We went on a jet boat adventure tour today on Devil’s Canyon. We were on the water for about 5 hours. Now before you get all excited that Lily, Rich, and I had paddles and dry suits and stuff like that on as we paddled our way down class 4 and 5 white water….let me burst your bubble a bit. We were actually on jet boats. They looked kinda like pontoon boats with really big engine power. They were enclosed with windows that opened (thank goodness, because it was 83 here today!). We did go to class 5 water in Devil’s Canyon though. It was amazing. The only wildlife we saw along the way were several bald eagles that were quite far off in the distance. Our boat captain was named Israel and he had quite a lot of great stories to tell along the way. There was also a naturalist with him, Abby, who was also a lot of fun. Both of them were born and raised in Talkeetna. Here are a couple of random facts I learned today I thought were really interesting: 1.) Alaska and Louisiana are the only two states who don’t use the county system. Louisiana has parishes. (this I knew since I graduated from high school in Louisiana) Alaska has boroughs. This I didn’t know. 2.) The Susitna River (the one we were on today) is the 15th longest in the U.S. at 314 miles long. It only has one town along it – Talkeetna. The rest of it is very remote and no one has built alongside it. There are some fresh water that comes into the water filled with glacier silt….you can see them in the pictures where the water is brown and then a line where the fresh blue water comes in. That is where the salmon come in as well. When the river freezes over during the winter, the ice is typically 5 feet thick. There are awful ice jams in the spring as the ice starts to break up and they build up and scrape the trees along the banks. On our way back to Talkeetna, we stopped at an area that has been set up as a reproduction of what a trapper’s camp would look like at the turn of the century. Our naturalist guide, Abby, took her 9 gauge shotgun with her as we made a 1/4 mile walk into the woods….just in case. It was very interesting. All in all, we had a really great time on the water today. We also learned a bit about the vegetation. There were a lot of fireweed flowers in the woods. She said that the jelly, jams, syrups, and ice cream are a true taste of Alaska. There were also some really talk stalks of what looked like Queen Anne’s lace. However, we were told it was actually called cow’s parsnip…which has an oily substance on it that when you get in the sun will give you chemical burns. Good to know!

When we returned to the town of Talkeetna, we walked around downtown for a bit and had an early dinner. We passed a store that had a woman in her 60’s sitting at a table in front of the building. She had a sign saying she had burrito bunny therapy going on. Well….that sounded interesting! We meandered over and got to hold some of her rabbits. She said that a years ago she lost her 42 year old son to a massive heart attack. She needed some form of therapy to manage her grief and this was it. Now she shares it with others. Anyhow…that is the reason for the bunny photos!

Tomorrow we will head onto the train again and head into Denali National Park for the last leg of our trip. I am really looking forward to it! I have loved Talkeetna. It is a charming little town that gets run over by tourists this time of year. I am holding out hope to come back up here again during the late fall or winter time. I think it would be magical with snow and not so many people and mosquitoes!

I was up way too late last night…up too early this morning…It is time for me to get to bed and get some rest for tomorrow’s adventures. I just wanted to share with you what the inside of our great room in our lodge looks like. There are a row of about a dozen leather and wood rocking chairs that face out of some large windows facing the Alaskan mountain range. This has been my go-to place to hang out and read messages on Facebook and doing my daily Bible study. I bet it is gorgeous in the winter time when it is snowing! Yesterday you could see everything pretty well, but today it was hazy over the mountains and not very clear. I took a few pictures in the fireweed flowers…now that I know what they are called. On to the weekend!

This morning we were fortunate enough to go out to the kennels of Dallas Seavey, a five time Iditarod champion and current reigning champion. He has about 130 dogs in totally, but about 85 were out today. He has some that stay on a glacier part of the year to train. He also has this big trailer that is air conditioned that has a huge treadmill to run a 14 dog mushing group. Isn’t that crazy? His trainers worked with us. They were fantastic. Some live there all year round and others, like Chloe, a 20 year old vet student from Minnesota, comes up for the summer for an internship. All of them are mushers and want to learn from the magic of Dallas. We got to meet Gamble, the dog that has been one of the most decorated dogs ever. They had a pen of eight puppies that were 7 weeks old and full of energy. They had the howling down pat. They made land carts to mimic dog sleds to use through the forest on his property. They have two sided hand brakes so Lily rode on my sled the whole time while I drove. We had a blast with the dogs. I wasn’t so sure at first about how the dogs lived…on 30-40 foot runs with a dog house…all on gravel. However, they were really well taken care of and I was really impressed with these trainers and the whole process involved in training for the Iditarod. Afterwards, we went into town and had lunch at the Talkeetna Brewery and Pub, then Lily and Rich had some fireweed ice cream cones. Fireweed is a purple flower that grows wild all over the play around here. It is in the vase next to Lily in the picture with her eating pink ice cream. Lily said that if pink were a flavor, it would taste like fireweed ice cream! Shirley, the owner, moved to Alaska from Arkansas 39 years ago. She is quite a character and sounds like she left Arkansas yesterday! We also had some spinach bread….sooooo good!

Well, I made it to another LMS Awareness Day. Yes, even my brand of crazy rare cancer has a day of awareness attached to it. Our color is purple, so I wore purple today. Purple was always my favorite color growing up. I have always loved the color green, but purple is a close second. I was kind of hoping the color would be some color I didn’t like…because I don’t like this cancer. Why did it have to be associated with one of my favorite colors? You know what else is a “sign” of LMS besides the color purple? Sunflowers. Gah! I LOVE sunflowers and taking photos in sunflower fields. So this disease seems to fit me. Sigh. I am doing okay. It is nice to not be on chemotherapy right now. However, this anastrozole is not a picnic. I am literally moving like an 80 year old until I get going. The joint pain and stiffness is not enjoyable. It slows me down. It makes me move in ways I don’t want to. But how can I complain when I am still here and still able to take care of myself and do wonderful things like check off some bucket list items? So today I thought of my friend, Hollie, who didn’t make it one year with her diagnosis. I prayed for her…for her family…for all those who are suffering with this awful, unpredictable form of cancer. Then I put it aside and didn’t think about it all day. Until I saw all the purple flowers at our lodge. Until I was put in the purple group at the flight seeing tour. It was like God was reminding me that He was thinking of me too today. That gives me pause to think of how fortunate I am to be his beloved daughter.

Here is a few signs being sent out amongst our LMS community globally I wanted to share:

We got up early this morning and got to the train depot in Anchorage to catch the glass domed train to Talkeetna. It was a beautiful ride and only took about 2.5 hours. Once we arrived at our hotel, the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge, we changed into some warmer clothes (although it was pretty warm here…in the lower 80’s) and got a ride to the flight seeing service. We were put in the purple group…kind of funny as today is National Leiomyosarcoma Awareness Day and our color is purple. Rich, Lily, and I boarded an 11 seater plane, an otter with skis on it and took off towards Denali National Park and the mountain range there. Rich volunteered to be the co-pilot and sit up front. It was spectacular! We flew for two hours around the peaks that make up the mountain range in Denali National Park. I grew up calling it Mt. McKinley, but it is now called Denali (the largest mountain in North America).We just kept circling closer and closer…at times I felt like the wings were going to touch the sides of the mountains, but the pilot assured us that we were at least a quarter of a mile away. We landed on a glacier and took some pictures, threw some snowballs at each other, and got to watch another plane take off on skis off the glacier heading straight for the mountains in front of us. We caught a ride into Talkeetna and walked around talking to locals and non-locals alike. There is a fabulous photographer named Dora. Her shop is called Dora Aurora because all she takes photos of are of the northern lights. She is originally from San Paulo, Brazil, but has lived here the last 20 years. It was wonderful talking with her and seeing her work. Talkeetna is not very big…and when they are in the high tourist season, like they are now, it is obvious that they don’t have enough staff at their restaurants to handle the larger crowds. After being told it would be over an hour to wait to sit down and eat, we ate at a Talkeetna Takos…a local taco truck. It was pretty good. Rich and Lily got some waffle cone ice cream cones then we started the walk back to the lodge…which is about 2 miles. All that traveling today and I didn’t even have to worry about getting my steps in. I walked about 6.5 miles today. Here are some photos of our day plus a few sunset photos. I found a fuzzy bee bum to photograph whilst waiting for the sun the sun a bit further. I also saw what I thought was a cat but was a porcupine! Can’t say as I have seen one in the wild before. Onto the adventures for tomorrow!

We made it! We left Tuesday afternoon and flew to Minneapolis. We then took off around 9 p.m. and literally chased the sunset the entire 5 1/2 hour flight. We arrived in Anchorage around midnight local time….about 3 a.m. Nebraska time. We all crashed hard when we got to the hotel but spent a full day exploring Anchorage.

We are staying at the Lakefront Lodge…where all the Iditarod dog mushing groups stay each year. Lake Hood is right behind the hotel and it has the busiest seaplane base in Alaska. I went out and took some photos this evening of the planes on the lake and some landing. We left this morning to go downtown and took a trolley ride around the city. The driver’s name was Alice and she was a hoot! She really knew her stuff about Anchorage and Alaska. She sang to us parodies about life in Alaska…about eating roadkill to being a single woman in Alaska. (where the odds are good but the good are odd – referring to the male choices). She had us laughing hysterically most of the time. However, I really didn’t know too much about the Good Friday earthquake of 1964. It was a 9.2 earthquake that lasted 4 minutes. Only 7 people died….and she talked about why it wasn’t several thousand, as it should have been. A lot of God things….high school basketball games cancelled because the Catholic moms called the school district to complain that the game shouldn’t be on Good Friday. It happened in the snowy part of March…in the dark, as it was 5:30 p.m. The neighbors held on to each other as they literally rode the waves of the earthquake and houses got washed into the sea. Because it was Good Friday, the city had closed down early, so most people were home. The earthquake caused a huge crack down the middle of the main street of town. The story was amazing. After the trolley ride, we walked down to the train depot and the Ulu factory. We then walked along the coast…and walked…and walked…and walked. We finally caught an Uber back to the main part of town and had dinner at the 49th State Brewing Company. Rich and Lily had blueberry cream sodas which were bright pink and tasted like liquid cotton candy. I had a yak burger. Yep. When in Rome, people.

I have to say that it is gorgeous here. The flower beds all around the city are amazing. They are so colorful. There are also views of the many different mountain ranges. There are so many walking paths. We walked several miles today. I forgot my watch but Rich’s watch had 22,000 steps at the end of the day. We move to Talkeetna tomorrow. I need to head to bed and get ready for an early start tomorrow, but I leave you with some photos from today. By the way, the temperatures were a full 50 degrees cooler than Las Vegas. It felt wonderful!

My dog just loves life. I remember when I used to blow bubbles for the boys when they were little….and then later for Lily when she was little. None of them enjoyed the pure joy of popping those bubbles like my dog does. When we are going to blow bubbles for him, we wait until all three of us are outside to enjoy the show. He magically becomes the matrix dog as he twists and turns in the air to try and catch those bubbles that are blowing away on the wind. He actually leaped higher than Rich’s head yesterday! It was crazy. Here are a couple of photos of him living his best life. We were trying to wear him out as we were going to be leaving without him for vacation….and he knew it. He will play this until he literally is foaming at the mouth from biting so many bubbles. You just hear the “Snap! Snap!” of his jaws moving like an alligator as he attacks those bubbles.

I mentioned that last week started a whirlwind of traveling for us. We went down to KC on Thursday and came back Friday. Rich and I were home about 4 hours before we headed to the airport to take off for Las Vegas. We left Lily alone with the dog as we would be gone less than 48 hours and she is 16.5 years old…and pretty responsible. There were supposed to be some storms on Friday night, but by the time we left, the local weatherman had cancelled the alert day and said it would track south of the area and it was weakening. We felt pretty comfortable in that we would be back in the early afternoon of Sunday.

In Feb 2020, for my birthday, Rich got me tickets to go see a UFC event in Lincoln in March. I was pretty sick at the time from the chemo and COVID cancelled the event anyhow. We didn’t get our money back but got a credit. Fastforward a year and we needed to use our credit or lose it. Rich shelled out some extra money and we got tickets for the first open UFC PPV fights in Vegas which were open to the public. This happened to be a huge card….with Conor McGregor fighting Dustin Poirier for a trilogy thriller. UFC 264 was the place to be on Saturday night if you were in Las Vegas….unless of course you were at the Bruno Mars concert or the Garth Brooks concert. So there were 3 big events going on after Vegas had just reopened with live shows and everything. Unfortunately, the state is still paying unemployment to people like taxi drivers. Only 30% of them were working as the others chose to collect $900/week to sit at home. Las Vegas, which is a place that thrives on customer service, was having issues everywhere we turned – hotel service, taxis, food service…everywhere. It was 117 degrees on Saturday….and cooled to 110 as the sun set and we waited in line with hundreds of others to catch rides back to our hotels. 117 degrees….it is a dry heat, I will give you that. But so is an oven or a hairdryer on high heat. It is still hot. We did spend some time in the pool. We stayed at Trump Plaza. The rooms were awesome. The pool felt like bath water but was somewhat refreshing because it was wet. We did a lot of walking….a LOT of people watching….(there is no other place to people watch than Las Vegas on a busy weekend). The fights were amazing. Rich and I had 7th row seats so had a pretty good view of the octagon. For the prelims and the first few main card fights, we sat even closer as the ultra rich folks didn’t come until later. (I don’t understand that at all.) We got there 30 minutes before the fights began so I could walk right up close to the octagon and see the commentators getting ready to broadcast. Little known fact…Bruce Buffer (the announcer on the microphone from the octagon) dances a lot to the walk in music. He also does a series of stretches in the octagon before the first fight. It was pretty neat to see things live and behind the scenes. I did miss being able to hear the commentators but my son, Tim, was filling me in on the main stuff I might have been missing. I have been a UFC fan forever…Tim and I rarely miss watching the fights and listening to MMA podcasts during the week. There were quite a few famous people there watching. President Trump was one of them. Paul Pierce (aka “The Truth”) from the Celtics was there. He is retired now but was one of the Big Three back when the Celtics were great a few years back. We are big fans. He took photos with us. The owners of the Raiders and Patriots football franchises were there as well as some other fighters and Hollywood celebs. This was a bucket list item for me that Rich has helped me check off. On to the next bucket list item….which happens in the next couple of weeks.

Meanwhile back in Omaha…..the weatherman was mistaken. Storms hit Omaha HARD on Friday night. Thunder, lightning, rain, and most of all wind, just blew up the area. By 11:30 p.m. on Friday, the power was out at our house. I was in contact with Lily and all was good. We figured it would be fixed in the morning, no big deal. She did mention the trees looked like they were bending in half. We would find out later that the winds gusted up to 78 miles an hour in Omaha and 96 mph at the Eppley (our airport in Omaha) which tied as the strongest wind gusts ever. These were not spinning wind, but straight winds, which can do a real number to trees. As Saturday wore on and there was still no sign of power being restored, we called our good friends, Ed and Wanda down in Bellevue to help out Lily. They had to wait a few hours to get to her as a second round of storms swept through. They were kind enough to take Lily and Tallinn to their home for about 24 hours until we could get back into town to get them. They also set up our generator (this is not our first rodeo with no power in this house) to plug in our fridge so we wouldn’t lose all our food. What awesome friends! They are like family to us…especially our kids. They are known as Miss Wanda and Mr. Ed to all three kids and they have known them for 14 years….Their son is Joe’s best friend. We are so blessed to have them in our lives and even more so when we needed someone to take in Lily during this freak storm. Fastforward again to today, Monday. We finally got our power back midday. In the beginning, there were nearly 190,000 without power. It is dwindled down to about 20,000 at this point. The amount of damage this did to the trees in the area is amazing. There were 6 tree limb dumping sites opened almost immediately. Two were closed today because they were full. Those were the ones nearest us. We are in an older part of Omaha with 50-75 year old mature trees. Our store had to be closed on Saturday because of a lack of power as well. Lily is coming with us this next trip! We want to thank the hard work of OPPD and the electrical line workers who came up from Missouri and were working in our neighborhood around the clock the last two days helping to get power restored. These guys rock!

This is going to be a proud momma boasting blog…so you are forewarned! Yesterday afternoon we drove down to Olathe, Kansas. This is about a 3 hour drive from us. Lily drove a little more than half of the way down. She needs the driving practice…although I think all three of us were happy to exit the vehicle when we arrived! I survived the other two…I will survive this one learning to drive as well. (this is my daily…sometimes hourly mantra.) The city of Olathe, Kansas put us up for the night at the Embassy Suites Hotel in honor of our son, Joe, graduating from their firefighting academy. How nice is that?? We snuck down to the conference center and got to give Joe a hug and be introduced to his academy fellow recruits. There were 10 in all…from all ages and walks of life. Joe promptly handed me his keys to place in my purse (some things never change) as he got all gussied up for the graduation. We, in turn, went up to our room and also got gussied up for his graduation.

We met Michelle, his wife, at the graduation and sat together as the ceremony started. I also handed her Joe’s keys and said, “Tag! You’re it!”. The American and Kansas flags were brought in by firefighters carrying axes before and following. The color guard was led in by a Scottish bagpiper and drum duo. It’s the kind of thing that makes goosebumps pop up on your arms. It was really cool. We then said the pledge of allegiance. All the while, all 10 of the recruits’ gear were lined up across the stage. We learned there are a LOT of chiefs in the Olathe Fire Department and most were there. Not only is this a graduation, but it is also an assignment night (which is more exciting for the recruits….to find out who their fire chief will be, what station they will be assigned to, and what shift they will be on). The OFD chaplains were there and prayed over the recruits giving them the advice to seek the Lord for strength when they need to. Each of the recruits had a family member pin on their OFD badge (a special one for the year 2021 because they are celebrating their 50th anniversary as a fire department this year) and received a framed diploma. Joe was recognized as being a military member. Five out of ten of the recruits have military service. Joe was also recognized as having legacy fire service. This means he has a family member who also serves as a firefighter. This would be my brother, Craig Neitzke, who is a LT in the Cy-Fair Fire Department in Houston, TX. Joe was given a special coin by one of the chiefs to give to his Uncle Craig from the Olathe Fire Department. Four of the ten recruits had this honor. The Captain then swore them in. They then were given envelopes (they were taped under their chairs) to open in front of everyone on stage with their assignments. After cake and photos, Joe got to sign his firefighter’s oath of office and Michelle witnessed it for him. A copy went to him to keep and the other goes into his file. We then went out to dinner and had a great rest of the evening catching up with Joe and Michelle. They left this morning to head to Ft. Chaffey, Arkansas, so Joe could catch up with his Army National Guard Unit before they go to Fort Polk, LA (yes, my old stomping grounds – where I graduated from high school) for 4 weeks of training at JRTC. He will start his job at OFD on shift A, station 1 (the big house), under Chief Simmons. Joe will be learning a lot in such a big station and is really looking forward to getting his career underway with OFD!

I can’t even begin to say how proud I was of Joe last night. This is really a class act fire department who shows compassion, kindness, and professionalism in all they do. I am blessed that he was accepted there and have some great mentors and friends surrounding him. Joe’s best friend, Zac, is also a firefighter and now paramedic (whoop whoop) on the other side of the border in Missouri. Those two…just so proud of them both! Here are several photos from last night’s ceremony.

What a wonderful weekend! My Independence Day weekend started out Saturday morning outside my church. A large group of us gathered to say the Patriotic Rosary. If you are not familiar with it, it is one of my favorite prayers for our nation. Each rosary has 5 decades. We have 50 states. So each states is particularly prayed for as we go through our rosary. In between the decades, we pray for different levels of government leaders, have a short reading of a famous U.S. citizen regarding prayer in our nation, and we usually sing a patriotic song in it’s entirety: the Battle Hymn of the Republic, My Country Tis of Thee, the National Anthem, etc. I have a link to an example of the Patriotic Rosary here: http://www.sacredheartmilledgeville.org/Freedom%20Rosary%20and%20Litany.pdfToday we went to Mass and then later went to the Ralston 4th of July parade. We had only been to it twice and it was usually HOURS long. I think every fire truck in the eastern side of the state was in the parade today. One of the ambulances actually had to leave the parade route and leave, sirens blaring, for a call. There were some horses and riders, clowns, 10 million Shriners, and a couple of bands. It was much much shorter this year, but it was really fun to get out and see everyone.

The pastor of our parish, Fr. Mark Nolte, said a few things today that really resonated with me. You know how the word “love” is overused. Love is something special and sacred….yet we love tv, pizza, chocolate, football, whatever. We use the word all the time and the specialness of it is somewhat worn away by overuse. Freedom is another one of those words. I am free to do this or that….free to be me. Freedom isn’t free. Ask any military member or their family that question. In my humble opinion, our nation is a hot mess right now…and has been for a good decade or more. We have so many things that unite us yet dwell solely on the things that divide us. Every year I think about our founding fathers…those men brave enough to meet and start a new country….what they would think of how we have moved to today. Goodness, I just go back to my grandparents and imagine what they would think of how this country is currently acting. What would they think? What would they say? So today I pray for our nation. I pray for peace. I pray for understanding and love. I don’t want to sound ungrateful though….I know I live in a wonderful country. So my prayers also are lifted in thanksgiving. I have children who can grow up to pursue whatever career they want. They are able to be educated and worship whenever and wherever they desire. They are able to travel freely and say what is in their hearts. That is a true blessing. So on our country’s 245th birthday, I pray with thanksgiving for our great nation and it’s continued healing and perseverance.