Happiness is a New Outhouse

It is, really.



BEHOLD!!! My new unukvik! Ain't she beautiful. Notice the lovely stairs and screened openings. I have been pleading for a new outhouse out at camp for years. My honey finally gave in.




Here is my little archer showing off the plush interior.





Here is the old crapper. How would you like to sit on that on a dark fall night??? Yeah, that's how I felt about it too.




I feel like I have really moved up in the world.


***FYI- Because a few people have asked hehehe,....yes that is a real toilet seat on there, and no it's not going to stay. You can bet your bottom (har har har) dollar that I won't be putting my butt on a regular toilet seat when it is cold out. We will be changing it to the ubiquitous blue foam.**

VORTAC

I have had several requests for pictures of things around town. Everyday things. I figure that will keep me busy for a while. Here is an everyday thing....the Kotzebue VORTAC. Ain't she a beauty?




VORTAC stands for Very High Frequency(VHF)Omni-Directional Radio Range Tactical Air Navigation. I think that this one in Kotzebue is a VOR/TACAN as opposed to a regular VOR/DME.....I'm no pilot, but I did once stay at a Holiday Inn Express.





I guess the VOR/TACAN is fancier than boring old VOR/DME and the TACAN part of it is a military thingie that is available for limited civilian use. We used to have an Air Force Base and "White Alice" (long range radar) site here in Kotzebue (I'll save that for another everyday thing post).


To put it in simple terms a VORTAC it is a beacon marking an airway for both civilian and military use. This beacon emits a specific radio signal, exclusive to that beacon, that tells the pilot where he is located and if he is on course....or something like that.

Picture Problems

I am trying not to panic.

The pictures for this blog are hosted by photobucket.com. Apparently they have had some sort of hack or meltdown and now I cannot access their website or the pictures and of course they are not working on the blog either. I am hoping that this is something that they will be able to fix. The thought of having over a a years worth of blog posts effectively trashed gives me a stomach ache.

**UPDATE**
Photobucket has apparently fixed their problem and people can see the photos on the blog now. I can see them to, but only at work. On my computer at home all the photobucket hosted pics still have little red x's. I have tried everything I can think of....
- deleted temporary internet files
- Deleted history
- deleted cookies
- ran Spybot just for the heck of it
- did all then and then rebooted

Still no photobucket pics can be viewed on my computer at home, nor can I access photobucket.com from my home computer. I have never claimed to be computer smart so does anyone out there have any suggestions???

Wordless (almost) Wednesday- Honeybee

Cannon Beach , Oregon

I hope to resume the usual Alaska pics soon. The weather, however, is not cooperating. It has been pretty rainy here since we got back. I walked out of my office today into cold drizzle to run some errands and choked back some complaints about the weather...hard to forget that 100 degrees in NH. I'll take 40 degrees and rain over nasty humid New England weather anyday.

So anyway, here are a few pics that I took while we were at Cannon Beach, Oregon.

Splash

Gotta get those cute pics posing in the water at the beach.




Whammo!




*cough* *sputter* *hack*


Lake Winnipesaukee, Gilford, New Hampshire

Uyaana and the Lorikeets

While we were in Portland, we visited the Oregon Zoo. There is a really neat exhibit there called Lorikeet Landing which is a walk-through, open-air aviary.




Lorikeets are a small to medium-sized parrot located throughout south-eastern Asia, Polynesia, Papua New Guinea and Australia. They feed on nectar and soft fruits.




Visitors to the exhibit are able to purchase small paper cups of nectar and the birds will fly down and drink the nectar out of the cups.




They are very noisy and curious and they are not afraid of people. The Lorries will often land on you to drink out of your cup.




Uyaana had a great time feeding the birds.




If you would like to see pictures of Lorikeets in the wild along with other types of parrots, be sure to visit Alaska Dave Down Under

Home Again

We made it back to Kotzebue this morning. It's great to be back in the land of the long sleeves. I will try to get back in the groove of blogging tomorrow with some pics from our trip.

Portland

We are in Portland Oregon now visiting a friend. Today we drove to Cannon Beach. It was beautiful. The weather was kind to us. I just thought I would check in to say we were still alive.

Chocorua Lake