These beautiful Puerto Rican Parrots are endangered but have been making a comeback (it is possible the birds we’re seeing aren’t exactly the PR Parrots but they could be a variation) CORRECTION: These are Red-masked Parakeets. They only live in Puerto Rico. Every now and then when we visit we’ll see a flock flying around. Today a group of about 7 landed close. I hate that the photos a bit blurry, but I maxed out my zoom and still had to crop tight. A couple more…
Sorry it’s taken so long, but I finally got about a fourth of the shots I took online. Below is a sampling, however you can go ahead and skip to the set or the slide show.
Throughout the year, we accept nominations for cities & towns throughout the country to be considered as a “great place to live”. The nominating parties must include their own reasons why they feel their city should make the list. The nominations, along with key data regarding education, environmental greenworthiness, economic opportunity, parks & recreation choices and real estate & home ownership options are reviewed, rated & judged by our editorial team. We list the TOP 100 places to live and rank the TOP 10 on consistency and number of nominations received.
I’m still working on getting about 100 photos ready to put online with the stories to tell. Keep watching for them.
In the mean time, here are a few graphics I found to be very interesting and put the great state of Alaska into perspective.
Our weather was great while we were there. It was a nice, cool temperature. A few times I was cold, but mostly it was a comfortable 40s during the day. Not sure it ever got below freezing though it did snow (non-sticking) the first morning we were there.
But the thing that was most difficult to get used to which I thought was just crazy was how light it was in the evenings! The sun wasn’t setting until about 11:30 pm. It was so strange and it threw me off a bit. It looked like 5 pm outside when it was 9:30 at night!
We had a great time though and I think I’d go back to Anchorage any time of the year again — as long as I’ve got the warm clothes to endure!
You might remember we were supposed to go to Alaska on vacation back in February but at the last minute we had to reschedule.
So this afternoon we’re trying again! We plan to fly out of MCO (Orlando) around 5:30 pm. Connecting through Salt Lake City, we arrive in Anchorage some hours later. The time change is confusing me as to when we actually get there.
Anyway, I hope to take a lot of photos and I’ll share them as I’m able. I don’t plan to be online a lot but we both know I will. We fly home May 7 on the red-eye.
We’ve cashed in frequent flier miles for both of us and we’re staying and hanging out with friends. Since our costs to get and stay there are very low, we’re going to try and take advantage of a few things:
Whew! Now that we got the orangejack stuff worked out, I’m going to Alaska.
Yep. Patricia and I are flying today to Atlanta and spend the night there to catch an early flight to Anchorage (via a few other cities).
We’re cashing in some frequent flier miles and hotel points to go visit Patricia’s BFF living in Alaska. They will move this summer so this was our best time to go.
I think they still have internets there so I’ll be checking in from time to time. Besides, we’re probably not going outside much! It won’t be THAT bad though, I hope.
Shot this on my Treo this morning as we were coming into the Atlanta airport from Orlando. It was such a nice, clear morning with the fall colors. And following the shadow of our approach was kinda cool.
I was probably supposed to have my electronics turned off. I won’t tell if you won’t.
In September of 2007, Patricia and I were really fortunate to be able to go on a family cruise vacation on board the Princess Emerald in the Mediterranean Sea. I finally have photos and blog posts about each city we went to online. I’m writing this post to pull it all together (an index if you will).
So here is the list of cities we went to on our entire vacation with links to the blog post summary and photo set for each:
