Booms and Bombs and Bushes

ETHER SUNDAY. No, it's not a typo. I meant to say "ether," as in the colorless gas... You see our neighbors here in Alaska invited us to celebrate Ether Sunday on their property. It's traditionally on the Sunday following the more well known and far less violent Easter Sunday, and the culture is for folks to shoot at containers of gas with guns to create mammoth explosions. Sooo...     Yup. That's pretty much the full explanation. Here's the really crazy part: First, this sounds somewhat reasonable and expected to us. Second, we went to it. What follows is a quick video of one of the gun-shots-followed-by-BOOM moments. As usual, you'll need to go to the blogger site version of the Alaska Adventure to see the goods. Take a moment and do that to get your Alaska groove on. Oh my.

BOMBER TRAVERSE. There seems to be a theme going here... So the Bomber Traverse actually has little to do with explosions and a lot to do with "getting away from it all" and experiencing some incredible wilderness and beauty. J Leslie, the king of taking two Spring breaks despite the fact that Alaska schools only officially take one, managed to escape for a week of ski mountaineering and touring in the Talkeetnas north of Anchorage. If you live somewhere spectacular, take advantage - beauty fuels the soul.

We've said it before but we'll say it again: Gotta get up to get down.

Getting down. Seriously.

The night of the full lunar eclipse. What a place to be...

Out for a sunny "stroll."

Did I mention that beauty fuels the soul?

PAY FOR THE PAYLOAD. Like last Spring, Team Leslie is preparing for a full Summer of adventure (we've got to live up to the blog name, right?). And with Alaska adventure-planning comes learning new vocabulary; like "payload" and "on floats" and "bush trip." As in "The Dehavilland Beaver on floats has a 1000 pound payload for bush trips." A rough translation of this speak is that a highly maneuverable float plane can handle carrying one thousand pounds of additional weight including passengers and gear, and said passengers need to pay for the cost of the entire flight, not just the normal per-seat fare of a regular air craft, so that we can get ourselves and all our stuff into a remote area of Alaska and land on a small lake, to paddle down a big river in the wilderness. So that pretty much throws off the whole bargain hunting on Expedia or Priceline situation that we're used to... instead we're renting a whole darn plane, not to mention procuring the thousand pounds of clothes, food, tents, sleeping bags, boats and paddles required for our destination. And bear spray. And mosquito nets. Stay tuned. 

[Grandparent Disclaimer: Despite your grandchild's proximity to Booms and Bombs and Bushes, we promise to maintain a reasonable semblance of order, safety and decision making to promote a positive life experience environment which will likely encourage further exploration, growing confidence and a strong sense of self... hopefully... at least that's the plan. And it's really really fun while we're at it.]