing this old blog, and bothering you all with another email. Travelblog's server crashed and the lost many blog entries. I had to recover the blog and republish it for it to get back on the server. BIAP and the Parable of the Vineyard Workers June opened up in tent city at BIAP (Baghdad International AirPort). Our unit had been having trouble getting guys out for leave on time. Some of the guys missed out on seeing relatives because of the delays, so our unit took the first possible chance to get us out of there. That put us at BIAP five days early, so we just hung out in the transient tents on that FOB until our turn to fly out. I almost got caught up on my "Bible in One Year" ... read more

Today we got up early to pick up our race kits for tomorrow - crappy schwag, no free stuff but tons of really nice people and a neat guy from LDI on the Jersey shore who swears we have a double in his bar every week....walked around downtown Anchorage which for a town of 277 000 is really kind of strange. The camera battery was dead so no photos of that right now but we'll have some after the race tomorrow. There were nine fires burning in the mountains when we woke this morning (two south of us and seven north) so the mountains we can see from our balcony were covered with clouds and smoke but it smelled fantastic! That cleared up mid-morning and we headed south down the Seward highway between enormous snowcaps, ... read more

First I must catch you up on doings since Kenai Fjords. Wednesday was supposed to be a day off but hiked my legs off inAnchorage which is a quarter-sized Adelaide, all very mod cons despite isolation, like ALice Springs has just one highway and rail line going through. Funny story in Federal building which houses what we would call National POarks and Wildlife- had to be security-checked just like at airport- smiling fellow asked for photo ID, couldn't find at first, said he'd trust me cos I was from Oz- THEN I found a scungy spare passport photo, his mate barely glanced at it, turned up his nose and looked away and first bloke said 'You look as though you are trying to set up a fake ID with that', great guffaws all round! but the ... read more