We’ll be back to rain soon, as early as tomorrow, but the past few days have been beautiful, warm, amazing for mid-May.

We went out fishing…didn’t catch anything, but we had a perfect after-work hour on the water.

We went to Anchorage on Tuesday for meetings, flew the “milk run,” Alaska Airlines’ trip that originates in Seattle, then stops in Ketchikan, Sitka, Juneau, and finally Anchorage. Flight seeing all the way!

We got on in Ketchikan. These were scenes on the way up:

That’s a glacier carving it’s way to the ocean.

This is the photo for the phrase, “pure as snow,” it’s blinding white. The snow and the clouds blend together.

Look at the time the sun is setting in Anchorage tonight. (You can see the sunrise/sunset times in the screenshot of my phone weather profile above.) Makes for long days and restless nights. That’s the way I sleep this time of year, restlessly. Somehow your body registers the light and doesn’t settle. I think it’s the elongated days that don’t give you the normal cues to begin shutting down and prepping for the darkness. Just a geographical hazard of being this far north.

We saw a moose in the marshlands. Fortunately it was too busy eating to notice us. Moose are sometimes aggressive, but this one wasn’t a threat. We were clearly less interesting to him than he was to us, and he couldn’t be bothered to turn around for a really good portrait, so I had to make do with a profile shot.

This is a view from the road heading south out of town toward Seward. Mountains and water are everywhere.

Today, on the way back down, I got this shot of Juneau’s famous glacier:

Finally, back to Ketchikan, and a beautiful sunny afternoon. We actually ate lunch on the patio of the restaurant we chose. I didn’t even know they had a patio until today…it’s not often you can enjoy outdoor dining here!

And this is what I got in the mail:

It’s the proof copy of my book. So fun to open and find a real book, not just a digital file, which is all I’ve seen until today. Now it will list on Amazon, and the Kindle version will be up in a couple of weeks. Ahhhh…I started this last July! Hard to believe it took this long to finish, but then, it wasn’t always a linear project. And I’ve learned, some things are best not rushed.

It’s not quite the beginning of summer, by the calendar. But in the north, where some years summer appears on a Tuesday and is gone by Thursday, and you often find yourself wearing jackets more than sunscreen, whatever the calendar says, an early start is a good thing!

A friend just called to say he’s dropping off some fresh salmon. Looks like we’re grilling out for dinner tomorrow!