No dice…

No dice meaning the bug stuck around and I’m still stuck in bed feeling nauseous, achy, and lethargic.  There’s actually 3 of us in my house who have been feeling under the weather the past few days.  Welcome to community living!  I didn’t end up working yesterday and luckily I already had today and tomorrow off.  I’ve been doing a LOT of sleeping; in fact, I think I’ve been awake a total of 20 hours the past 48 hours.  The sad thing is, because I haven’t recovered as quickly as originally hoped, I had to find a replacement for my speaking engagement tonight at church.  Be as it may, I am humbly spending my Sabbath in bed, trying to stay awake as long as possible (so that I can actually sleep through the night) by reading, watching movies, writing letters, and now blogging.  Now that I say that out loud, my day really isn’t all that bad…relaxing, actually.  

Last weekend was a fun weekend!  Nicole and I got Friday off and went up to Whitehorse  for a much needed day away.  Usually a large group of us drivers go up together to stock up on groceries and maybe catch a flick at the theatre.  This time it was just the two of us…and it was BLISS!  We could do whatever we wanted, in whatever order we wanted, for as long as we wanted.  We were craving fast-food, so as soon as we got to town we stopped at McDonald’s and ate double cheeseburgers, chicken McNuggets, and fries to our heart’s content.  Afterwards, we met up with our friend Alex who had driven his motorcycle up and had blizzards at Dairy Queen.  By this time our bellies were bursting…and raging at us for all the crap we had just piled into our bodies.  Alex left us and we headed downtown to walk off the grease fest and looked through shops along Main Street.  It was a really nice day so we drove to the park near the river, laid out a blanket, and spent the next two hours visiting and dozing in the hot afternoon sun.   Then we went to Wal-Mart and Canadian Superstore for some quick grocery shopping.  Come 7:30, we decided it was time to start heading back.  We didn’t leave however without squeezing in one more stop at McDonald’s drive-thru for a quick dinner-to-go.  Call us ridiculous (fast-food 3 times in one day is quite ridiculous) but it seriously was one of our favorite days of the summer so far.  I came home that night reminded of how fortunate and blessed I am to have such a good friend up here with me this summer. 

We (”we” meaning Nicole and me) both worked on Saturday but the good weekend continued with another out-of-town venture on Sunday to Haines for the Southeast Alaska State Fair.  Haines is a town of about 3,000 and is a 45-minute ferry ride from Skagway or 6 hours by road.  For those of you who have seen “The White Fang”, you may recognize the ”town” below.  The set was built for the filming of the movie at the fairgrounds and is still used today during the fair. 

The fair is very small but still a lot of fun. We managed to find enough to entertain us for an afternoon…. 

 Nicole feasting on a sea of cotton candy and me watching her suck it all in (literally)            

        Awww…wook at duh widdle puppy…sooooo cute!

 Ben & Jason trying to maneuver the kiddy sized John Deere tractor

 Introducing Klondike, the largest and slowest competitor in this year’s 4-H horse rodeo

Fair fun lasted until about 6 on Sunday evening.  We then met up with some friends who had driven over on Friday and we all went out to dinner, then drove to Chilkoot Lake, a very still and serene glacier lake, and camped out for the night.  I had to work Monday morning so I caught the 6:30 a.m. ferry back to Skagway. 

And this concludes today’s blogging entry.  Oh, before I leave you, here are some pics from the glacier sightseeing tour I mentioned earlier.  Seriously, if you ever come visit the southeastern part of Alaska, you have to go on one of these tours.  Even from the windows of a little puddle jumper plane, Mother Nature showed herself so majestically.  These snapshots don’t do the hands-on experience the justice it deserves, but it’s a sampling to say the least.  Enjoy….

 

 

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