Recent Trips

I have finally (after being told at church this morning that my content was getting stale...) taken the time to upload photos from our recent trips to Indianapolis and Alaska. The albums are in our Shutterfly collections for your enjoyment. Below are some highlights and noteworthy photos from the trips.

We traveled to Indianapolis for Memorial Day weekend, not to see the race, but to celebrate Amy's grandmother's birthday. We flew to St. Louis, drove to Indy, stayed a day and a half, drove back to St. Louis, and flew home. It actually got stranger than that, because Amy was helping a friend drive back to Michigan that weekend and drove to St. Louis the first day and met me and Sydney there at Mark's house. They left the next morning and drove to Indianapolis while the rest of us went to church. Amy was dropped off at a relative's house while her friend continued on, trying to get to Michigan before dark. We drove the same route (minus a few wrong turns) later in the day and met up with Amy. The logistics weren't that bad, but suffice it to say that Sydney did NOT understand why Mommy was disappearing and reappearing and not traveling with us. That caused some interesting anxiety and sleepless nights.

The best photo from that trip was the shot taken as Sydney and I were boarding the plane in Dallas to fly to St. Louis. We were among the first to board and were invited up to see the cockpit. Here was Sydney's reaction:



Last month, Amy, Sydney, my mom, and I headed to Homer, Alaska for a medical education (CME) conference that Amy was attending. That was the excuse, anyway. We flew to Anchorage and drove several hours to Homer through beautiful scenery. Unfortunately for our photos, the weather for most of our stay was very cloudy with intermittent rain. It made for a great break from a Dallas summer, but made it hard to catch the breathtaking views on film.

When Amy was at the conference, the rest of us poked around town in various museums and nature centers. When Amy was free, we hiked and did more exploring. One morning we caught a water taxi across Kachemak Bay and hiked about four miles to a lake fed by a glacier. I wish I had taken more photos, but we have some good video footage of the ice floating in the lake. On the way we passed a tree with a momma-bear and two baby-bears climbing and eating. The photo below is grainy because we were (providentially) several hundred feet away.







On our way home from Alaska, we stopped in Seattle and spent several days with my sister and her family. We went to the zoo, the acquarium, Pike Place Market, and other local attractions. Sydney had a blast with her cousins (and their toys), and we came home wishing Dallas were a wee-bit closer to the Pacific Northwest...