Hot, hot, hot!

Why is it that we always have beautiful weather at home when we leave?  It's in the 70s today there.  A while back we had made plans to meet  our kids and grandkids at Disneyland next week.  We left home yesterday and came down to spend a few days visiting hubby's mother in Modesto, CA.  It has reached 106 both yesterday and today.  Thankfully, the weather further south where we're headed is a much more pleasant 70+.  We looks forward to the time with our family this week.  I'm sure I'll have pictures to post when we return home, or maybe before.  Who knows?

After returning from Alaska and before heading south, I finished quilting the quilt I had referenced before that has not been gifted yet.  I will put the label on when we get home next weekend.  I am really looking forward to some time at home, and our budget needs some serious time to recover from our travels this July.

July happenings and fourth grandchild feature

Well, it's been a while since I've posted, so best get busy.  We got home from Alaska Monday morning at 5:00 a.m., so we kind of dragged ourselves around that day. 

First, we have one more grandchild who hasn't been featured lately, so I want to do that now.  This young man is the oldest of our four.  He is quite an athlete and enjoys football first and foremost, but also basketball and baseball.  The football picture is actually from 2009, when he made a great defensive play and sacked the quarterback for a safety.  Football practice starts in August, and he is excited about that.  His team's baseball season was disappointing, but besides football, he will be playing on a fall baseball team.  His family went camping at Diamond Lake earlier this year, and this was the prize trout he caught.  This lake sits in a most beautiful forested setting, with snow-capped mountains all around.

Now, about our trip to Alaska.  We had such a wonderful time.  To put it in a very brief nutshell, what an absolutely beautiful, spectacular, magnificent, and huge state!  We flew into Anchorage, rented a car and put about 2000 miles on the car.  We should have gotten an award for the most disgusting display of splattered bugs on the front of our car when we turned it in.  Yuk!   We went to Homer, Seward, Whittier, back to Anchorage, and then to one of the main highlights - Denali National Park.  We took a long tour into the interior of the park and saw about 10 grizzly bears, several moose, a few caribou and a fox.  As a huge bonus, Mt. McKinley poked her head out of the clouds several times for us.   From Denali, we went to Fairbanks and enjoyed our time there.  North of Fairbanks we got our first of several sightings of the Alaska pipeline.  It is an impressive sight, to say the least.  We took a different, and very scenic route back to Anchorage and from there flew home.