Why can’t humans leave things alone?

Lava bed destruction

In this instance, I’m talking about the never-ending building that’s going on here.  We have many houses in the area that are still sitting vacant from the 2004-2006 building boom. These homes have never sold.  Why are they building more residences?  It makes no sense to me, especially when they’re destroying the lava beds to make it happen.

It’s true they take some of the lava rock they blast out to make nice walls around these developments, but it burns me up that they can destroy something that we’ll never get back.  The volcanoes around us are dormant cinder cones now.  These old lava flows are thousands of years old.  They are a beautiful thing to see, the pitch black against the red sand and rocks.

So we’re going from this to this.

Before picture

 After picture

The whole landscape is changing so the developers can make bundles of money by asking exorbitant prices for these new homes.  The natural beauty of the land is slowly disappearing, along with the natural habitat for the quail, jackrabbits, chipmunks and other critters that call this home.  It makes me grateful that we have many parks here where the land is protected from all this destruction.

But I wonder if this will always be the case because the state park, about two miles from us, now has homes along the upper rim.  The homes in this development sell for several million dollars each because they have a nice view of the park below.  This developer is another one who has since gone bankrupt and there are few homes sold in that development and quite a few vacant ones along with vacant lots.

Lava bed destruction

Of course, I’m only one person and I can’t do much about any of this, although I suspect a few people here feel this way.  You can’t stop progress and I wouldn’t want to, but I don’t think humankind should destroy things for the sake of building either.  That’s my two cents.  What do you think about such matters?

Wind, a Double-edged Sword - Sculpting Beauty or a Force of Destruction

Kayenta - Sunni's Photo's

Snow Canyon State Park - Sunni's Photo's

Living in the desert, we are subject to windstorms, but without those brutal winds, we wouldn’t have all the carved, red rocks around us. The sweeping beauty of the canyons and sheer cliffs of rock walls rise up out of the desert plain, sagebrush, and cactus keeping them company. It took thousands of years to carve the beauty all around us. Without the wind, we would only have lumps of red, black, and cream-colored mountains to look at, all smooth and not near as intriguing as they are now. Amazing places like the Grand Canyon wouldn’t exist without the help of the wind. Therefore, looking from this angle, the wind is a good thing.

Grand Canyon National Park - Sunni's Photo's

Bryce Canyon National Park - Sunni's Photo's

Bryce Canyon National Park - Sunni's Photo's

However, I don’t relish it blowing 60 MPH in the dead of winter, when I have to go out and recover the poor plants I’m trying to protect, without freezing to death while doing it.

Free Clipart

It can also cause quite a mess when it brings blowing sand to clean up later. However, even this has its own beauty as I can look out my window and see it rippling across the desert in red-colored sheets.

In its milder version, wind becomes a breeze that can cool us on a hot summer day when a gentle puff of air is a relief. This can be as welcome as a tall glass of icy lemonade.

Free Clipart

Free Clipart

Without the wind we could never fly a kite or drift around in a hot balloon, once we got over our fright of floating around up there in a basket that only comes up to your thigh. Someday I will post that story.

Bushes would have to stay wherever they sprang up because nothing would be around to uproot them and carry them away to a different location.

Wind can also be a destructive force when it takes the form of a hurricane or tornado, ripping across the land leveling infrastructures, destroying homes, and taking human lives. Every year certain parts of the country fall victim to this destructive force of nature.

Flooding from Hurricane Damage

As people going about our daily lives, we probably never give much thought to the wind, unless it directly affects us in some way. The wind always draws my attention to it all the time because it’s a part of living in the desert.

We have had the barbecue almost blown off the patio a few times. It has blown over heavy medal chairs that have fallen and broken things and has blown with such gusto as to move a cargo trailer we have parked on the side of the house. One time it even took the trashcans and beat over $300 worth of damage into my husband’s truck. We now keep a chain around those cans at all times. Everyone in our neighborhood has lost things to the wind, blown away into the desert and probably miles away.

On one occasion, a dust storm came up while I was at the grocery store. By the time I loaded the car and got in, my mouth was full of gritty sand.

Maybe this post will be a reminder to some of just how much things in nature can affect us everyday.

You Need the Right Attitude to Live in Alaska

This is the first post of the A to Z challenge. I am glad to be part of it this year. Many thanks go to Arlee Bird for thinking up this big blog event and making it a success every year.

Free Clipart



Attitude has to do with everything in life. Sometimes I forget that and let my apprehension stand in the way, such as moving to foreign places. I always try to have an open mind and a good attitude about things, but I’m not sure what it is about moving to the unknown that makes this good quality go out the window. I guess the concept of living in a foreign place doesn’t set well with me at my age. It’s too bad this didn’t come up forty years ago when I was gung-ho to go anywhere and do about anything.

Back then, my sense of adventure led me to Alaska to spend the summer, not knowing it would be five long years before I got out of there. I’m not saying it was all bad, but we have no idea what a place will actually be like until we move there and can immerse ourselves in what it has to offer.

Denali National Park - Alaska

Downtown Anchorage Alaska in Summer



The Alaska experience was one that exposed me to things I would have never seen, or been a part of, had I not gone there. It is the “last frontier” here in the US. Many things about the state live up to this name. The biggest adjustment, besides all the cold weather, was the short seasons, and unusual differences between days versus nights. It is also amazing that you can drive no more than two or three minutes out of any settlement and be totally out in the wilderness. You can literally leave a large city like Anchorage with its skyscrapers, restaurants, and shopping centers and find yourself surrounded by woods and mountains thinking you are the only one there, not even knowing a large city is a couple of miles down the road.

Whittier/Portage Glacier - Not far from where I lived in Anchorage, Alaska

It is a very different country. The fur and pine trees grow stunted because of the cold weather temperatures, and on the mountains, there is a “tree line” where it is actually too high and too cold to grow any trees. Yet, because of the short growing season, the veggies are gigantic, growing to several feet long or diameters across. One can picture sitting there and watching them as they grow before your eyes because overnight they seem to pick up several inches. This same phenomenon happens when the trees leaf out in the spring. They go from bud to full leaf in a week’s time.

This broccoli weighs 35 pounds and was grown by John Evans in Palmer, Alaska



The state is like a picture postcard. Almost everywhere you look is some magnificent untouched landscape to photograph. I would love to share some of these with you, but I didn’t have a digital camera in those days. The pictures I do have are from an old 110 camera and not very good. The ones I’m posting on here I Googled and found on the internet.

Aside from the extreme cold, it was always dark in the winter and always light in the summer. I worked in a mall, went to work in the dark, and came home in the dark in the wintertime. The sun was up from about 11am to 2 pm, but was still dusky and you needed headlights to drive. The opposite was true in summer when you had to have dark shades on the window to sleep. The sun was still up at midnight. All of this stuff can really throw you off mentally. The summers never get warm either, unless you call the two days in July when it is 70 degrees warm.

There are as many bars as gas stations. It seems like there is one on every corner. This is because there is nothing to do in the wintertime except drink and party. It even gets too cold to ski or walk around in snowshoes. Depression is a big factor in the wintertime. They call it “cabin fever.”

Everyone has a foyer in the house, which is in essence a small compartment about three by four that sits between two front doors to the house. This is where everyone leaves all the cold weather gear you have to put on just to go outside anywhere, even if it’s just down the block. This space also acts as a barrier to trap most of the cold air before you enter the house. It takes about 15-20 minutes to get all this stuff on, or get it off after you’ve arrived somewhere. People go to dinner in fancy restaurants in snow boots in the winter.

Every house is also equipped with plug-ins to warm your car engine, so it will start and you can go somewhere. All the cars have engine heaters installed and a small plug sticking out of the grill in front.

I never saw so many wrecked vehicles either. Almost everyone up there owns a car with at least a couple of dents because the roads get slick in the winters. There are numerous fender benders daily. It isn’t unusual to see cars sitting off in vacant fields or stuck in the snow banks. Sometimes it is like driving past the carnage from the night before on your way to work. You definitely need to watch out for “sliding vehicles.”

Bull Moose in Chugach State Park - Alaska



Aside from all this, there are some amazing sights as well. Among those are moose grazing in the ponds, standing knee deep in the water, and picking wild blueberries with the black bears on berry-covered knolls in the summers. In addition, the glaciers are amazing with their enormous chunks of blue ice immersed in large, cold pools with the main glacier in the background that is several stories high. If I hadn’t gone there, I would have never witnessed all these things, or have been part of a moose butchering team. Let me note here that this was an experience and not necessarily a highlight of my life up there. Butchering animals is not my thing, but moose is definitely better than beef.

Fireweed and Clover grows wild everywhere on Alaska

This is fireweed on the Kenai River

Where else can you gather fireweed and clover to make your own honey? Or walk among squash and other veggies growing that are as big as wheelbarrows? Or view the Northern Lights in winter?

The Northern Lights - Alaska

So I wonder what became of my great attitude as I embark on this new adventure in Central America, if that is in fact where I end up. Maybe I should call upon my younger self to get me through this transition.


All landscape photos courtesy of Niebrugge Images

Broccoli from John Evans in Palmer AK

Vacations

Royalty free pic



I read your blogs and I always get inspired to write something, so thank you for that you wonderful writers. I thought I’d write an extra post this week about my recent vacation. It sort of didn’t feel like a vacation to me, but I suppose anytime you’re visiting with people you don’t see often, perhaps you could call that a vacation, in a way. It all depends on what each of our definitions of a vacation is.


What comes to mind when you think of this word? Sailing the seas to some exotic locale, perhaps digging around ancient ruins, the majestic view offered at national parks, or exploring some place you’ve only read about over the years. The list could go on and on couldn’t it? Perhaps it’s just being lazy lying about the house and doing nothing at all except sipping tea, or wine, curling up with a good book, or watching nature and enjoying all the beauty around us.

When I hear the word vacation, I usually wonder what that is since I’ve had so few of them during my life. I guess because of that those times really stand out. We could never afford it growing up, but we did go three hundred miles away to visit our great grandmother twice, I think. It could have been once. Usually we just stayed home and played in the dirt, enjoying our time away from school. We made mud pies, played baseball in the pasture, made paper dolls, had chinaberry fights, and picked cotton, among other things around the farm.

Normally, the only vacations I ever get as an adult is going to funerals, if you can call that a vacation. Mainly this is because I work all the time and can’t afford to go anywhere, but when it concerns family, you have come up with the funds to go and be supportive and pay your final respects. Once the funeral is out of the way, it is fun getting together with everyone, even on sad occasions. It’s a shame that this is how my life seems to go, but it is what it is.

There have been times when twenty years have gone by between family visits, as much as I hate to admit that, but when you live in different areas of the country, it isn’t always easy to get there when no one ever has any money to visit, or any extra time either, for that matter. Not all of us can coordinate things to coincide at the same time, so once we can all meet up we realize we’ve changed so much during that time that we don’t even recognize our own family members. Anyway, that’s a whole other story for another time perhaps...

In my mind, a vacation should be all about fun, excitement, and seeing places you’ve never been before, certainly no cooking and cleaning, or alarm clocks. I think the best vacation I’ve ever had in my life was going to Hawaii when I lived in Alaska. I’ll never forget that as long as I live. You see it was February in Alaska and for those of you who have never been there – it can be one dark, cold, desolate place in the winter.

Alaska in the winter - Courtesy of Creative Commons

Arriving in Hawaii astounded me. I’d never seen such a gorgeous place! It was like arriving in heaven. It was February and in the 80’s, birds were chirping. All the warmth and all the beauty, blue skies, flowers, palm trees swaying in the breeze were amazing! It was about 20 degrees the day I flew out of Alaska, everything was gray, the sky, and ground. The only birds in Alaska are ravens, even in summer.

Hawaii Beaches - Courtesy of Creative Commons

Another thing that stood out about Hawaii is the way they arrange food in restaurants and sidewalk cafes. The food is so beautifully prepared and they put orchids on the plate. Imagine that? I wanted to stay there and never go back home. But, that’s another story too...

Hibiscus Flowers Bloom Everywhere in Hawaii - Courtesy of Creative Commons

Plumerias Bloom Everywhere in Hawaii - Courtesy of Sunni's Pictures

Anyway, as you know, I just went on vacation with my husband to visit his dad in Oregon. Now I can’t say this was a horrible vacation, the weather was fantastic for Oregon in October – in the 70’s everyday we were there, it only rained twice, and that was overnight. A few trees had turned, but not many, so I didn’t get many fall color shots with my camera. However, that’s okay, I’m glad it wasn’t freezing and dreary the whole time as Oregon gets in the winter. I’m a sun worshipper, as you may have guessed by now. Many dreary days in a row really get to me.

Fall color from the trip - Medford Oregon - Courtesy Sunni's Pictures

Fall color from the trip - Medford Oregon - Courtesy Sunni's Pictures

My husband’s father will be 94 in December, so it was important to visit him and his wife. They both get along fairly well considering their ages, but it seemed all I did was repair things, wash dishes, and eat. We sat around a lot when not in the kitchen. The mother-in-law loves to cook and bake. My husband watched politics and sports with his dad and we found ourselves in front of the TV, along with the men on many of the evenings, so we would bring our books to the couch and read while it was on. The whole situation was a lot like staying home, except for all the cooking and cleaning to do, but I was glad to help. They did need it, and I’d rather stay busy doing something most of the time anyway. My husband usually goes alone on these trips, so it was time for me to go along this time.

One thing remarkable about his dad is that he gets around by himself, no walker, or cane, still drives, and still loves tinkering in the garage.

Internet access was a problem, but I did get to B and N one afternoon for a couple of hours to use the wifi there and I was able to get it at the motels coming and going. I could check a bit of email at least.

We were able to escape a couple of hours too to visit some of my husband’s old friends and their wives. I was hoping to get to the Oregon coast one day, but it’s an all day affair, so we didn’t do that this trip. The Oregon coast is beautiful with all the driftwood on the beaches, the misty air, and big rocks jutting from the ocean. I always get in the mood for a steaming hot bowl of clam chowder when I get in that atmosphere.

Oregon Beaches - Courtesy of Creative Commons

Oregon Coast - Courtsy of Creative Commons

I really felt like I needed some exercise after being so sedentary and eating too much, so we stopped at a couple of places in NV on the way home. We got out and hiked around to look at some old petroglyphs and then again at a mini grand canyon. Those pics are below.

Hickison Petroglyph Recreation Area - NV - Courtesy Sunni's Pictures

Hickison Petroglyph Recreation Area - NV - Courtesy Sunni's Pictures

Cathedral Gorge Park - NV - Courtesy Sunni's Pictures

Cathedral Gorge Park - NV - Courtesy Sunni's Pictures

Of course, now I feel way behind on everything. I was out of my element there, so it is good to be home even though I know it will be many years before I go again. My cats really missed me a lot and won’t let me out of their sight now.

Koki, my little daredevil, has been up to a lot of mischief, chewing a hole in the newspaper I was trying to read because she wanted my attention at that moment, also getting the drainer out of the kitchen sink again and packing it around the house. At least she didn’t break anything valuable while we were gone. However, she hasn’t let me get a decent night’s sleep since we’ve been back. She wakes me up three times a night to love all over my face. Of course once I’m wake awake, she goes back to sleep awhile, but just until I fall asleep again. Maybe she is punishing me for leaving her behind.