A Great Evening

Jody and I have been like ships passing in the night the last few weeks with his working Wednesday thru Saturday nights and sleeping days and me working days, and then company and all. We've not been able to do anything together. So I checked into going to Whittier. There is a 2 mile long tunnel that you have to pay to go through and it is a one way tunnel so it's got a schedule as to when cars from the different directions can go through. My boss helped get all the information and for a whopping $12 toll and gas (no big deal it's just about 50 miles away) we had a great evening veiwing Whittier and the Prince William Sound portion of the Ocean with lots of glaciers. Jessa and Joleesa went with (Jenna chose to stay home, but as you read then wished she had gone, and being Joleesa doesn't spend much time with her family we insisted she go). See, I don't mind the girls going, I enjoy them going that way when there's something Jody would rather do usually one the girls will stay with me.

Anyway Whittier is another place where the world ends...you get there and all you can do is turn around and go back because all roads end at the ocean there. It's got all kinds of shops but more importantly we met a cute and polite young man (17 year old Ryan). Ryan's dad is a phsyciatrist and his mom a CEO of a bank and he has 12 brothers and sisters that all live in Anchorage but he has chosen to live in Whittier the last 5 years helping his uncle run his fish processing/gift shop business. He owns a cabin up the mountain. He was out fishing and Jody started talking to him. To shorten things up some here, I asked him if he had time to be our personal tour guide and so he took on underground pedestrial tunnel that led to the side of Whittier where the 14 story building was that housed most the residents, the post office and a clinic. They have mobil community church, no banks or bars (but a liquor store), and a school that has about 27 students. They get abot 25 feet of snow so they have underground tunnels that they use in the winter. On the other side of these buildings and 100's of boats is the mountain and river and the most gorgeous waterfalls coming right out of the mountains. It was a peaceful, unique place and I thoroughly enjoyed myself and Ryan was awesome. Brother Nowling introduced himself as Pastor Nowling and it opened the door for questions. We thought he may be mormon, but not so. He seemed very interested and may come out to services, but before school starts I hope to take the youth to Whittier for a day of hiking and roasting hot dogs and we'll call him so he can join us. I had Jessa get his phone number and email address (Joleesa is too close to his age although he was having a great time telling her about fishing and teasing her along the way; with her dad's help).

Anyway, the night was perfect except for two things...my camera had no flash card in in it. Grrrr. Someone had taken it out to download pictures on to the computer. Fortunately Jessa had her camera with so we put her flashcard into my camera, until the batteries went dead (unfortunately my camera doesn't let me know how much life is left in the batteries). So back to Jessa's camera until her batteries went dead (before you think I was smart enough to think of switching batteries too, her's only takes two mine four)and the second bummer was the stores were closed there so, no we couldn't even buy batteries. It was 8 pm by the time we got there but one of the first places we went to was Ryan's store (by the way Joleesa came out quickly saying it stunk of fish ~ go figure it was a gift shop but there's a big sign on it that said FISH PROCESSING ~ Ryan was standing there talking to Jody and I when she came out, how perfect for HIM). There were a few other stores still open but we started our looooooong walk (to me it was long, and I don't even hurt this morning) and by the time we got back we were so thirsty and the only thing open was the liquor store and he assured us we didn't want that kind of drink (dah~grin)so he went into his store and got us some pop and tea. Jody insisted on paying for them.

Like I started out it was A GREAT EVENING. I went to bed PTL and in awe once again of his creation.