Just chilling

Friday - September 5, 2014

Did I say that the breakfasts at the Lodge are fabulous?  Because they are.  They don’t sound very sexy, and they don’t look very sexy, but the food is amazingly good.  It’s just really really good home cooking.  We woke up this morning in time for the roughly 9 am breakfast.

As we trooped up towards the house we once again admired the frozen mud puddle.  This morning’s breakfast was a take on eggs benedict.  The toast was like...a croissant toast.  It was thick and delicious and oh so good.  Instead of Canadian bacon, there were two slices of fatty delicious bacon and the poached egg was perfect.  Oh, I’m drooling as I’m typing this.  We gobbled it all up, then had their delicious coffee and pastries.  Homemade.  Mmmm…

hello fried deliciousness with buttery sauce and bacon!

The crew of very loud Japanese people were leaving this morning.  There were about 8 of them - all in their mid to late twenties and they were very, very loud.  Nice - but at night, when we were outside watching the aurora...we could hear them.  Clearly.  A lot.  They were pretty raucous at breakfast as well.  When it’s two or three of them they were pretty quiet.  Once more trickled in they got loud.  It’d be the same if it were a group of Chinese people too - we Asians are very loud.  And our audible output multiplies exponentially as we congregate.  They were nice and polite and even though they were loud, they didn’t bother us.  We just smiled at each other.  But the two old white people (very nice, but very verbose.  They kept me there for almost 3 hours talking to me) kept looking at them disapprovingly.  The Lodge also had two dogs - a small sheepdog named Blaze who’s 9 (and almost entirely deaf) and a big ass happy brown lab named Hank who’s only 3 and totally acts it.  He brings his tennis ball to you and looks at you with pleading eyes and you just can’t say no.  So you spend the next hour of your life throwing a slobbery tennis ball.  

Today was going to be a lazy day.  The only tentative plans we had was to make our way into the city to see Guardians of the Galaxy.  After breakfast we went back to our cabin and back into bed because we are lazy slugs.  I love being a lazy slug!  We were lazy slugs until Raymond finally woke later in the afternoon.  We ended up not having lunch because we all just snacked our way through the day.  I wasn’t in the mood to watch a movie, so instead we just trooped to Walmart to wander around.  I ended up buying some souvenirs there because they actually had a wider selection than some of those kitschy souvenir stores.  Also, we just like to wander in stores.  And by we, I mean me. But alas, as they did not have my beloved Target we (I) settled for Walmart.  We made our way back to our cabin after a few hours in town wandering through the stores my mama cooked dinner tonight with the food we bought in town.  Do you know how nice it is to have home cooked food on vacation?  Also, thus far we’ve basically just laid around.  I’ve never had a vacation where we just laid around.  All day.  Every day.  Usually it’s go-go-go,  So this is nice.  Though I am looking forward to our cruise.  Because too much relaxation actually stresses me out.  :)

I wanted to climb the hill to watch the sun set, so after dinner we bundled up (because it’s freaking cold!) and trudged up that hill.  Now, it doesn’t look like much, but for out of shape schlubs like us, we were wheezing up that hill.  It was a nice sunset.  It’s not something I get to see in Orange County.

it was SOOOO cold!  And I was wearing two pairs of pants!

What was funny?  Across the street from our cabin and the Lodge (“street” - a term I use loosely) a bunch of RV’s with ATV’s attached drove up and set up camp.  Literally.  They had a camp fire going, they were roasting marshmallows, and there was classic rock blaring.  They were riding up and down the hills/road/mountainous roads and were having a good time.  I guess this is what Alaskans do on the weekends?  Must be nice.

Unfortunately the cloud cover was too thick to see any lights.  I saw some green glow (out of focus because I’m a moron) when we went out around midnight, but soon the cloud cover rolled in so thick we couldn’t even see the stars.  :(   Oh well, considering we got two spectacular shows two nights in a row, we really can’t complain.