Departing Homer for Kodiak and Chenega Bay
Did I mention departures can be ephemeral?
“As soon as possible” can take a long long time when you are boarding cars, motorcycles, even a grown-up tricycle, container vans, campers, R/vs of all shapes and sizes, trucks, and today we learn how it is done. This is truly a marvel of engineering. It must also take some amazing system to keep straight where every vehicle needs to go because they are getting off at different stops, so all the ones getting off at the same stop need to be stored together. Watching all this happen is amazing.
They have this turntable. Cars drive on, we think a maximum of six. The turntable also handles a maximum of one large container truck.
Cars drive on the elevated turntable:
Turntable begins to lower:
Cars reach main deck:
Turntable begins to turn:
A friendly otter kept us entertained while we waited for all the vehicles to board.
We were told this is one of the Homer small ferries to Kachemak National Park or to Seldovia:
It is another gorgeous day in Homer, and even early in the morning, fishermen and women are on the beach:
It’s a beautiful departure, and somewhere between Homer and Kodiak, we run into a heavy mist near sunset:
We departed late and will be getting into Kodiak late, so late we sleep right through it. Before we know it, we are departed from Kodiak and en route to Chenega Bay and Whittier.
Where Atz Lee Kilcher and Family Really Live (JOKE!)
First, this really is not where Atz Lee Kilcher lives, but as we drove out to the end of the road going up Kachemak Bay, we saw so many houses that look self-sustaining, or as self-sustaining as possible. We saw old Volkswagon buses, used as chicken coops, old school buses used as green houses; we saw a lot of homesteads that looked like they were using solar power and growing a lot of their own produce. We saw horse barns and ATVs and cranes and big barns. We saw all kinds of signs of self-sustaining people who are loving life in Homer, Alaska.
Do you know who Atz Lee Kilcher is? The Discovery Show has a reality show called Alaska, the Last Frontier, and it is one of my guilty pleasures. I have a good friend whose husband also follows the adventures of this hard-working, self-sustaining family. My friend joked with me as we left “Say hello to Atz Lee for us!”
So as we drove along, looking at all these wonderful homes, I saw this one, and thought to myself . . . maybe this is where the Atz Lee family really lives. They film all these outbuildings, and the family going out hunting in boats, or taking their cranes on their barge, or taking their horses to run the cows back home – but maybe “reality” is all that AND they live in comfort in this beautiful house outside Homer. Atz Lee Kilcher does live on Kachemak Bay and there are a lot of lovely houses along Kachemak Bay.
Remember, this is a joke, I do not know where Atz Lee really lives, only when I looked at this house I thought it would be funny if this is where they really lived.
UPDATE: When I wrote this post, it was a joke, and I had no idea how many people would come her to see where the Kilchers live. Actually, without knowing, we were on the Kilcher road, and I believe this home is on the same road which connects to Kilcher road, called Merrimac road. You can see Kilcher road on Google Maps:
It isn’t far out of Homer, an easy drive. The scenery is BEAUTIFUL. The Kilchers homesteaded one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Welcome Aboard the M/V Kennicott
When most people think of an Alaskan cruise, they think of the ships the size of small cities. We saw many of them in Juneau, docked, three, four, five at a time, inundating the town. In a town of around 30,000 the population can nearly double when five cruise ships are in port at the same time.
Juneau has a lot of services in place to handle the tourist demands. You can sign up for glacier tours, or whale watching tours, or both right at the landing dock. You can have a fine meal, you can buy tanzanite or brown diamonds, or fine sporting gear just across the street, or you can take a cable car up to the top of Mt. Roberts – right from the dock where you landed.
No. We didn’t do that.
We boarded the M/V Kennicott out in Auke Bay, where the Alaska Marine Highway Ferries come in and out shuttling the locals from town to town. There are ferry routes that are regional, like you can take a ferry to Haines, or Skagway, or Ketchikan, or Petersburg, places on the SE panhandle of Alaska, or you can, like us, take a ferry that goes all the way around the Gulf of Alaska from Juneau via Yakutat, Whittier, Chenega Bay, Kodiak Island to Homer. You can even continue on to Seldovia before you head back. Some years, when the ferry hasn’t broken down, you can take a ferry all the way down to Unalaska/Dutch Harbor, all the way down on the very tip of the Aleutian Islands. Wouldn’t that be a grand adventure!?
It’s all part of the Alaska Marine Highway System, a very practical part of the entire Alaska transportation system which is a lot like Africa. You take a big plane or a big ship to get there, then you take a smaller ferry or a small – even tiny – airplane to get to the more remote places. Juneau is not connected to anywhere. All the highways end. Kodiak Island is . . . well, an island. There are many remote places that there is no way to reach without ferry or tiny aircraft service.
We picked up our tickets at the Ferry Terminal a couple days in advance, and were surprised to see that while the ferry was scheduled to leave at 12:00 noon, boarding said 0900 in the morning.
No problem. We were packed and ready to go, grabbed a little breakfast and coffee, and the shuttle took us out to the ferry terminal, about 15 minutes away. The Best Western Country Lane shuttle makes everything so easy; they take you to the airport, they take you to the terminal, they take people to the restaurants they want to go to, they run you downtown – a trip that costs about $35 if you come in to the Ferry Terminal and want to go into downtown Juneau. The shuttle is one reason why we chose this hotel, and we were so glad we did.
So we arrived, on time, at 0900 to board the ferry and the guy at the counter looked surprised and said “You want to board now?” and I said “It says we are supposed to board at 0900. It doesn’t make sense to me, either, but here we are.” He said “OK, you can board if you want.”
It’s not like an airplane. It’s not like you see “Boarding at 0900” and it means you MUST be there at 0900, in this case, it means “you can board if you want to.” LOL, this is my culture, and it’s confusing to me!
Laurie, the boarding purser, checks our I.D. and checks our tickets and waves us to the vehicle entrance with our rolley-bags, saying “just go in here and take the elevator.”
It wasn’t until after the trip that I learned the M/V part of M/V Kennicott means Motor Vessel, i.e. this is a ship that transports motor vehicles. We love learning new ways how things are done, and the boarding and unloading of the vessel was endlessly fascinating to us. Great technology, and it also requires great planning and execution.
We went to the purser’s office to get our cabin, but the cabins weren’t clean yet. He suggested we go up to the forward lounge, have a cup of coffee, he would call us when the rooms were ready.
The forward lounge was full of Alaskan art objects. This is a shaman’s mask:
This is a Haida clam basket (basket weaving is so fascinating to me, all those patterns. How did people figure out, oh so long ago, how to gather living plant material and weave it in these ways? On our trip, we saw baskets woven so finely that you could boil water in them. Imagine!)
I explored around a little, well, I snooped. While the cabins were being cleaned, I looked in to see the various kinds of cabins. It was so interesting. The majority of the cabins did not have bathrooms.
There were one person little cabins, like a booth, with two seats that would slide down and together, and a table that could be clipped up when a person didn’t want to sit at the table and wanted to sleep on a flat surface. It was a pretty narrow surface, and a room like a coffin, but it locked, and it would be a safe place for one person to sleep and keep their bags safe, too.
There were two person roomettes, they also had a little table and two bunks that attached to the wall unless you wanted to sleep, in which case they came down.
There were four person cabins without baths and four person cabins with baths. If only two people were in the cabin, the unused bunks were attached up to the walls, and you had a couch to sit on during the day. The outside cabins had nice large windows, big square ones.
There was a solarium up on top designated for campers. There are a LOT of campers in Alaskan, not just Alaskans, but also visiting campers from all over the world. The solarium gives them a safe dry place to pitch their tents. There are also big lockers where they can stow their gear.
People are also allowed to camp in the aft lounges, upper and lower, but the signs ask that you only roll out your sleeping gear between 8 at night and 8 in the morning, so that all the passengers can use the lounges during daylight hours.
This isn’t a cruise ship. This is transportation. This is how people get from one place to another, how they take their kids to boarding school when their village is too small to support a school. This is how high school teams might travel to their away games. These are working ships.
When the purser announced that people could come check in to their cabins, I went, but I ended up at the end of a long line. I saw people get assigned and then the purser would hand them a set: one pillow, two sheets, one pillowcase and one blanket. (@) (@) ! No! No! I did not sign up to be making up bunk beds! Enough democracy!
Lucky me, those sets were for the roomettes, and you don’t even have to rent them, you can do without them if you prefer. I think the rental per night for the set is $3.00, but they also have it broken down, so if you just want to rent a pillow and pillow case it might be $1.00 per night, or just a blanket. Our cabin is beautiful and spacious. We have a big window, and dolphins romp by, and beautiful mysteriously foggy islands. We have our own toilet and shower, thanks be to God, and a washstand with plenty of clean towels. This is heaven. 🙂
The food is not elegant, but neither is it institutional. It is a giant step above McDonalds, or any of the fast food outlets. These are the menus posted in the hallway leading to the galley (kitchen):
There are a variety of food stations – drinks of all kinds on the left, a salad and soup station on your right. Every day there were three soup choices, a soup like chicken noodle or French onion, a smoked salmon or clam chowder, and a chili. There were four prepared salads, and a big bar with greens and accoutrements; carrots, tiny tomatoes, peas, etc.
There was also a deli sandwich and pizza station, where the lady would make you what you want.
There was another station, the hot station, where you could order several different hot things. There would be three main meal choices at every meal, like beef stew, salmon steak or pork fried rice, for example, and a veg and a starch. They even had brown rice.
After you paid, cafeteria style, you enter the dining hall. It’s a working ship, remember, so it’s not just paid eaters who eat there, but also there is a microwave available for people who bring their own food. I saw one young man who had the BEST food, the first day he had a cucumber with salt and pepper, and bread. At breakfast, he had brought his own granola kind of mix. (Then he was gone, it’s a ferry, and people come and go.)
There are families with children warming up spaghettio’s, and single women with bowls of Ramen. It’s all very democratic, everyone sitting in the same dining hall.
There is always a large display full of desserts; they must have specialized in desserts, very tempting desserts. AdventureMan succumbed one meal to a piece of Coconut Cream Pie, and I yielded to a Blueberry Pie at another meal.
They also had all kinds of condiments, in case you like a little kick with your foods, the more common ones, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise you pumped into small containers, but there were also things like Thai chili sauce, Tiger Sauce, Tabasco sauce, soy sauce – things different people like.
There were several booths with Alaskan wildlife and bird life on them:
Near the dining hall, across from the gift shop was a small room for small children with a rubber floor 🙂
This is the bar, which was closed every day until around 5:00 and it was the only place on board that sold alcohol. You weren’t supposed to take it out of the bar. They had Alaskan beer, which is very tasty.
This was lunch our first day on board, Smoked Salmon Chowder and a shrimp salad:
After every meal, we walk the decks, and, in fact, other than climbing in and out of my bunk, most of our exercise was walking, walking, walking, and climbing stair up and down. It didn’t do us any harm 🙂 The scenery is ever changing. Our first day out, we pass the same humpbacks we had seen on the whale watch the day before, spouting, someone always can be counted on to shout “Thar she blows!” The Alaskan waters team with wildlife; sparkling fish jumping, dolphins, seals, sea lions, otter – we saw them all. I would be typing up notes in our cabin, facing out the window, and I would see a couple dolphins just zipping along, so graceful, just doing their dolphin thing.
A Whaling Adventure with Captain Alan on The Scania
This is what we were waiting for – a trip out to see the whales! We researched all the companies offering these outings, and Adventures in Alaska caught our attention because of the maximum number of people they carry – 12. On our trip out, there were 7 customers, Captain Alan, and his brother Andy.
Other whale watch trips were leaving at the same time – with twenty five or more passengers seated side by side in rows INSIDE. On The Scania, there is an upper deck, a lower deck, and an inside cabin and you can move freely up and down and from side to side for the best view, and the best angle if you are shooting photos.
Once we were all aboard, we zoomed down the coast, hoping to see Orcas, and there they were! It was such a thrill.
This is what other boats looked like:
Passengers have to shoot from inside:
Leaving Auke Bay en route to the Orcas:
Captain Alan moving out to insure that we see Orcas:
Our first glimpse of Orca
At first we saw dolphin . . . and then we saw Orcas moving really fast and then some commotion and then . . . no more dolphin. The Orcas are feeding:
Orca diving
These are my favorite moments of all – the baby Orca was just irrepressible, dancing, twisting, diving and twirling – so entertaining, and so cute!
We also saw Humpback whales, sea lion, and eagles. It was a truly grand day.
Perseid Meteor Showers Climax Sunday and Monday Nights
Truly, some of the best moments in life are free. The smell of salt in the air near the sea, pine needles underfoot walking through a forest – and watching meteor showers in a light-free area – an isolated beach, a desert, or out on a boat 🙂
Written by
USA Today and staff reports
Get outside this weekend and check out the shooting stars of summer.
The year’s best celestial fireworks show is on tap in the wee hours of Sunday and Monday as the annual Perseid meteor shower takes center stage in the night sky.
Sky watchers may see as many as 50 to 100 meteors an hour as it peaks in the early morning hours before dawn. But if you don’t want to stay up so late, don’t fret. The reliable shower is known to produce some brilliant meteors between 10 p.m. and midnight, too.
Summer is a perfect time to watch meteors. Plunking down on a blanket or sitting in the dark in a reclining lawn chair works fine. Temperatures in the Pensacola area during the evening are forecast for the mid-70s and there is a chance of an occasional thunderstorm. All you have to do is lie flat on your back and enjoy the show.
The key to seeing meteors is finding a fairly dark sky unspoiled by artificial lighting. If heading to the country or finding a dark beach is not in the cards, the backyard will work fine as an observing platform as long as outside lights are kept off.
Perseids are known for fireballs, brilliant trails of light produced as tiny grains of comet dust slam into the upper atmosphere at nearly 134,000 mph. The shower’s cosmic dust grains — about one-fifth of an inch across — burn nicely as they zip overhead. Those dust grains come courtesy of Comet Swift-Tuttle, which circles the sun once every 133 years and leaves behind a debris trail. (Comets are basically dirty snowballs that develop tails when they approach the sun and start to melt.
“The Perseids are the good ones,” said meteorite expert Bill Cooke of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
The Perseids are named after the constellation Perseus, the hero of Greek mythology born from a shower of heavenly gold. As Perseus rises in the northeast sky after midnight, the meteors appear to emanate near the constellation.
You will have to stay up late to see the Perseids at their peak. The best viewing comes from midnight to dawn, particularly after the half-full moon sets both nights after midnight, said Astronomy magazine’s Michael Bakich.
“There will be a dozen ‘Ooh’ moments in that hour,” Bakich said. “Ones when everyone will say, ‘Did you see that?’ ”
Though the shooting stars seem to come from the constellation Perseus, don’t look there to see them, Bakich advises. Instead, look about one-third of the sky down and away from the constellation to spot meteors streaking across the sky.
“That makes them easier to pick out,” he said.
World’s Most Expensive Cities for Expats
By Mark Johanson
Where is the world’s most-expensive city for expatriates? It’s not notoriously pricey Tokyo. It’s not wallet-shrinking Sydney, Moscow or Oslo. And it’s definitely not surprisingly cheap New York City. Rather, it’s an African seaport you’ve probably never heard of: Luanda, Angola.
This finding from U.S. consulting firm Mercer underscores its annual survey’s purpose: to assess the cost of living around the world so that multinational companies and governments can determine appropriate compensation allowances for their expatriate employees. After all, more than half of oil-rich Luanda’s 5 million residents live below the poverty line.
“Despite being one of Africa’s major oil producers, Angola is a relatively poor country, yet expensive for expatriates since imported goods can be costly,” Barb Marder, senior partner and Mercer’s global mobility practice leader, said. “In addition, finding secure living accommodations that meet the standards of expatriates can be challenging and quite costly.”
Mercer noted in the survey that the difference in cost of various everyday items could be dramatic from country to country. The average cup of coffee, for example, costs about $1.54 in Managua, Nicaragua, while it costs $8.29 in Moscow. A fast-food hamburger meal in Kolkata, India, costs $3.62, compared to $13.49 in Caracas, Venezuela. A ticket to the cinema, meanwhile, can run between $5.91 in Johannesburg and up to $20.10 in London.
Cost of accommodation was another major factor Mercer looked at, and a one-month unfurnished luxury rental in Hong Kong topped the world at about $7,092 — more than 20 times as much as in Karachi, Pakistan. Yet, it was Moscow that crept in just below Luanda as the second-most expensive city for expats, followed by Tokyo, Chad’s capital city of N’djamena, and Singapore.
“Recent world events, including economic and political upheavals, which resulted in currency fluctuations, cost inflation for goods and services, and volatility in accommodation prices have impacted these cities making them expensive,” Marder explained.
Mercer assessed a total of 214 cities across five continents for its 2013 survey, analyzing data from March 2012 to March 2013. Cities were then ranked by the price of housing, transport, food, entertainment and clothing, and ordered on the joint cost of 200 items compared to the benchmark, New York City.
“Given the increasing numbers of business travelers, global ‘commuters’ and longer-term expatriates, companies are keeping a close eye on the cost of living for international assignees in different cities around the world,” Marder said, explaining the purpose of the study. “Organizations need to evaluate the impact of currency fluctuations, inflation, and political instability when sending employees on overseas assignments while ensuring they can facilitate the moves they need to drive the business results by offering fair and competitive compensation packages.”
Nathalie Constantin-Métral, principal at Mercer with responsibility for compiling the survey ranking, said that, overall, cost of living went up across parts of Europe, while it went down in much of Asia. Japan dropped significantly from last year due to a weakening of the yen against the U.S. dollar.
In the Americas, meanwhile, South American cities were the most expensive for expatriates, while Canadian cities moved down in rankings due to a slight decrease of the Canadian dollar against the U.S. dollar. New York remained the most-expensive urban center in the U.S.
“Overall, U.S. cities either remained stable in the ranking or have slightly decreased due to the movement of the U.S. dollar against the majority of currencies worldwide,” Constantin-Métral said. “Yet several cities, including New York, moved up in the ranking due to a rise in the rental accommodation market.”
Name that Country: A Most Difficult Challenge
This morning, as I was praying for Panama – there is always a diocese listed in the daily lectionary to be prayed for somewhere in the world – I was thinking how I know where Panama is. When we are praying for Nigeria, there are names I haven’t heard of. I now Lagos, and Port Harcourt, but where is Abuja? Owerri? I go to GoogleEarth and look them up.
I struggle with how little the average American knows about geographical location. It’s just embarrassing. Through all the years I lived abroad, most of the time, unless it was Germany, people couldn’t quite place where I was living. Many had heard of Tunisia; we had troops there in World War II, and Saudi Arabia, because they had seen it often enough on the news, but the rest of the Arab Gulf, Jordan, Syria, North Africa – beyond them.
Then, on the first night of one of my grad classes, the professor handed us this map and gave us ten minutes to put in the appropriate country names. He did not, thanks be to God, ask us to put in capitals. Not a single one of us got them all, and this was a class full of nation-oriented people.
It was also on the final exam, three months later, and most of us got them all right – thanks to some fervent cramming and study groups.
Here are a couple more maps, in case you are feeling cocky. See if you can accurately fill in the name of each country:
Bonne chance!
Americanah and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Rushing from one meeting to another yesterday, I had just an hour – but during that hour, Terry Gross was interviewing one of my favorite authors, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie does GREAT interviews. She is funny, and educated and insightful; she can talk about painful topics and make you laugh and cry with her. That interview was a blessing on my day.
I started reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie when I was in Kuwait. A good friend approached me and asked me to form a book club. LOL. This is a friend I can’t say no to. Every introverted bone in my body was screaming “NO! NO!” and I smiled at her and said “Yes.”
God is good. He laughed when I said “yes” and through the book club, introduced me to authors I might never otherwise read. The club was made up of many nationalities, and we read books from everywhere, unforgettable books. We read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie “Half of a Yellow Sun.” Once you read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, there is no going back. I wonder if I will be able to hold out on Americanah until it comes out in paperback?
This is from the National Public Radio website, so you can actually listen to the interview yourself, should you want to get to know this delightful author a little better.
‘Americanah’ Author Explains ‘Learning’ To Be Black In The U.S.
When the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was growing up in Nigeria she was not used to being identified by the color of her skin. That changed when she arrived in the United States for college. As a black African in America, Adichie was suddenly confronted with what it meant to be a person of color in the United States. Race as an idea became something that she had to navigate and learn.
The learning process took some time and was episodic. Adichie recalls, for example, an undergraduate class in which the subject of watermelon came up. A student had said something about watermelon to an African-American classmate, who was offended by the comment.
“I remember sitting there thinking, ‘But what’s so bad about watermelons? Because I quite like watermelons,’ ” Adichie tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross.
She felt that her African-American classmate was annoyed with her because Adichie didn’t share her anger — but she didn’t have the context to understand why. The history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was not taught to students in Nigeria. Adichie had yet to learn fully about the history of slavery — and its continuing reverberations — in the U.S.
“Race is such a strange construct,” says Adichie, “because you have to learn what it means to be black in America. So you have to learn that watermelon is supposed to be offensive.”
Adichie is a MacArthur Fellowship winner and author of the novels Purple Hibiscusand Half of A Yellow Sun. Her new novel, Americanah, explores this question of what it means to be black in the U.S., and tells the story of a young Nigerian couple, one of whom leaves for England and the other of whom leaves for America.
The title, she says, is a Nigerian word for those who have been to the U.S. and return with American affectations.
“It’s often used,” she says, “in the context of a kind of gentle mockery.”
Good Marketing Campaigns – What’s Your Favorite?
“Red Robin!” I sang, and AdventureMan responded “YUMMMMMMMM!” I had mentioned I am getting ready for my annual hamburger, and he became obsessed with Red Robin and we had to go there. I had the Whiskey River Chicken Salad. If I only have one hamburger a year, I want it closer to the 4th of July. It doesn’t have to make sense to you, but it matters to me. If you only eat one hamburger a year, it has to be a really good hamburger. 🙂
Back to the “YUMMMMMMM!”
Now, that’s good marketing. There is nothing not good about “YUMMMMMMM”
A campaign where you train people to think “YUMMMMM!” every time you hear Red Robin – brilliant!
We love good marketing. We love good ads; we notice good ads and good marketing techniques. We also scorn the bad ones.
Here’s what we love:
Mayhem – the entire series for Allstate, also the Allstate commercials when suddenly the black-guy-who-was-President-in-24’s voice comes out of an unlikely person.
Gecko/Geico – anytime you smile and you remember who the ad is for, that’s a good ad.
“What’s in Your Wallet?” Those hilarious Vikings make the point for Capitol One.
There are ads we like, but they don’t win our awards because while we like them, we can’t remember who they are for. If you can’t remember who an ad is for, the ad isn’t effective.
Campaigns I hate:
COX TV ads, all of them, just dumb.
Direct TV ads, just dumb.
Toilet Paper ads
As you can imagine, AdventureMan and I can have this conversation over a lot of long-distance drives and over a lot of meals.
So – what’s your favorite ad campaign? And why? Worst?
Pensacola: Fiesta of Five Flag Parade
I’ve never lived anywhere with so many parades, and as Pensacola cools down a little and an offshore breeze blows away the heat of the day, a parade sounds like fun. Tonight is the Fiesta of Five Flags Parade. I can’t think of a parade since Lent, so maybe this is the kick off of the new season. Pensacola has an active and lively social scene, with all these Mardi Gras Krewes, and the older our grandson gets, the more of the parade we get to see! I think we got through three quarters of the parade tonight, and oh what fun.
The people on the floats are having a great time. They have these great alter-egos, get to wear elaborate costumes, and there may be some alcohol involved, LOL. The people on the ground are having a great time, you can really get into the waving and trying to catch the beads. Some of the beads are prettier than others, but as AdventureMan says, it’s all plastic. Having said that, you should see him scramble! He is good at catching beads.
And oh my, they are so good to the kids, with stuffed toys, beads, ice cream bars, frisbees, trinkets, including pieces of eight!
Honestly, there are some things in life I will never get tired of – parades and fireworks. I feel so blessed to live in Pensacola.
These photos are not in the right order because I just did a group dump into the photo gallery, and it scrambled them when they were inserted into the blog entry.
The parade always starts with the Pensacola motorcycle police, with flashing lights and roaring engines!
I love that they decorate the horses tails:
And then AdventureMan pointed out they also rubbed glitter into the horses haunches to make them pretty 🙂
So many beads! We got to the parade a mere ten minutes before it began, but it was more lightly attended, and we were able to be right up front. Our little grandson had a great view, and people were so kind giving him beads, throwing him beads, toys, etc.
Look at all those beads they plan to throw! There was a throne on this float with King Tut!
These ladies were having a grand time!
The Mayoki Indians seemed to be the Krewe having the best time of all, with two floats loaded with beads, and more ‘foot Indians’ handing and throwing beads into the crowds:
The flame throwing baton twirler got lots of applause:
We saw our little grandson rubbing his eyes and asked if he was ready to go home, and he was. One of these days he will be old enough we will see an entire parade. I had a minor concern that Tropical Storm Andrea would blow in bad weather and make the parade unlikely, but nothing of the sort, we had great weather, a lovely evening and a wonderful time making good memories with our little grandson.
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Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 