Fall Colors

This is a shot from a week or more ago of all the smoke in the air. There was a fire on military land that they let burn. The live rounds that could be out there makes it too dangerous for fire crews so the only way to fight it is by air therefore they chose to leave it. A bit ironic since the government puts so many clean air rules in place and there are attempts to regulate our wood stoves, but the week or more we spent in this smoke was horrible.

Lucas at running club. He did one day and declared that he did not like to run. Emily went to one day of cross-country and declared "it hurt" and she quit. Guess we won't have Fall running after all. (Kind of hard after raising Cody, Nick and Elijah who wanted to join every sport there was).

Friday morning I drove down to Palmer to watch Elijah play football. Fall is really hitting Alaska. This is just before Healy.

It rained the entire was to Wasilla and when I got there traffic was at a standstill for about a mile until we got to the 4-lane road.

Both of our teams lost. The Palmer Moose are big and strong. Elijah played JV, but not so much on Varsity. There's a lot of grumbling among the parents on the new coaches tactics. We have a huge number of really talented athletes that are not being used to their potentials. Elijah is one of them. Other coaches know this and prepare. We should not be losing.

That's Elijah in the JV game right in the middle going to the ball being blocked by number 4-something (he made it through him). I don't have very many photos of the game. Elijah wanted me to take video instead. He was showing another kid and said "my mom has video of the game, but it's not very good". The kids reply... "you should be thankful she drove all this way and tried". I think he may have actually for half a second felt bad for being so ungrateful and getting called about by a teammate (whose father has battled throat cancer all summer and he is appreciative of his parents).

Look at how high he jumps to try and block the field goal. That should be good for rebounding in basketball.

What a back drop for a football field. The weather was cold, windy and rainy. Ick!

Elijah rode back with me since we'd beat the bus by a couple of hours. This is what he and Sophie did the whole way back. No one for me to visit with, but at least the scenery is beautiful.

This is right before the Denali National Park entrance.

 This is a glimpse of some of the hotels and businesses at the park entrance. I had intended on stopping to buy some t-shirts as it is the end-of-season sales, but I had worked too hard to get around some slow traffic and didn't want them to pass me. The motor home in front of me turned off. Maybe I should take a day trip down with the kids to shop?

This is just the canyon pass just the other side of the above businesses. You can't stop here because of rock slides.

This is coming into Healy from the other direction.

All my photos were taken on the fly. I just held up my phone and clicked. A whole lot were of nothing! I did stop for a few seconds in Nenana  to take a photo of the swans. They were right by the road.

I slept in far too long this morning with the list of chores I have, but I was exhausted. I've picked some nasturtium leaves for pesto while the photos loaded, but now it is time to pick Olivia up from a birthday party and go to the store. Hopefully, I find some get-up-and-go when we return. It's so cold and wet out that I just want to curl up inside. Homer is busy hauling dirt for the Great Hole. It isn't raining at the moment and hopefully it doesn't today or tomorrow. He gets stuck when it does. 

I'll leave you with a photo of the 6 quarts of salsa I made when I got home last night.