Steve and Judy's Travels!

We’ve finally put a dent in that 4,219 number!

We drove through some serious storms to get here.  No problem.  During the worst of it, we pulled over at a truck stop and let the most severe part pass. Otherwise, an uneventful trip.

Now we’re San Antonio-ish.  An afternoon walk along the Medina River in the Texas Hill Country.

Chicken fried steak at the Old Spanish Trail.

The Great Alaska Trip map

Look how much closer we are!

The big trip to Alaska has begun.  The house is clean and empty.  The bus is clean and full.

Here we are at our first night’s stop.

We’re spending the night in the bus at Sandpipers on the 300 row.  No longer do we have 4,219 miles to go to get to Fairbanks.  We’ve cut that down to 4,218 ¾!

He had a tough year in gymnastics.  His wrists were hurting enough they needed treatment.  Six weeks in casts.

When the casts came off, he couldn’t do any exercises for another six weeks.  Then he couldn’t do any high impact or high torque moves after that.  All he could do was go to gym every day and watch and do conditioning.

So he didn’t compete at all the first half of the season.  Then he only competed on three out of the six events for the second half.  Then came the State Competition.  He did all six events for the first time this year, and advanced to Regionals in Long Beach.  He competed at Regionals and advanced to Nationals in Reno.  He did the first round of all six events on Thursday at Nationals, but didn’t advance in All-around.  He did advance in Floor though, and will compete again, just on Floor, on Sunday.

Go Alex!

We’ve all got yards full of grass here.

The kind of grass is called St Augustine.  It looks good all year, requires very little water, but is a little goofy.  It grows deep and is spongy to walk on.

It just builds on itself.

Here at the edge of our driveway it’s six inches deep!

It’s like walking through soft sand!

…and tomorrow is the Global Big Day!

Put any bird sightings into ebird ( www.ebird.com ) tomorrow, and you’ll be part of it.  Last year the Global Big Day netted about three-quarters of all species found in North America.  World-wide, there were sightings of two-thirds of all bird species on the planet on one day!  All these sightings go into the ebird database for scientific purposes, and they’re available to the general public as well.

Happy birding.