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R and I went out with our friend Millie yesterday for some extreme geocaching. (I asked Millie if she minded being on the internet. She said no, though I don't think she knew I was going to blog about her.) We had the GPS with us, and the coordinates for the cache we were trying to find. The GPS will tell you the distance to a particular cache, but as the distance is measured "as the crow flies" it's not always accurate when compared to your miles on foot. It took quite a bit of meandering and backtracking and generally mucking about to find the trail that led to this cache, and just as much time to march through the mud and moss to it.

The muskeg (marshy, swampy tundra ground) was, well marshy and swampy. This is Millie actually wringing out her socks. She got the wettest out of all of us, thinking that vented Asics would make for comfortable hiking.

We did eventually locate the cache, which was full of old CD's to exchange with your own. R and I unloaded some of our duplicates. We took a different route back to the car, thinking that it was faster and drier than the previous. We were wrong on both counts. Then we went out for ice cream. Millie swears she'll go out with us again next weekend, though I may have to search for a cache that doesn't require quite so much schlepping.

The equinox has come and gone, and the pit of darkness will soon be upon us. Stumbling toward the solstice, indeed! I must admit that I am looking forward to doing some knitting and other crafts for Christmas. It doesn't feel quite cold enough yet. (28 degrees tonight though; that just might be cold enough for me.)

tags: geocaching, geocache

This is my new baby niece, Emily, and isn't she the cutest thing you have ever seen? (Don't even try to counter that!) She was born on Friday morning at 9:50 am, and she weighs 7lbs 8oz. She is an absolute doll. My sister-in-law is still in the hospital with some minor complications, and we are going by again today to see her and the baby. I need to get my daily baby fix!

R and I met my parents at Denali last weekend. We came down from Fairbanks and they came up from Albuquerque. Our 2 hour drive beats their 9 hours of flying and 5 hours drive from Anchorage. Much like my previous visits to the park, the scenery and the spectacle and the animals and the incredible primoridial permanence of it are indescribable. I'll never get tired of that place.

We took the park road in 60 miles or so to Fish Creek, and saw all sorts of amazing things along the way. We saw a litter of wolf puppies, now almost grown, lazing and sleeping and chasing each other around a field. They were black and brown, and a couple were silver. We saw a lone caribou grazing on a beautiful fall-colored field.

We took my parents geocaching with us, and even though my mom is physically incapable of being sly and sneaky (she's much too loud and Irish) I think they enjoyed it.

Now they've met R and know she's not a psycho-killer. In fact, she's a normal human being, and we do normal things like watch TV and play board games and cook dinner. You have to see it to believe it, I guess.

tags: fall, denali, denali national park, caribou