Crazy bird lady in Hawaii

I made it to Hawaii without my bags. So the first thing I had to do was to buy some clean clothes. Once I got freshed up we walked the streets of Wikiki to take in the scenes. It did not take long to run into the guy with the birds...

I opened the draw of the night stand to find books of many faiths. I guess Hawaii is a very accepting place, a melting pot. Either that or they get tourists from all over... hmm no Torah or Koran?


This morning there was the sun, and the rain and a rainbow, this was taken outside the balcony of my hotel room.


Look me and more birds...

Look another Rainbow... We saw this on the way up diamond head, the a hike to the high point on the rim of a volcanic crater.


Me at the top... there were many stairs...


And a few tunnels!


Did some Geocaching... tooking for hidden trinkets with the GPS unit. Found and geocache in the park and while we were looking these birds came up to check us out.


The Golden Plover is a migrant from Alaska like me. They nest in the area above the arctic circle where I live, then spend their winters in Hawaii, they are no dummies.
Below is the red-crested cardinal. We also saw your run of the mill Northern Cardinal. Other birds included the Java Sparrow, the house sparrow, the house finch, the red-vented Bulbul and a white-eye, maybe Japanese.

Diamond head from the park below.... yes, I hiked up it.

And last but not least, the sun set!

I am happy to be in Hawaii.

Sweatshop

Just kidding, here are a few of my dedicated students learning to sew in my Home Ec. Class. I will post some photos of their nice looking Atiqluks when the are finished.

Hawaii Bound

Last night I grabbed a bite to eat at a Chinnese resuratnt and this was the fortune in my cookie!
Good thing I already had my tickets. All of the flights out of Alaska are booked! If you did not plan your trip at least a month ago you are not going! I bought my tickets to Hawaii in September. I was feeling guilty about not seeing my family and all, until Seatle got hammered by a major storm that shut down the airport. If I had bookea flight back to Vermont, I do not think I would have made it. Colby was supposed to go to Mexico and another teacher was going to Chicago. Neither of them have made it out of Fairbanks yet. I am currenlty in the Anchorage airport looking out at a gorgous mountain range! What a view! My Flight is schedualed to leave in about 2 1/2 hours.

Ashley and I flew out of AKP on Friday to be sure we could get out for the Holidays.

It was a fun weekend. We drank, we ate, I skiied, I soaked. Above is a phot of me soaking up the sun on the shorted day of the year on the University trail system in Fairbanks. The snow in Fairbanks was light and fluffy, the trails had excellent coverage, and they were groomed. Man I could live in Fairbanks... this city looks very livable. Except maybe the air quality.... many people are burning wood and even coal with the price of heating oil so high. A thick blanket of smoke is trapped above the city due to and temperature inversion.

Skiing across a frozen lake on the university trail system.

Ashley and I met a musher in Fairbanks. Here she is with a bear skin in his cabin.

Musher mitts are hard to fill. My what big hands...

Feeding Time at the dog yard. Mushing Huskies are much smaller than I expected. The smaller dogs tend to have fewer injuries to the wrists and such. They are small and fast. Together as a team they are stong.