More panoramas

Since I got NO comments about the panoramas, and since I'm still having fun playing with that feature on the camera, you're gonna get a bunch more of them today! This one is down near Palmer at the level of the Matanuska River. I think this one is my favorite so far just because of the clouds. The sun is in front of the camera from this angle so they were hard to position because I couldn't see well, but they were still fun to try. Besides, it was a beautiful day!

The Matanuska glacier, from which the river flows.
"Our" mountains from the road.
The sunset in the flats between Palmer, Wasilla and Anchorage.
This is like a super-panorama where I used photoshop to stitch together two panoramas that came out of the camera, a total of 6 pictures side by side in order to see what can be seen on the overlook above Palmer. Our truck is the tiny little spot down in the parking lot. How's that for perspective?
The Lowes parking lot - check out the mountain scenery - that's just not right! Walmart is down the hill with a similar view.
One (or two) dog sled teams - possibly warming up for the upcoming Iditarod. They'd just come in from a run and were packing up to leave.

I know everyone wants to see the pictures, so I figured I'd start with those! It has been another busy week, culminating with 18 teens for dessert last night. It was definitely fun, but I'm really tired today. We were the last stop of their progressive supper, a guaranteed hit combining teens and food. ;) They easily polished off an entire large coconut layer cake, a chocolate silk pie AND almost an entire LARGE cheesecake (they left two small pieces). Unbelievable! I guess I should expect it. I know how my three can eat, so multiply that by 6 and you get a LOT of big eaters! That included the entire volleyball team and you've seen the size of those boys, not to mention that they are extra hungry from all that activity! It was a good excuse to clean house too!

The boys had another game this past week against the community players. They got beaten again, but it was close this time! They've made amazing progress in the weeks they've been playing! They have one more game coming up against the boy's team from Palmer, this time here at Glacierview. It ought to be interesting! Their last opportunity for competition for the season will be a weekend tournament against that team plus another team from Anchorage. They are hoping to get some other teams to come but so far there are only three signed up.

Rodney is as busy as a one handed camp maintenance guy these days! Nate is still gone for at least another week and Rod is still out with his heart problem. We got dumped on with at least 6" of snow over the last two nights so Rodney has been VERY busy plowing using the camp's character-building plow truck. It leaks exhaust into the cab making Rodney rather sick to his stomach. It is also rather difficult to see where you're going and in trying to avoid objects (other cars, snow mobiles, etc) it has an interesting habit of crashing into assorted stationary (snow banks, parked vehicles) and not so stationary (moving vehicles) objects. I was "privileged" to ride in the beast yesterday after it got itself rather securely stuck in a snow bank in front of our house, requiring a visit from the bobcat to free it. It is hard enough to see where you are going when it is NOT plowing, but when the plow is down it becomes downright impossible at times. It builds character, right?

This week is also the 13th annual Mountain Man Rendezvous, where he-men go out into the wilderness to camp out, swap stories, eat and ride snow machines. My understanding is that there is also considerable competition to build the most luxurious camp and serve up the best food. Some even bring along generators and have been known to bring TVs to the Rondy as well! This is the first time in all those years that they've had snow during the Rondy! It also means, though, that we've lost Jake and Doug for the weekend (and the camp interns are up at Li-Wa helping with a large retreat up there) as well as Rodney picking up Doug's horse feeding duties. With a group coming in and tons of snow, that means there is a lot of shoveling to do for the few guys left at camp.

Things start picking up at camp this week. From here on out the groups start to get bigger and we have groups in during the week as well. Hope we've got our feet on the ground because we're going to start running pretty soon! :) We thought we were running out of water at one point - the water pressure had dropped dramatically in the house - but it turned out that we just needed a new filter! We're back up to having plenty of water now that we put in a new filter. I picked up a bunch of new filters since we will apparently be clogging them up MUCH faster than anticipated! They are supposed to last 6 months in theory but we're using them for the whole house and we aren't exactly running off of city water! ;)