Philip James Schenkel—my dad's little brother—passed away yesterday. He was 81.
Uncle Jimmy was the middle child of five—with Uncle Bobby and my dad being the oldest, and Uncle Ricky and Aunt Phyllis being the youngest.
Back, L to R: Uncles Ricky, Jimmy and Bobby; Middle: Aunt Phyllis; Front: Dad
Family was important to all of them. In fact, the first memory that comes to mind were Orange Bowl parties at Uncle Jimmy's house on New Year's Day when the Nebraska Cornhuskers played some losing team (national champions back to back to back, baby!). The brothers were watching the game. Their wives and Aunt Phyllis were in the kitchen. The kids were playing unsupervised wherever we wanted—probably running with scissors. It was the 70s, man!
Dad was the glue in the family—he was the one who organized the family reunions and made sure everyone showed up to make runzas have a good time. While I was looking for pictures of Uncle Jimmy today, I found at least four such reunions. Here's one with the next generation of Schenkels, my niece Margeaux and my nephew Nick. And there's my Uncle Jimmy, second from right, with his ever-present smile:
Eventually, we lost Uncle Bobby, but Dad, Uncle Jimmy and Uncle Ricky made the trek from Lincoln to Greeley, where my Uncle Bobby was living then, for the funeral. If you know me, then you know that the way I process grief is often through humor. Gosh, I wonder where I got that from? 🤣 I remember this evening before the service just sitting in a hotel lobby and laughing the night away:
Although I spent a lot of time with Uncle Jimmy and his family growing up, it wasn't until Vic and I started driving to Nebraska every year that I grew much closer to him. You can imagine how some family members might balk at the idea of their beloved daughter/sister/niece dating and then marrying a man 17 years her senior ... but not Uncle Jimmy. He welcomed Vic with open arms (as did all of my family ... eventually 😂) from the very start and always made him feel included and loved.
Every time we went to Nebraska, we made sure to spend time with Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Nancy.
We would often go to The sllonK for dinner (actually The Knolls, but my dad had this thing about pronouncing words backward—I still remember the first time we passed through an unincorporated town and the word "detaroprocninu" just flew off his tongue—and then everyone else just started calling it The sllonK, too), after which we would drive around Lincoln, often starting in the North Bottoms, where Dad's family settled, and then passing by the little house where Grandma Rose and Grandpa Phil lived with their children—my dad and his siblings. Dad and Uncle Jimmy would narrate, and we never heard the same story twice.
Vic would always make us get out of the car at some point so he could take a picture of us. This is my all-time favorite:
Many a trip ended at the Village Inn, where everyone would meet for breakfast before we headed back to Colorado. We almost always did some jokey pose—Vic rarely got a clean shot of us. The thing that strikes me about this picture is that my mom and my stepmom are in it. They were both close to Aunt Nancy, and Norma (my stepmom) just wasn't intimidated by Dad's ex-wife. (I know this post is supposed to be about Uncle Jimmy, but shout-out to Norma, the best stepmom of all time.)
The last time I saw Uncle Jimmy was at my beloved cousin Kimmy's funeral not quite three years ago. He wasn't doing well—both physically and emotionally. He was pretty much in constant pain, and he had just lost his daughter suddenly and without warning. But he still had the ability to summon a smile to his face, which is how I'll always think of him.
I loved getting the occasional text from him, always signed "Love ya, Uncle Jim," as if I wouldn't know who it was from. He would tell me what TV show they were watching and what was going on in it, or what the weather was like, or how he missed my dad/his brother. After Kimmy died, we talked a lot about grief.
My heart goes out to my Aunt Nancy, my cousin Chris, my Aunt Kathy (Uncle Jimmy's first wife), and all of our family and friends who loved Uncle Jimmy. I've been getting a lot of texts from my family today, and they all say the same thing: "He was a really good guy" and "He was the best." And they are all right.
I'll leave you with a few of my favorite pictures of Uncle Jimmy and me. I couldn't have loved him more.
After a nice dinner we had in Lincoln—maybe at The sllonK?
At one of our many meals together—I'll bet this was at the Garden Cafe
When I was in high school, I ended up in a class with a bunch of girls in the grade below. There were several—about 10—who were a really tight group. For reasons unknown but for which I am eternally grateful, those girls let me join their crew. We did more or less everything together for my last three years of high school, and I count them as some of my dearest friends to this day.
We let some boys into our club, too, one of whom passed away Wednesday, very suddenly and unexpectedly.
Lynn Hartzell was the best kind of high school boy—funny, kind, respectful. Looking back, he seemed wise beyond his years—he was comfortable in his own skin and didn't seem to care what anybody else thought. (Unlike so many teenage girls, who live and die by the approval of their peers.) So he hung out with us girls a lot, and that was OK with us.
We were great friends in high school, and after the invention of Facebook, we became great friends again. But for a short time in my senior year, to quote Cloris Leachman in Young Frankenstein, "He vas ... my boyfriend!" (Cue Peter Boyle getting electrocuted and screaming. Lynn would have loved this reference.)
Boyfriend. That word feels sooooo teenagery to me today. But man, in the late 70s/early 80s, having a boyfriend was everything. And he was the best kind of high school boyfriend to have because he didn't play high school boy games—if he liked you, he'd walk down the hall hand in hand with you. He wouldn't talk smack about you just to look cool in front of the other guys. And he wouldn't be coy or evasive about his feelings or make you wonder where you stood with him.
He also had a hot Camaro, so there was that.
If this picture doesn't scream 1970s to you, you are too young.
We went to football and basketball games, took band trips, went to bible study, and hung out at his house a lot. (His parents were a girlfriend's absolute dream. In fact, his dad was one of the first adult men who didn't treat me like a girl. He let me drive the tractor when they were putting up hay the summer after I graduated, even though I broke the hay bailer—twice. The obvious choice would have been for me to stay in the kitchen with Lynn's mom while she cooked us a feast for lunch, but they needed help in the fields, and I could drive. More or less.)
As many high school romances do, ours fizzled out. I moved away from home in the days before cell phones or email. We had to write letters. And we did ... for a while. And then we didn't. We both moved on, found the loves of our lives, and married them.
One day, 20 years after high school, I got a DM in my Facebook. From Lynn. He and his wife Sara were moving, and he found a cheerleader sweater with a "Patti" emblem on it. Knowing that I spelled my name with a "y," he wasn't sure it was mine, but after a little investigating, I confirmed that it was. Sara and I had been cheerleaders together, and after I stopped cheerleading, she needed the sweater I had worn in ... 9th grade, maybe? I gladly gave it to her, and he gladly mailed it back to me two decades later.
That's when we got back in touch. We'd send a Facebook message every now and again, talk about the old days a little, but mostly we'd talk about the current days. How he had become a father, and then a grandfather. How he and Sara were going to Hawaii for their 25-year anniversary. How he didn't enjoy working much. I'd tell him about my four-legged kids, how Vic and I went to Hawaii for our 25-year anniversary, and how I didn't enjoy working much. (No offense, work peeps—you know I love you.)
A year might go by between messages, and then something would remind one of us of the other, and we'd reach out, exchange messages or emails for a few days, and go dormant again. It was an easy friendship.
I saw Lynn for the last time seven years ago, at my dad's funeral. Seven years to the day before he himself passed away. (I know this because OneDrive sends me a daily recap of all the pictures from that day.) I remember looking out and seeing him and two of the girls from our little high school group and felt not only that I was loved but also that my dad was. It was so special.
We continued our "every now and again" messaging after that, and it was just about getting to be time for one of us to reach out. I'm sorry that I missed one last chance to hear one of his dad jokes and have a laugh with such a wonderful, caring person.
My heart goes out to Sara and their children, Sloane and Chandler. If Lynn was nothing else, he was a devoted family man who loved his family with all his heart.
As usual in a blog post from me, I'd like to leave with a few more pictures:
Lynn with his mom and dad
Lynn with his dog—I want to say her name was Libby, but come on, guys, it's been 45 years
My senior prom—him in a classic 70s tux (even though this was 1981) and me with classic 70s feathered hair
At my dad's funeral—only Lynn and Mary can make a funeral happy
"Your girl is lovely, Hubbell." —Katie Morosky, The Way We Were
The first Robert Redford movie I remember seeing was Out of Africa in 1985. I was 22. His earlier work was for adults, and I ... wasn't one. (Side note: That was my first Meryl Streep movie, too.)
He was already almost 50 at that point, but he was one of those men who aged well. I mean, really well.
Still, I'll be honest, he wasn't on my list.* This was the era of Tom Cruise and Rob Lowe, who were far more age-appropriate for my list.
*Friends, "The One with Frank Jr.," which included Ross's "freebie" list of five celebrities he's allowed to sleep with
Vic was a fan of Redford's movies. Three of his favorites were Three Days of the Condor, Jeremiah Johnson and The Natural. So it wasn't a hard sell to get him to go to a movie with Redford in it. We saw virtually every Robert Redford movie from Out of Africa to The Old Man & the Gun.
I loved Redford's body of work when he was in his 50s and 60s. I loved the fun he had in movies like Legal Eagles and Sneakers, I loved the beauty of the movies he directed, such as A River Runs Through It and The Horse Whisperer, and I loved how he could go from Spy Game to Charlotte's Web to Lions for Lambs to All Is Lost, a movie in which he is the only character and has virtually no dialogue.
But in 2004, a DVD of The Way We Were landed at my Blockbuster. I'd seen the episode of Sex and the City where Carrie and Mr. Big have their Katie and Hubbell moment, but I'd never seen the actual movie. Vic did not love The Way We Were. He didn't like movies where romantic couples bicker all the time. But he didn't argue when I selected The Way We Were for my movie choice that week. Because: Vic.
Of course, I loved the movie. It made me laugh and also cry (always a plus), and the ending, although sad, was perfect.
This was also the movie that landed Robert Redford on my laminated list. (I was not going to take a chance of seeing him at Central Perk with a laminated list that did not have his name on it, like Ross and Isabella Rossellini. Alas, I never did get to meet him in person, but he'll never be taken off my laminated list.)
To be a fan of Robert Redford is to have to decide what you love about him. Is he just a sex symbol? Just a movie star but not a real actor? A flawed or brilliant director? An activist? A patron of independent film?
But I don't have to decide. He was all of those things to me.
Sexy as hell, for sure. Even in his later years. He chose not to alter his appearance with plastic surgery and said he didn't think much about his looks. (He didn't judge others—he just said it wasn't for him. "I am what I am," he said.) He was philosophical about aging, saying things like "You carry your life with you" and "I never did look back." He just wanted to make the most of what he'd been given and keep moving forward. Like I said. Sexy as hell.
Both a movie star and a real actor. The kind of guy who made movies just for the money so that he could make films that meant something to him or donate to his causes (more on that below). Was he the same kind of character in most of his movies? Maybe. But so what? If you enjoy the film, what difference does it make? Unfortunately, his "beach-god looks," as The Washington Post called them in its obituary (that's a gift link you should be able to click on and read without a subscription) and his "same kind of character" vibe probably didn't do him any favors on the award circuit. Nominated for only one Academy Award in the acting category, as Johnny Hooker in The Sting, he lost out to Jack Lemmon in Save the Tiger. (No shade on Jack Lemmon—that guy should have one 100 Oscars.) But the Sundance Kid? Jeremiah Johnson? Bob Woodward? Henry Brubaker? Roy Hobbs? Tom Booker? General Irwin? Stephen Malley? Our Man? Not even ONE. MORE. NOMINATION. for acting? That's a real shame. Put someone else in any of those roles and see what you think. If Robert Redford made the role his, he's an actor.
A flawed and a brilliant director. He was praised more for his directing, although he directed only 10 films. His first outing gave him his only Oscar (not counting the honorary one he received in 2020): as the director of Ordinary People. He made a beautiful and poignant study of grief and turned a beloved sitcom star (Mary Tyler Moore) into one of the most hated characters in cinema. His work on Quiz Show received high critical praise and garnered him a second Oscar nomination for directing. Scarlett Johansson recently told Stephen Colbert that Redford's patient, warm, generous directing on The Horse Whisperer, where he would talk to her about her character's journey before each scene, taught her about the craft of acting and inspired her to become a director. Brad Pitt agreed. "Redford made us better," he said in an interview. His direction "elevated us," and "he was the real star of the film" (A River Runs Through It, which Redford directed and provided the narration for). But critics were mixed about The Legend of Bagger Vance, which took a hit for the trope of "the magical Negro," a black character who solves a white character's problems but gets no real character development of his own, and Lions for Lambs, which one critic said "never fully [drew] the audience into the discussion. I enjoyed all of his directorial outings, with my high bar of "I left the theater and felt my ticket was worth the price."
An activist. Redford was an ardent naturalist and environmentalist. He used his stunning good looks (how many ways can you say how handsome the man was?) and his movie star status to help finance the causes he was passionate about. But he didn't just talk the talk—he walked the walk. He served as a trustee for the Natural Resources Defense Council and advocated for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and his Redford Center is dedicated to environmental filmmaking and storytelling. He was awarded the 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom for his lifetime of art and activism that, as President Barack Obama said, continued "to shape our nation's cultural heritage, inspiring millions to laugh, cry, think, and change."
A patron of independent film. This is perhaps Redford's most enduring legacy. His Sundance Institute was a space for independent voices when Hollywood was churning out blockbuster after blockbuster. I mean, sure, Hollywood is still churning out blockbuster after blockbuster, some of which Redford appeared in, but Sundance gave independent filmmakers such as Ava DuVernay, Stephen Soderbergh, Paul Thomas Anderson and even Quentin Tarantino a much-needed boost. Sundance also provided a space for underrepresented communities, including indigenous artists. Redford promoted artistic diversity and was dedicated to real, sustained change. Although Sundance has become something more commercial than Redford intended, its legacy is rich.
But honestly, if the only thing you could say about Robert Redford was that he made fun, interesting, amusing, thought-provoking, beautiful movies, that would be enough. At least it was for me.
Like Roy Hobbs in The Natural, Redford just might have been "the best there ever was."
You all know how much I love "Weird Al" Yankovic—but before "Weird Al," there was Tom Lehrer.
Tom Lehrer passed away July 26, 2025, at the age of 97. I missed it because I was in my summer grieving period, 🙄 but every once in a while, I would Google "Tom Lehrer" to see if he was doing anything or commenting on anything. He had long since stopped performing and recording—he released only 37 songs over a period of about two decades—and he publicly stated that "political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Novel Peace Prize," citing that as the reason he stopped writing songs. Yankovic even called him the "J.D. Salinger of demented music" for having stepped out of the spotlight. But I never stopped hoping he would comment on the news of the day.
I was first introduced to Lehrer in the 70s through the songs he wrote and recorded for The Electric Company (my favorite being "Silent E"). But I didn't know he both wrote and recorded those songs until much, much later. Over the next several years, various people would tell me about another Tom Lehrer song, so when Rhino Entertainment released a box set of Lehrer's complete works, I scooped it up immediately. Disc 1 contains 23 songs he recorded in the studio plus two unreleased gems, but Discs 2 and 3 are the meat of that boxed set. Disc 2 contains the same songs—but recorded live. His commentary introducing each song is priceless. Disc 3 contains the most political of his works from his album That Was the Year That Was. You really have to be a student of history (or alive in the 60s) to really get the brilliance of that album. Disc 3 also contains five songs from The Electric Company ... and only then did I realize I'd been a fan practically all my life.
Lehrer's legacy continues in comedians such as Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Samantha Bee and Trevor Noah, who also critique societal and political issues through humor. Their no-holds-barred satire and subversive wit can easily be traced back to Lehrer.
As for "Weird Al," not only has he come right out and said Lehrer was one of his musical influences, but also one has only to compare track lists to see it—or should I say hear it. Both have an incredible gift for rhyme, inappropriate lyrics and song topics (Lehrer: "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park," Yankovic "Good Old Days") as well as a certain irreverence toward ... well ... just about everything.
Lehrer also inspired Randy Newman—the brilliant composer and songwriter who you might know from a number of Pixar films as well as the song "I Love L.A." Newman once said of Lehrer, "He's one of the great American songwriters without a doubt, right up there with everybody, the top guys. As a lyricist, as good as there's been in the last half of the 20th century." (https://nyfos.org/tom-lehrer-poisoning-pigeons-park)
I could say more, but let me direct you to the official obituary as well as this opinion column in The Washington Post (both of which I got "gift" links for, so you should be able to read them even without a subscription). They tell you far more about his life than I possibly could.
I'll just close with a little list:
I can sing all of Lehrer's songs by heart, but "The Elements" is my proudest accomplishment. ("The Elements" is simply a list of all of the elements on the period table at the time Lehrer wrote it set to music by Gilbert and Sullivan.) Watch Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) sing it here.
I'm partial to the songs from That Was the Year That Was. "The Vatican Rag," widely considered his most controversial song, is on that album, along with "Smut" (in which he rhymes "philately" with "Lady Chatterley") and "New Math," all three favorites.
"Clementine" is another favorite. It is simply the old folk song "Clementine" reimagined as if it had been written by Cole Porter, Mozart, a "cool school" of composer from the 60s, or (my favorite) Gilbert and Sullivan.
As a choir nerd, I love "Selling Out." It starts with one melody, then introduces a second one, playing the two together. These are followed by a third and fourth melody—all four completely different—and closes with all four melodies together. This song is a real showcase to his musical genius.
As a Christmas music nerd, I love "A Christmas Carol." More on rhyme below, but my favorite rhyme in this song is:
Relations, sparing no expense'll Send some useless old utensil Or a matching pen and pencil
I've mentioned Lehrer's rhymes several times, but man, that guy could RHYME. I did a quick Google search to see if there was a definitive list of Lehrer's best rhymes, and I got sucked into a Reddit rabbit hold with everyone picking their favorites. In going through that list, I decided my favorite is from a song called "When You Are Old and Grey." Right in the middle of that song is just this long list of things that go wrong as one gets older, 16 lines all ending in -ility words. Brilliant.
I wanted to leave you with my favorite Tom Lehrer song, but I just couldn't decide. That said, I would be remiss if I didn't give you a link to one other of Lehrer's most popular songs, "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park." Is it appropriate? Absolutely not. Is it still hilarious? Absolutely. And that's the magic of Tom Lehrer.
Thank you, Tom Lehrer, for decades of "laughter and merriment."
We made it to Fairbanks, our "final" destination, safe and sound. For some reason, I thought that we were spending the day tooling around Fairbanks, so I booked a late flight home: 9:05 p.m. Turns out that we were not spending the day tooling around Fairbanks. Mary and Sue booked their return flight for the morning and had to be at the airport around 10 a.m. I didn't have a car, so I thought I'd just go back to the airport when they went and read for 11 hours. (I have been known to read for 11 hours.)
But then I thought, "I don't really have to leave the motel at the same time, so why have three people trying to get showered and packed on a deadline when I can just hang out for a bit longer?" So I packed while they were showering and blow drying and whatnot, and then when they left, I showered and got a cab to the airport. This turned out to be a fortuitous decision.
Because the thing is, I wanted to see Denali. We "only" booked our trip a year and a half early, so we were too late to get any lodging at Denali, and that's why we booked the Wilderness Train. Unfortunately, it was cloudy and rainy, as you already know if you read the previous post. Weather is the tourist's greatest foe, especially in Alaska. And even if it isn't cloudy or rainy (which only happens an average of seven days in July), Denali makes its own weather. So seeing the peak is a crapshoot at best.
In the cab on my way to the airport, we somehow got on the topic of how you can see Denali from Fairbanks on a clear day. And despite the previous three days of overcast skies, this sky was not just blue. It wasn't turquoise or lapis. It was actually cerulean. (I mean, it would probably be more accurately described as azure, but that is not one of the colors Miranda Priestly chose in this scene from The Devil Wears Prada. After we watched this movie, Vic often described things as cerulean. He was so funny.) He suggested renting a car and told me where to go in Fairbanks to see the mountain.
But when I got to the rental car counter, the rental agent wanted me to go to a different spot. She wanted me to go to Denali. "Why would you stay here when you could drive down there?" I knew Denali was within driving distance from Fairbanks—about 2.5 hours—but I was nervous about being on the road by myself for five hours and having something happen to me and not making my plane. But she finally convinced me and told me where I should have lunch because this restaurant had a patio with a great view of the mountain.
So I plugged the restaurant name in my GPS and off I went.
About an hour and a half into the drive, I rounded a bend and saw this:
No, not the RV. The mountain! Here. Look closer:
I mean, I'm still 100 miles from the restaurant, and I'm seeing ... this. Now, I'm not gonna lie. I do not know what "this" is. I have never been to Alaska. I have never seen Denali. But whatever "this" is, it is jaw-droppingly stunning. I had tears in my eyes not only just looking at it but also thinking about how I almost didn't see this because I was worried I'd get a flat tire.
Still, I hoped it was Denali, so I took a picture. (FYI: I did plug this image into a Google image search, and Google did say this was a view of Denali from the George Parks Highway, which is where I was, so I'm just gonna say that it is Denali!) And all I could think was, "If it looks like this from here, what is it going to look like closer?!" So I hopped back in the car and kept going.
As I got closer to the restaurant, I was also getting closer to the park. I started doing the math. I left around 10:30 a.m. It's a five-hour round trip, so that gets me back into Fairbanks around 3:30 p.m. if I don't do anything but look at the mountain, turn around and go back, a la Chevy Chase at the Grand Canyon in Vacation. But I don't really have to be back at the airport until maybe 7 p.m., which gives me plenty of time to have a leisurely lunch. But why wouldn't I go into the park if I was so close? I need a picture of me at the sign—we always take pictures at the sign. And I need to go to the visitor center and get a map—we always get maps of the national parks we visit.
So I skipped the restaurant and went straight to the park—my actualfinal destination!
At the visitor center, I asked the ranger, "I don't have a reservation on the bus that goes into the park, and I don't have hiking boots, and I'm in a rental car. But I have two hours until I have to get back to Fairbanks. I know I can't drive into the park, but are there any roads outside the park you would recommend?" And she said, "Yes, there are a lot of them, but you can drive up to 15 miles into the park, and that's exactly what you're going to do today, because the mountain is out." She said this with great drama. Or maybe I heard it with great drama, I don't know. Anyway, I grabbed a sandwich from the food court and I drove into the park, just as she said, and this is what I got, exactly where the ranger said it would be. The mountain.
Denali
Then I took a bunch of selfies that sucked and ended up asking a complete stranger to take a picture of me in front of Denali, which she was more than happy to do because, as she said, she'd lived in Alaska for 20 years and had never seen Denali before because every time she had come to the park, it was socked in.
I stayed there looking at the mountain for quite a while, thinking about how much Vic would have loved it and the park. There may have been tears. (You know there were tears.)
Around 3, I realized that if I left right away, I could still ... uh ... get to the yarn store in Fairbanks before I had to get to the airport, so that's what I did. Bought some yarn, gassed up the ol' rental car and returned it, checked in and still had plenty of time to hit the gift shop and do some reading.
As we left Fairbanks, I took some pictures of some of the geological features in the Hayes Range as we flew over them—I liked these glaciers:
And then this happened:
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We will be flying right over Denali National Park and Preserve and should be able to get a fantastic view of Denali out the right side of the plane."
Arrrrrggggghhhhh! I AM ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE PLANE!!!
But just as I think, "Surely, someone will let me lay across their lap to get a good view," this happened:
"And we've been cleared to do a little teardrop turn so that everyone on the left side will see it, too."
So I patiently waited, and I was not disappointed:
It's hard to see just how close it felt like we were at this point, as if I could have reached out and touched it if I'd been in a hot air balloon. A hot air balloon with supplemental oxygen so I didn't pass out.
Here we're just going around and getting a different view, and as you can see, the sky was cerulean.
Ditto
(Note: I told my flight attendant on my Anchorage–Denver leg about this, and she said, "Wow, you were really lucky! Not only is it particularly rare to see the mountain [I can't tell you how many times I heard this in the 24 hours before I left for home], but they don't always get clearance to do the teardrop turn." Lucky indeed.)
I got one final Alaskan sunset as we took off from Anchorage around 1:45 a.m.:
It really was a beautiful trip.
Bella was particularly excited to see me when I got back:
After having been up for more than 24 hours, I went home and promptly crashed! I slept for about 12 hours, and Miss Bella was right next to me when I woke up. She even "let" me take this selfie of us!
That afternoon, I pulled out all the yarn I bought. Maybe I overdid it. I'm not sure.
One last thing, which I think is a funny story. You be the judge. I have a driving app on my phone. If I drive safely (it keeps track of my speed, how often I brake too hard and whether I swipe while driving), I get a discount on my car insurance. It is supposed to know whether you're the driver or a passenger, and usually it's pretty good about it. But not always, so I like to check it every few days (it only keeps five days of driving in the app). I checked it on the Tuesday after I got back to see how well I did on that last day in Alaska and the Saturday I got home. I saw the screen below. Notice how it shows "Not A Car." I thought, "That's weird, because I totally drove to Denali." But then I looked closer at the route—from Fairbanks to Anchorage. That's when I realized what it was—it had recorded my flight from Fairbanks to Anchorage, complete with that teardrop turn. I took a lot of flights in those three weeks, and not a single one registered on my app. Except this one. I just think my driving app really wanted me to remember this trip.
Here we reach the end of our voyage—but not the end of our trip.
We spent a delightful day in Sitka at the end of our voyage, even if it did mark the beginning of three days of cloudy, misty, rainy weather. Sitka is kind of a cross between a mountain town and a funky city like Portland. It had fish bike racks all through town:
This is the view from the library:
As you can see, it's really green because it's the middle of summer and because it rains a lot. But that means there are also a lot of flowers, which I love. These peonies were everywhere:
Among the most popular attractions in Sitka (besides Sweet Sisters Caramels) is St. Michael's Cathedral. You'll have to imagine what it looks like outside because my photographer was not with me and I didn't think to take a picture from the outside. But I took a lot of the inside, and this is my favorite:
And what would an Alaska city be without a totem pole?
As we were walking through town (yes, I went to a yarn store in Sitka—do you wanna make something of it?), I saw a stuffed bear outside of a pharmacy, and the first thing I thought of was how Vic would make me pose with this bear, so I had Mary take that picture:
Vintage Victor R. Love pose
After Sitka, it was off to Anchorage. We arrived there in the morning, but our train to Fairbanks didn't leave until the next day. One of our guides on the ship, Christina, said we should visit the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center in Anchorage, so that's exactly what we did with our extra day! We drove down the Seward Highway, through the Chugach National Forest, with the Turnagin Arm on the right side. This drive, even through the misty rain and with cloudy skies, was breathtaking. I couldn't stop staring at how beautiful it was. This is just one of the gorgeous pictures I took:
The wildlife center was fun but, again, rainy and cold. Still, I saw moose, elk, musk ox, reindeer and regular deer. Also a bear, but I only took videos of her, so no pictures below.
The next day, it was off to Fairbanks via the Wilderness Train!
We were sitting in the domed area at the top, but where you see windows in the white section of the picture above, that's the dining area. Delicious food, generous portions. 😀 Anyway, this is us in the dome car:
It was cloudy and rainy almost the whole way, but the sun did show itself at the end of the day. I took lots of scenic pictures of the trees and mountains around us and spent a fair amount of time standing on the platform between the cars breathing in that cool Alaska air which made my lingering hacking cough go away for short periods of time.
See those little white specks on the water? Swans.
It was a no-stress way to get to our final(?) stop: Fairbanks.
