Back home...

Made it home safe and sound last night (more like 2AM this morning!) from our Alaska trip. The word for those two weeks was "Wow!" Everything was just...WOW. The mountains, the wildlife, the scenery, the people, the...everything.

My pal Kathleen is an Alaskan, and I got a little taste of the heaven she lives in. Heaven, that is, during the summer--during the winter, not so much. I got the idea it'd be WAAAAAAAY too cold for me up there, so I'm happy to visit but wouldn't want to live there.

I was struck, over and over again, by a sense of amazement and wonder at all of the natural beauty God created. I tend to feel God's presence most strongly when I'm surrounded by nature, and I practically overdosed on it the past couple weeks!

Oh, and photos? I'm not kidding y'all, I took easily 200 pix a day. Now, some of those I tossed out, but I'm going through and editing others. I've already posted some of my shots on Picasa, and this one went on my photo blog today.

More (possibly stories, but definitely photos!) later...

What I did on my summer vacation...

I mentioned in my last post I was going to be gone on vacation for a while, but didn't say where we were going. Well...we're in the middle of a vacation in Alaska--5 days on land, then 7 days on a cruise ship. We've been talking about doing this for a few years, and we decided to just make it happen. We both really like to travel for fun, and so we make it a priority to take one really cool trip every year or so.

Yesterday we spent the entire day inside Denali National Park. I took a ton of pictures, and the ones below were a couple of my favorites. I posted this to my photoblog also, but I thought I'd go ahead and cross-post it here.

We saw this yearling caribou toward the end of our trip. It caught everyone by surprise--it wasn't more than 100 yards from our bus. Quite a rare sighting, from what I hear. I still need to process lots and lots of pictures but I thought this would be a nice sampler.

Tomorrow we're headed to the cruise ship to go south from Anchorage. There will be lots more stories, pictures, etc...so more later...

Finally, something interesting!!!

Oh, and not just one interesting thing today but TWO things. WHOOHOO! Life has been work-school-eat-sleep for a few weeks, with a little travel thrown in, so there's not been much to write about. Shameless self-cross-promotion...I was able to work in an afternoon shooting around San Francisco (pictures, not bullets...) and I posted some of my favorite shots from that trip on my photo blog.

Interesting thing #1 - got to go to a book signing last night. One of my favorite authors is Lee Child, who's written a series of 12 books (so far) about a drifter, ex-military, loner, tough-guy named Jack Reacher. Interesting factoid--according to sources, Child's books sell at the rate of one per second. CHA-CHING! Anyway, his latest novel, Nothing To Lose, was just released so he's touring the world to promote it. He's a very engaging speaker and took lots of questions (including 2 from me). I went with a good friend of mine--the friend who turned me on to Child's books a few years ago. We both had a great time last night, and I can't wait to dive into the book. I got a couple of decent pictures, also...















Interesting thing #2: I was poking around on a couple friend's blogs, and found this hysterical photo essay from Sue's blog: The Top 25 Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians. Just wait until you get to the last one on the list. I about died laughing.

Anyway, that's it for now. I'm off on yet another business trip, and then on vacation for 2 weeks (double YAY!). I'm still trying to work out how, when, and whether I will post while I'm gone. Worst case, I'll see you in a couple weeks...

More later...