I am so tired

I drove for about 9 hours today, and realized afterwards when I was sending pictures to a friend that I had gone from 60 to 63 degrees of latitude and driven through about a month of seasonal progression.

I woke up this morning in Seward, and this was my view out the front windows as I had my morning tea.



I saw a mountain goat on the mountain (with binoculars).

( The trip )

Travel update the last (probably)

Last full day of my fall road trip, which is good because I'm starting to receive plaintive "when are you coming hooooome" emails from the Beloved Spouse.

My previous places were pretty swank, but this cabin is appealingly rustic. Well, mostly appealing - it does have running water and the info on the place says that the water is "potable," by which you might guess "won't kill you but tastes terrible" and you would be correct. It was so bad that I went out at 8pm last night hoping to find a place that was open (which I did, a little convenience store at a campground up the road) and bought a few bottles of extremely overpriced bottled water for drinking and tea. I think it's all right for cooking and brushing teeth with.

The propane stove is so old that it doesn't have an igniter or a pilot light - there's a long-handled barbecue lighter to ignite the burners. I think it's distinctly possible that we had this exact stove when I was a little kid in the '70s. It looks just like it. (And I can't get over how much smaller it is than a modern stove, it's like half the size of ours at home. You can see the scale of the stove by the size of the teakettle, which is not huge, it's just a normal-sized teakettle.)



All of that aside, the place where I'm staying is behind an airstrip used by a flightseeing service (not too busy, I see a few planes a day) and the view from the kitchen table looks like this:



That's the view out the window, not paintings!

It was cold and rainy today, so I stayed in most of the day, worked on my Closer exchange assignment and did some business stuff related to my book launch on Tuesday. But later in the afternoon I decided to go for a scenic drive out to the Savage River hiking trail (as far as you can drive in a private vehicle on the Denali park road; the drive goes from the park entrance, which is a bit north of here, to Mile 14) and I had no regrets because it was STUNNING, peak colors and sweeping red and gold vistas. It was "I can't believe this is a real place and not a fantasy world" levels of gorgeous.







This sign implies adventures ahead.



After that I was going to be EXTREMELY salty if I saw no moose at all - but I did! It was a cow and a calf, their presence advertised by a large cluster of RVs and tour buses on the side of the road.



One more scenic visa:



And tomorrow I drive home.

And in other (Biggles) news

While we are all frantically writing for the proximity flash and waiting for a bite-sized candy box of fic to fall on us, I wrote a short thing:

Crime and Punishment (600 wds, Biggles & EvS)
Von Stalhein has a question for Biggles.

It's just a little scene that's been in my head for a while, I thought would probably end up belonging to a longer fic, but when I wrote it, it feels complete on its own.

Meanwhile on Facebook, someone I follow linked to this local event, which obviously made me instantly think of Guess Who:

The Great Interior Pumpkin Drop is back at Bradley Sky Ranch (95Z) for 2024! Open to aviation enthusiasts as well as family, friends, and the broader Alaskan Community, come join us for a day of amazing aviators, local musicians and food trucks, and games and activities for the whole family.

Pilots: Try your luck or skill at dropping pumpkins from your airplane! The target zone will be a 100 foot circle. Winner is the closest to the center. It is a lot harder to judge when to drop than it looks! Prizes for first, second, and third place will be awarded.

DROPPING A PUMPKIN FROM AN AIRPLANE ON A TARGET. And they're inviting any rando with an pilot's license who wants to participate. 🤣

I desperately want Biggles doing this. As Sheron said when I showed this to her, this sounds exactly like something they did during WWI ...