kevinychen

[kevinychen]

Anchorage (7/16)

Today was our flight back to California (or New York for Natalle). We had kept a food bag throughout the trip, but now was the time to pack it or trash it. Nobody wanted the carrots, or the muffins, or the remaining yogurts. Though Natalle did take the Hello Pandas.

The flight to California was early in the morning, so the three of us left first. We returned our rental car, which I scratched on the first day but I guess they didn't care or notice. And we got on our flight!

Here's a picture taken at 11:59am. It's before noon, which may explain the various participants' states of consciousness.

Natalle's flight was later in the day, so she continued to explore the city, including visiting the native heritage center. As she walked, she suddenly noticed a car with an aura of familiarity.

Was it??? But alas, our license played differed in the last digit: 473 instead of 470. Cool coincidence though!

When the California crew landed, we got some nice noodle soups at Kunjip. While Natalle got the actual final meal of Alaska, which was...

Thai! Nicely completing the loop. Amazing.

[kevinychen]

Anchorage (7/15)

This morning we drive back to Anchorage.

But what do we do there? We've already been here two previous days.

Tommy? "Whatever."

Natalle? "Anything that others want to do."

Becky? "I dunno. Birds?"

So my lame idea of going to a seafood store wins. I wanted to bring back some good seafood anyway. Also, I recall seeing some gulls on the store building.

Becky was skeptical. "What on earth are you going to buy here?" she said. "Fresh fish? How are you going to bring that back on your suitcase?"

I hadn't really planned anything so I didn't have an answer. But luckily they had a lot of non-fresh items, such as canned smoked salmon (which I got) and boxed salmon samplers (which Natalle got). They also had a random bottle of spicy sauce, which I got because my dad likes spicy things.

For lunch we got: MORE SALMON!!! Becky had found a random bakery and she got super excited. We all got salmon sandwiches. Except Becky, I think, who got some soup.

This was all about a 15 minute drive southeast of downtown Anchorage. Once we were done with lunch and shopping, we headed downtown, but had pretty much no idea what we were going to do there.

So we just went to our hotel and played The Crew.

What was for dinner? Well, we had already eaten all sorts of things in Alaska. But one of a particular person's favorite food on the trip was King Crab Legs. "Wouldn't it be nice if we could have those King Crab Legs again?" said that particular person.

"Yes!" said another person.

So we found a place that had King Crab Legs, called Glacier Brewhouse. But remember a couple of days ago when Natalle and Tommy called a bunch of dinner places and their wait times were all over an hour and a half on a random weekday? Well, we remembered it. And so we headed out very early, around 5pm (they didn't take reservations).

I circled around the block a few times, but didn't find parking. "You can drop me off and go find parking elsewhere," said Natalle. So that's what we did, and without Natalle I was immediately able to find parking right across the street. We got out of the car, and saw Natalle walk back out of the restaurant across the street. But she didn't see us. For some reason we found this very amusing.

Natalle had put our name down, and indeed the wait was about an hour and a half. So we walked down the coastal trail for a while, half haphazardly but also trying to find a monument in the area. We took an embarrassingly long time, but eventually found it!

It was Captain James Cook, one of the early European explorers of Alaska. Unfortunately, by then Becky was hungry and not particularly enthused by the statue.

And hungry Becky got king crab legs! Tommy and Natalle got expensive entrees too. But not-as-hungry me was kind of tired of big Alaskan meals and got a salad. Ironically, that turned out to be the biggest order.

We celebrated our last main meal in Alaska. Apparently the beer was really yummy. But the crab legs were a disappointment.

But I don't want "disappointment" to be the last word of our Alaska diary. So I asked Becky, if you could describe our trip in only one word, what would it be? And she said, AMAZING!

[kevinychen]

Talkeetna (7/14)

Today we had two big things planned: rafting at 2:30pm, and a flight over Denali at 6.

Fortunately, even though we had a habit throughout this vacation of sleeping in until our first scheduled event, we did not bum around until 2:30. Instead, in the morning (ok, maybe it was late morning), Becky realized that Bernard from the night before had called her beloved pineapple weed plant "chamomile", as in chamomile tea. So after briefly foraging outside and preparations inside, she created a cup of homemade chamomile tea!

But tea isn't a complete meal. So we went to a food truck called Spinach Bread.

Just as we were looking at the menu but Natalle was looking away, someone came out, took down the board with the menu, and replaced it with a new one. Natalle looked back after she walked away. "Huh, how'd the menu suddenly change?"

Naturally, none of us told her. We're all really mean people.

It turned out that the food truck excepted only cash. This was a little worrisome because we altogether only had about $80. This was just enough to cover two spinach breads, four burritos, and a couple of drinks.

It turned out that altogether, we only finished two and a half burritos anyway. But I started getting really worried now that we were completely cashless. I was so anxious about being cashless that I even went back to the car to check if I had any spare bucks in my backpack. We went to a couple of ATMs, but none of them would except our credit cards, which even added an additional worry that they were stealing our credit card information, though Becky helped to alleviate that concern because it would be ridiculous for them to do that.

Later, after the trip, I would realize that I had $300 stashed in a hidden backpack pocket the entire time. Oops.

We were now full. But that only means that our non-dessert stomachs were full. We still had plenty of room for Shirley's Ice Cream! Natalle got the signature fireweed ice cream, while Becky got the Northern Lights, which was basically vanilla ice cream with a bunch of fruit-flavored ice bits mixed in. Becky could immediately detect that the fireweed ice cream tasted subtly of honey, but nobody else believed her. She made everybody take two bites of Northern Lights to desensitize their taste buds to the vanilla ice cream, and then try the fireweed. Before anyone else realized it, she succeeded in her plan to get us to help her finish her ice cream.

After finishing the ice cream, and after doing a bit of souvenir shopping, we realized we still had a bit of time to kill. So we drove back to the Airbnb, where Natalle impressively was able to take a 20 minute nap. We then headed back to downtown Talkeetna.

Tommy forgot a water bottle. Luckily, some of us had brought extra. Unluckily, Tommy was too prideful to use our water. So at 2:29pm, he ventured away to find some water to buy. Meanwhile Becky checked in at their rafting location where they told her that they were about to leave. Becky frantically searched for Tommy.

When we got to the rafts, Tommy was disappointed. "I thought that we would get to paddle ourselves."

Unfortunately, I immediately forgot the name of our rafter, but she had a cute dog named Charlie who slept on my lap for most of the beginning of the trip. That's easy to remember because I have a friend who also has a female dog named Charlie.

The rafter showed us many of the same berries along the coast that Bernard had shown us the day before. She even picked some red currant berries for us.

We finished rafting. Like I mentioned above, we were out of cash. So neither the rafter nor her dog got any tips.

Our scheduled guided plain ride to Denali was in a few hours. I had mentioned earlier that Becky and Natalle had wanted to make smores over the fire pit at our Airbnb, but we didn't buy any fire starter at Anchorage. So we set out to find some here.

We went to the (only) general store. They didn't have any, but they suggested we try a lodge a couple minutes drive away.

We went to the lodge. But they didn't have any either. They suggested the general store.

We went to the general store. They didn't have any, but they suggested we try the lodge...

...

Somehow we ended up in Denali Brew Pub for dinner. I got a pulled pork sandwich, where the pork was kind of dry, but the brioche bun was super nicely toasted. Also Becky had the great idea of ordering a bunch of sides, which made me very happy.

We made it to the airport for the Denali plane flights. They had to reduce our flight time from 90 minutes to 75 minutes. While we waited for the pilots, Natalle found a swing! Though she didn't appreciate me taking a sneaky picture.

What are you doing? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

When our pilot arrived, he told us that we would be the only four passengers on the plane! At first I thought this was awesome, but then I realized that meant the plane would be really really small. And really really small plane = really really bumpy ride = high potential for getting sick = possible death.

There was only one escape from death in the confined space. I learned it from reading Artemis Fowl. And that was to fall asleep. My brain started preparing the ritual to start falling asleep.

Tommy wasn't afraid. He took the cockpit seat. Is it even allowed to have someone who isn't a pilot in that seat? Wait, what if our only pilot gets a heart attack, or suddenly turns mentally incapacitated? Then wouldn't we be screwed? We would fall and crash to the ground, screaming for our lives.

Ah right, my sleeping brain is psycho. We successfully flew to Denali, tallest mountain in North America. But because of the fog, we could only see some of the surrounding mountains.

It's crazy how big and tall these mountains are. They didn't even look that big in real life (because it was hard to process the scale), let alone in the photos.

Anyway, we made it back without dying. Maybe this should have warranted a tip, but again, we didn't have any cash. Or at least, any cash that I knew about :(

So we went back to the Airbnb to attempt to make s'mores without fire starter. Fortunately, we had professional nature survivor Tommy tending to the fire, smart Becky using the bark from logs, and me saying words of encouragement. And we were able to come up with this:

We managed to make 4 delicious s'mores.

Then we quit and went back inside to play games. But what game? Bridge? Charades? Instead of deciding, we just alternated! Alternation Bridge Charades!

[kevinychen]

Anchorage -> Talkeetna (7/13)

Before our drive to the small town of Talkeetna, we had brunch at one of Natalle's recommendations. It was called Snow City Cafe.

As with all things Anchorage, the wait was an hour and a half.

We put our name down. Luckily, we were right next to downtown Anchorage, so we started to stroll in that direction.

We walked east on 4th ave. It was pretty normal for a city downtown, with gift shops, cafes, and a courthouse. The first mile the interesting thing we saw was the Visitors Center, so we went in.

When the guide inside saw us, his eyes lit up. "Hey, are you Japanese?" We shook our heads. "Oh, well you should check out this building across the street. They have this cool exhibit about earthquakes in Japan. And I thought you all would be interested because I thought you were Japanese."

Becky, Tommy, and Natalle must have cringed and immediately left because when I turned around, they were already gone.

We saw a statue of a sled dog. I got excited because I thought it was Balto, from the Disney movie, but that turned out to be in the town of Nome over 500 miles away.

Downtown Anchorage was all about these commemorations. Here's a plaque right across the statue celebrating the first building built in Anchorage.

And finally (and this one to go while to find), we found the statue of Captain James Cook, the first European to discover the land of Alaska.

There was now only about 30 minutes until the estimated seating time to Snow City Cafe. Perfect for a quick trip to a Safeway about seven minutes away, right? Were driving to Talkeetna the next day, and we want to make some smores there.

We drive seven minutes to the Safeway, get out of the car, and... Natalle gets a text from the cafe saying that the table is ready.

We drive back empty-handed.

The caffe was ok in my opinion; I got a salmon cake benedict. Becky and Natalle really liked it though, and Becky even said it was her second favorite meal after her home cooked meal with asparagus on the first night.

After brunch we went back to the Safeway and had quite an adventure trying to find marshmallows. "Maybe we should also get fire starter," said Tommy. "We're getting everything else so we might as well get that too."

"Nah, everyone goes to Talkeetna for smores, so they'll definitely have fire starter there," said X. "Even though I see the fire starter right in front of me," X continued, pointing at it, "let's just hope they have it at Talkeetna and get it there."

We bought all the food and materials for smores, except for the fire starter.

When we got to Talkeetna, we had dinner at Shirley's Burger Barn, where I got a halibut burger and some really really good tater tots.

We then had a little bit of time before our scheduled hike at 6:30pm, so we walked over to the main downtown street. We saw Shirley's Ice Cream, with the special fireweed ice came flavor! But Becky and Natalle were out of character and for some reason didn't want any (yet).

"Do you think this is the same Shirley?" said Tommy. We kept walking.

We walked past a couple of souvenir stores, but didn't go in because of time. then I saw an old man greeting a woman as she got out of a car. "Hey Shirley!"

Apparently everyone here is named Shirley. On an obviously completely related topic, we pretended to do some mushing.

What is a dogsledder's favorite place?

Mushroom.

Anyway, we made it to the trail head at 6pm. The place was called XY lake, because there were three lakes: one was in the shape of an X, and the other two were named Y and Z probably because the namers didn't have imagination. And Z didn't even make it into the final name.

At about 6:05pm, a big van with a bunch of other people who were to join us on their walk drove up to us. A hairy guy who seemed like he was our tour guide stepped out and greeted us. "Hi, my name is Bernard." He gave a small speech about the area which I didn't find memorable. He also suggested us to put on bug spray. If you read my post on July 11th, then you'll know that we didn't need this reminder.

The walk started out being very informative, basically a brain dump from Bernard to us about all the different plants and berries along the trail. There was the Devil's Club, which was all along the trail, and has dangerous barbed thorns that can be really hard to remove. There were watermelon berries, granny smith apple berries, and delicious red currant berries. (But also similar looking red baneberries that can kill you.).

By the way, Becky already learned about Devil's Club, the raspberries, and all sorts of trees from her hike at Potter Creek. Wow, she's objectively so smart!

Next were the fungi. Basically in the summer time, Bernard would come here often to forage stuff for salads. So there was Old Man's Beard, which is a fungus that looks kind of like Spanish Moss, and tasted like black pepper.

We also saw a loon! And some moose hairs on the ground! And yarrow. And lupines! Which Becky had used to explain to Tommy about the pea family. (Though these purple lupines aren't edible.) And oak ferns! And moss ferns! (Though not really any ostrich ferns there.)

Towards the end, Bernard stopped talking about the plants and instead started talking about himself. Apparently he had been in Alaska since April 2011 and had worked as a guide for a lot of that time, even working at some very secluded and expensive lodges, and conversing with the Alaska elders to learn more about the local foliage.

After about three hours, and a bit of rain towards the end (but I had no shame taking out my umbrella), we finished the walk and headed home.

As we entered the Airbnb, I realized that a mosquito had followed me in. "Darned mosquito," I shouted. I lunged out and grabbed it by the leg. Then I released it back outside.

Rid of that mosquito, we played charades!!!

<insert picture of Snaky smiling here>

[kevinychen]

Anchorage (7/12)

Today we went to the Anchorage Heritage Museum!

The museum was very art-focused. Or at least, it started out very much so. There were four floors, and we were recommended to start on the top and work our way down.

The third and fourth floors turned out to all be temporary art exhibits. And this was all modern art stuff. So for example, there was like water coming out of a hose and hitting some drums, and this was supposed to represent the unchanging presence of nature in our lives. And if you were in an appreciative mood, this made a lot of sense, and if you weren't, it didn't.

Some random artwork

The second floor had the cool permanent exhibits though. We saw artifacts from the various indigenous peoples of Alaska. There were the Aleut, who inhabited be Aleutian Islands, the small island chain extending off the southwestern coast of Alaska, and whose language is were the word "Alaska" came from. There were the Athabaskans, which inhabited the Seward peninsula area that our entire trip was in. And there were the Yupik, with many artifacts made of seal intestine.

Today was also Lawn Lunch Tuesday! There were a bunch of food trucks. Becky got really excited, but we didn't eat lunch there. Instead, we went back home and reheated left over pizza from Moose's Tooth from the previous night. Yum. It was actually still pretty good after microwaving.

After lunch we planned to go to AWCC (The Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center). But Becky was angry at us for not eating at the food trucks. So she didn't go with us. Instead, she forced me to drop her off at Potter Creek trail head where she sulked for a couple hours.

At the AWCC, we saw wolves, some black bears, porcupines, a bold eagle, bison, musk ox, caribou, reindeer, elk, deer. And we spent an embarrassingly long amount of time trying to find the lynx in its exhibit, but we failed.

This bald eagle got its wing shot by a hunter. It had to be amputated and the eagle could no longer fly.

After a couple hours of birding, Becky felt much better ed asked us to pick her up from a nearby trailhead which she had walked to. But we were early, so after we parked I got out to run toward Becky while Tommy and Natalle didn't want to get out of the car.

Apparently Becky had an unwanted encounter with bears! She was still shaking like Snaky.

It was now time for dinner! Natalle had a long list of recommendations in Anchorage from her friend. So she called the first one on the list.

"Hi, how long is the wait for four?"

It was over an hour and a half. She hung up. And called the next restaurant.

Also an hour and a half.

And the next too. And this was all on a weekday evening.

Finally Tommy got exasperated. "Let's just go to a less popular place," he said. "How about Nepalese?" He pointed at a place on the map called Mandala Restaurant.

"It's your turn to call," said Natalle. Tommy grumbled.

"Hi, how long is the wait for four?"

"I said, how long is the wait for four?"

"I SAID, HOW LONG IS THE WAIT FOR FOUR?"

It took as long for Tommy to finish the call as for Natalle to finish her entire list. But there wouldn't be a wait! That counts for something, right?

We got there and asked for a table for four. The server shook his head at us and said, "There's no room." He then pointed at an empty table and said, "This table is reserved. You have to call ahead. Did you call to reserve?"

"Uh, I'm not sure," said Tommy.

We had to wait for an hour and a half.

Later, we played bridge.

[kevinychen]

Homer -> Anchorage (7/11)

I didn't know it yet, but yesterday would be the last day of our vacation without pain.

This morning we have the longest drive of our trip, from Homer to Anchorage, 4 hours. Apparently Becky was afraid the entire time that we would hit a moose. I had some PB&J in the morning and we left the cabin at around 10:30am.

The first stop was a small town named Cooper Landing along the way, for lunch. We ate at a place called Gwin's Lodge where I ate a sandwich called "Caribou-ya". In retrospect, this wasn't the best choice because it tasted just like a normal sausage sandwich, with a name to attract tourists. But I still liked it. Natalle didn't enjoy it though; she said later that it was one of her least favorite meals.

In order to make more out of Cooper Landing, we set out to find a hiking trail in the area. This turned out to be more difficult than expected, because the original trail that we wanted to go to, Cooper Landing Dam Trail, required driving up a road that was way too rocky and steep for our compact car. Instead, we found a place called Cooper Creek Trail. The road there was also very rocky and unpaved, but we managed to get there at the end. We got out of the car, and Tommy led the way.

Tommy had no idea what he was about to get into.

Bugs.

Lots and lots of biting bugs. We had mosquito repellent, but spoiler alert: I initially forgot to put it on my ankles. And Tommy initially didn't put any on at all.

Instead of putting on the repellent, Tommy ran to the creek and did his favorite thing, skipping stones. He skipped them left, and he skipped them right. Then he skipped one with such force, that his Brass Rat flew off his finger into the creek.

"HAHAHA HAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA," said Natalle after hearing what happened. In all these years, Tommy had put his Brass Rat in tons of precarious situations, almost losing it multiple times. He left it on a plane. He left it in a restaurant and didn't realize it until the next day. Natalle (and Becky probably as well) were excited that Tommy was finally going to suffer the consequences of his actions. Here's Becky laughing at the creek:

Tommy walked a little bit further down the stream. "Ah, I found it," picking it up from the riverbank.

"WHAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!" exclaimed Becky.

"I will never suffer any consequences of my actions," said Tommy. He put the ring back on his finger, and a mysterious insect bit his pinky. We're still not sure what this insect was, so we later termed it the "super mosquito". It kept his pinky swollen for days.

The next stop was Crow Creek Mine. There were a lot of gold mines in this town, but this was one of the more popular ones for tourists.

We did the self-guided tour. You could also pay extra to pan for gold, but I wasn't that interested. (Though apparently the largest gold nugget was found by a tourist and worth about $5,000.)

There was a scale for measuring gold nuggets. Natalle and Becky bet on whether my wallet or my phone weighed more. After a bit of time fixing the scale upon realizing it was broken, and thinking that we would have to call the bet off, Natalle won (my wallet was heavier) and claimed the title of Weight Estimation Queen.

We walked to this stream and got a chance to do some panning anyway. I also saw some forget-me-nots! I'm pretty sure that they were Alpine Forget-me-nots, Alaska's state flower.

For dinner we went to Moose's Tooth, known as one of the best, if not the best, pizza place in the US. It was another one and a half hour wait, during which we went to a nearby Carr's for some dried apricots for snacking.

We got too much pizza, but it was Becky and Natalle's favorite meal of the trip. I liked the "Wild Mushroom" and "Call of the Wild". But we had enough leftovers for a full lunch tomorrow.

Back at the Airbnb, since we had no more WandaVision, we played Exploding Kittens, brought by Natalle! I had always wanted to try this game. It seemed like it was based on complete luck, but I somehow managed to win all 3 times.

I'll end this post with this picture. I call it Fireweed and Firewood:

[kevinychen]

Homer (7/10)

If you were in suspense from the last post: it was not a scam.

We got to the plane loading zone a little bit before 8:30 and (to my relief) we saw a small float plane.

It was the four of us, three others, and the pilot. We had a nice two hour flight to Katchemak Bay. This is a park that is only accessible by plane or boat.

I was really worried about getting sick, so I fell asleep quickly. But Becky saw glaciers, rivers, valleys, and even reindeer running on ice.

We landed on the coast, and immediately spotted some bears on the beach.

We then did "bear orientation", which was basically a park ranger telling us how to stay safe in the bear park. The best part was when he said, "I'll teach you how to keep yourself safe, your food safe, and your gear safe. But most importantly, how to keep the bears safe."

At that point, a small brown bear started making its way to the camp. The ranger and another ranger immediately started hurling rocks at it, I guess to keep it safe.

Anyway, we started the two mile walk on the Brooks Falls Trail to the Riffles Platform and Falls Platform, where you have the iconic views of bears catching salmon. But in the middle of the trail, I got a much closer bear encounter than I would have imagined. People in front of me walking in the opposite direction suddenly started pointing behind me. I turned around and behold, a huge bear was crossing the trail right behind me, only 10-20 feet away!

We got to the platform. The Falls Platform is the one right next to the waterfall, where the salmon need to jump, and the bears know is the best spot. But each party can only spend 30 minutes there. So you have to put your name on a waitlist, and they give you a buzzer just like at a restaurant. And meanwhile, you can enjoy the views at the Riffles Platform.

Here is the view from Riffles Platform. You can see part of the waterfall in the distance. The biggest, strongest bears stay next to the waterfall, and other bears have to settle for slightly lesser spots further downstream, as seen here. But even these downstream spots are great. Usually bears live at a density of at most one an acre, but here there are hundreds.

After about an hour and a half of waiting, our buzzer sounded. We made our way to the Falls Platform. Becky got some nice pictures of salmon mid-jump:

Though that one failed. Though I guess it takes only one to make it upstream and lay its 8000 eggs in the safety of freshwater to continue the amazing salmon life cycle. The others probably just die from the exhaustion of the jump, or end up like this:

A bear snacking on its catch. They're really lazy - even if they see a salmon, they likely won't move unless it jumps write into its body, to conserve energy. Kittiwakes swarm nearby, hoping for some leftovers.

Some arrogant tall white male stared at the front and blocked the best camera shots. That by itself may be fine, but he was there when we arrived and still there when we left at the 30-minute mark.

Afterwards, after eating some PB&J, Becky wanted to do some birding and try to find a spruce grouse, so the rest of us went to a longer trail ending at a lake. There, Tommy tried to teach Natalle how to skip stones. Heres the exciting video of when she finally got it:

It was nearing 4pm, when we were supposed to return to the plane, so we started heading back. Along the way, and continuing the theme of random useless skills that you can do in a park, Natalle and I learned how to grass whistle. Or maybe I should say, I learned and Natalle tried to learn?

Suddenly I heard a coo on the side of the trail. It was a dove-like creature. What was it? I thought a while. Wait, could this be spruce grouse? With my amazing bird camera skills, I took a picture:

Speaking of spruce grouse, these birds have become a bit overpopulated, causing trouble to the spruce trees, the source of their main diet. But there's a much bigger problem for these spruce trees: the spruce beetle. The beetle has coexisted with the tree for a long time, but every winter, the freezing weather kills most of the young beetles and keeps them in check. However, lately due to climate change, the winters have been less cold, resulting in more beetles. In the worst places, up to half of these spruce trees were dead from overeating by the spruce beetles.

I proudly showed my picture of the grouse to Becky. She nodded, and told of what she saw, including hundreds of tree swallows, hundreds of yellow rumped warblers, a very yellow-colored warbler, a Canada Jay, a yellowlegs, ~20 common mergansers, some unidentifiable duck with a white patch on its head, and even a brown bear that kept staying on the trail in front of her, so she had to follow it all the way back (scraping her feet on the ground loudly the entire time, as mentioned in Bear Orientation. Good job!)

Anyway, we got back to the plan at 4:01pm, and fortunately the plane didn't leave without us. On the way back, scared-of-sickness me (I?) fell asleep again, while Becky saw some mountains and maybe even a volcano.

For dinner, Natalle wanted king crab legs, so we looked on Yelp for the best restaurants. The top result was a place called Fresh Catch Cafe, but the wait was 1.5+ hours! So we went to the next result, Captain Pattie's. Since we were still in Homer, the halibut capital of the world, Tommy and I got char-grilled halibut, but we should have read the reviews because it was really unimpressive. However, the crab legs were apparently really good (though very expensive, at ~$130, for only two legs, albeit large legs).

We went back home, and excitedly watched the WandaVision finale. Becky took a small walk around the cabin. Suddenly, she heard a noise from behind the bushes. Immediately the bear flashbacks from earlier today triggered, but it was only a dog.

There was supposedly also horseshoes and archery next to our house, which would have been fun, but it was really late and we went to sleep. And by "we went to sleep", Becky and I went to sleep while Tommy and Natalle stayed up until 3am just like every other day.

[kevinychen]

Homer (7/9)

This morning started with a 3.5 hour drive from Seward to Homer. My maximum contiguous driving duration used to be bottlenecked by whenever my right foot got tired of pressing the gas pedal. However, I have since practiced switching feet from time to time, and it's been a real game-changer.

During the drive we played Contact, where I led with the word "marshmallow", which turned out to be a pretty good Contact word. Ooh, we should have smores!

We stopped in the small town of Soldotna where we once again got Thai food at a place with a very charismatically written menu (Siam Noodles and Food). I got Pad See Ew and Natalle got this:

Before we got to our Airbnb, we took a stop at the Wynn Nature Center, where we saw a moose! Other discoveries included a caterpillar, a spider, star flowers, and potentially even a Wilson Warbler.

We then went to Homer Spit, which is a piece of land jutting out into the sea, and is the iconic area of Homer. And Homer is known as the halibut fishing capital of the world.

So our first dinner was halibut fish and chips. And some clam strips, because Tommy is always hungry. Tommy and Becky then fought over who had to hold the clam strips while we walked on the boardwalk afterwards.

Natalle found gelato! She bought some Earl Gray before we realized that they had some award-winning flavor (maybe Tahitian Vanilla Bean?).

"Argh," grumbled Natalle. "Well, all the reason to come back tomorrow!"

We then walked along a long trail going down Homer Spit. Tommy wasn't a big fan. "This trail is a bit too monotonous, horizontally-speaking."

"Ooh, a semi-palmated plover!" exclaimed Becky in delight, still a couple hundred feet behind.

Later we stopped at Safeway to buy lunch for our all-day trip the next day. We planned to get hummus, but they didn't have any - so we settled for PB&J. Though Tommy suspected he would get hungry, and added some sausages.

I got a call from the aviation company that would fly us tomorrow. I picked up, worried that we would have to cancel or something like that. But instead, they just said they would have to delay the flight one hour, from 7:30am to 8:30am. For us night owls, this was awesome.

We went home and - WandaVision episodes 7&8! But then, Becky suggested bridge herself! Yes, the game that she never wanted to play before because it was too stressful. When she was the declarer, she played perfectly.

As I tucked myself into bed that night, I suddenly panicked. The aviation company hadn't sent any email confirming the flight delay. My brain raced with bad scenarios. What if this was all a big scam? We all paid $1000 per person, what if we get there at 8:30 and they claim the plane already left? I don't have any recording of the phone call. So I just wrote a Slack message to myself so I could use it as evidence for the case in court. Yeah, my night brain is a psycho.

[kevinychen]

Seward (7/8)

Is "Seward" related to "sewer", which sounds similar? No, it's related to "sea"-"ward", or towards the sea. Today we're going towards the sea: we scheduled a 4-hour boat ride in Resurrection Bay.

When's check-in? Well, Becky insists it's 10:30, but I open up an email with 11:30. It turns out we're both right - Becky is just on a different cruise! She had previously chose the 8-hour cruise that went to the open ocean, but had to be changed to a 4-hour cruise because of weather. We had assumed it was the same cruise, but that wasn't the case.

Becky boarded first. Since the rest of us still had an hour, Tommy and I spent a long time trying to find a poncho. First we tried the Marine Tours check-in store, thinking that ponchos would be a popular item. Then we tried a pharmacy. Finally, we drove a couple minutes to an outdoor clothing store, but even they only had jackets, not ponchos. Frustrated, we went back to the check-in location, and proceeded to get in the line for the wrong boat.

Becky's ship:

And ours, the Glacier Express:

We got a table for four in the middle of the ship. I took some dramamine since I get seasick easily. The downside was it made me pretty sleepy. "I'm really sleepy too," said Natalle. "It's because I put on a scopolamine patch the night before, and that makes people drowsy too. Cuz I still have the patch on obviously."

The ride started out pretty calm, but towards the halfway point when we exited Resurrection Bay and got to the ocean, there were a lot of big waves and lots of people got sick.

"Good thing I got my patch," said Natalle, as she placed her finger behind her ear where she put the patch on the night before. Suddenly, her face went white. "My patch isn't there!" she exclaimed.

She ran up to the bar to buy some dramamine.

"I'm good now."

"I'm going to get something too," said Tommy. "This reindeer dog looks interesting." He got a reindeer dog, but it turned out tasting just like a normal hotdog. "Anyone else want this?" [1]

We saw a bald eagle immediately after leaving the harbor, followed by some orca whales, kittiwakes (gulls), puffins, sea lions, seals, and otters.

But once we got out into the ocean, the boat rocked too much. That, combined with the dramamine, knocked us out for an hour. Once we woke up, we were close to the harbor already.

Becky was waiting at the harbor, and handed me a poncho. I stared at it and said, "where did you find this?"

"Right there," she replied, pointing at the store right across the street.

For dinner, we went to a place called Ray's Waterfront. I got linguini, Becky and Tommy got halibut, and Natalle got the Fisherman's Platter.

Even though this was still in Seward, we had to move to a different Airbnb. There, we - you guessed it - watched WandaVision episodes 5 and 6, catching up to where Tommy had left off last time. We followed with some bridge while Shinzo Abe got assassinated.

[1] Behind the scenes

[kevinychen]

Seward (7/7)

We bought tickets to the SeaLife center for 12pm. Our plan was to leave at 11:15, but three of us (hm, which three?) were already up and bored at ~10am so we decided to go get brunch first, and get some groceries so we could cook dinner.

We lived 10 minutes from downtown Seward. The first stop was Safeway, where we got corn and asparagus. The next stop was Smoke Shack for brunch, which was the top result on Yelp in this town and turned out to be a nice food-truck like place, where I ordered a "Breakfast Sandwich" with sausage egg and bacon. The final stop was J-Dock, right nearby, for frozen salmon sockeye to cook for dinner.

Here's the fish from J-Dock:

We also saw the Marine Tours building where we were supposed to meet for our planned cruise tomorrow. "What time do we need to meet tomorrow?" asked Natalle. "11:30am," I replied. "No, it's 10:30am", Becky interjected.

We drove 20 minutes back to the Airbnb and back to downtown Seward, to drop off our bought food and pick up the sleepyhead.

At noon we got to the SeaLife center. Some highlights:

My favorite thing to learn about was the "sleeping shark", named because it is the slowest-moving shark at a pitiful 1 mph. There was even a nice video with the shark swimming in a "water treadmill", i.e. a box of water that is continuously flowing in one direction.

In the middle of the exhibits of jellyfish and anemones, was a small tank that at first sight looked like some similar sea creatures, but turned out to be just plastic trash flowing around. It was to spread awareness of plastic pollution.

There was a "touch-me" area, which just made me think of Finding Nemo 2. Most things ignored my touch, but the shrimp retreated quickly. The water was freezing.

Next is Exit Glacier, a nice short 3-mile hike that takes us pretty close to a glacier for how easy it is.

As we hiked the trail, we saw signs with four digit numbers such as "1856". We weren't sure what they meant - they didn't seem to fit with altitude, or distance. Finally we realized the sad truth - they represented how much larger the glacier was during given years. When we got to the top, even the sign for 2010 was depressingly far from the current glacier front.

We got back to the Airbnb and played Crew while Becky made dinner. Becky did a cool thing with roasting corn on a gas stove.

We briefly discussed plans for tomorrow. "When should we leave?" I started. "Well, check-in is at 10:30, so a little before that," said Becky. "No, I think check-in is at 11:30," added Tommy.

After a yummy dinner (Becky loved her asparagus), we started a game of "You Got Got" where you try to complete secret "missions" without others thinking that you're doing something suspicious. It was way too stressful and not enjoyable.

We also played "Spontuneous", also brought by Natalle, which was fun but I was spectacularly bad at it.

Next we painted rocks. Becky painted a harlequin duck, Natalle painted Nemo, and I painted a candy corn for Omnom.

After that was WandaVision, episodes 3 and 4 (I mentioned last post that this would be a theme for this vacation...)

And then was a game of Oh Hell, which I think is complete luck now but this time the luck was with me and I won.

And after that a game of Spades, with me&Natalle vs. Becky&Tommy. Becky made a super questionable bid of 12 against our bid of Nil+1, costing her team over 200 points on that round, but they somehow still managed to win.

It's actually pretty impressive how much miscellaneous stuff we managed to cram in today. I'll end with a picture of our Airbnb:

[kevinychen]

Anchorage -> Seward (7/6)

Who: me, Becky, Natalle, Tommy.

Pets: Snaky, Omnom.

I had always wanted to go to Alaska. In the summer of 2012, while I was interning at Google, my parents thought that since we were getting the extra income, it'd be a great idea to go on a cruise to Alaska without me.

Now, 10 years later, I finally get a chance to go, for 10 days.

Becky, Tommy, and I fly together from San Francisco Airport (Tommy had just moved back from Maryland a couple days before). At Anchorage, we have a few hours before Natalle's flight from New York arrives. First we get our car rental:

and then we ate dinner. Becky wanted Vietnamese, but we followed another car into the small parking lot of a pho place, both of us realizing it was closed. Fortunately, there was a Thai restaurant just a block away, which was ran by Thai people and felt quite authentic. A White family sat next to us, but they ordered in Thai.

Then we walked along Westchester Lagoon:

It was now time to pick Natalle from the airport. We parked at the arrivals pickup area so that Becky and I could use the restroom in the airport, while Tommy waited in the car. Our car was the only one there, so we didn't feel bad about parking for a while. When we came out, we found Natalle standing with her suitcase right in front of our car, with Tommy just a couple feet away in the car, both oblivious to each other.

With Natalle picked up, we start our 2.5hr drive to our first Airbnb in Seward. It's already 8pm, but the sun is still bright. We'll never see a night sky in the next 10 days.

(Guess what time it is in this picture? 9pm.)

On Highway 9 there was a huge avalanche a couple weeks ago. Workers remove debris in the evenings, so we had to follow a pilot car along a couple miles of road for safety.

When we got to the Airbnb, we realized there was a TV with DisneyPlus support. We watched WandaVision episode 1 and 2 (out of 9), setting a precedent for a big part of the rest of the vacation...

[kevinychen]

Monterey (Sunday, 9/5)

Another early morning. Becky needs to be on the dock by 7am. I don't have a strict timeline, but the park I want to go to opens at 8am and is half an hour away, and I want to make the most of the morning hours.

Crepes of Brittany doesn't open until 7am, which is why Becky got it yesterday (she couldn't make it today). I can however - so I order a nice savory ham, egg, and cheese crepe for breakfast. I'm the first one in the store.

The morning was gray and foggy. Becky saw some sea lions in the bay:

Meanwhile, I drove to Toro Park, which has some family-friendly picnic areas and playgrounds at the base, but continues on for about a ~10 mile trail. At the base there were many acorn woodpeckers. Here's one chilling on a fence.

I parked at Quail Meadow parking lot and started walking. Shortly after, I realized that I had a cut on my ankle at a location that got aggravated on every step (and only aggravated in my hiking shoes, which is why I didn't notice before). This constant pain was the worst part of my hike, and a lot of skin peeled off by the end.

Becky saw a lot of whales. They jumped out of the water so much that it was easy to take pictures:

The boat was pretty small, and the group was under 24 people. This was an 8 hour trip to the middle of the ocean, organized by the Monterey Seabirds club and runs every Sunday. They often saw birds far off in the distance, and because they were on the boat, they had to bounce their binoculars at the beat of the waves in order to keep the birds in view.

Meanwhile, after a quick rest at the Last Tree about an hour up, I continued the rest of the trail in open land. A huge part of the park had burned down recently, and there was no cover.

Here's the map of the trails I took. The park had a lack of signs, and especially the area at the top was all open and un-demarcated, so that part might be a bit off.

Thankfully, the high today is 81°, much better than yesterday's of 96°.

Meanwhile, Becky continued seeing whales, which were apparently much more common than birds. The sky was still gray:

In the middle of the trip, a warbler out in the ocean flew into the ship cabin and perched next to the captain! The captain went AAAAAAH in terror.

Finally after a while, I finally found some trees and sat down for lunch with Snaky. I hadn't seen any hikers on the trip, though there were several cyclists. Also, it seemed like everyone I met in the park spoke Spanish. A dios le pido.

I finished my hike at around 2:30pm and made it back to the pier by 3pm. Since Becky was still nowhere to be heard, I made an attempt to recover the lost cap at Old Fisherman's Grotto. Since I didn't really pay attention yesterday when Becky got it, I stopped by the same shop so that I would be able to describe it. Fortunately, they had a lost&found and getting it back was a piece of cake.

At around 3:30pm Becky docked, and we headed back to Cannery Row for Dippin' Dots. They're a lot more expensive than they once were - my medium size chocolate was $7.50. But they were still yummy!

After that we drove back home, taking a quick stop at the Vietnamese restaurant Khanh (and it was quick for a sit-down restaurant; it took only ~30 minutes). Happy but tired, we were snoozing not long after the sunset.

[kevinychen]

Monterey (Saturday, 9/4)

A few days before, I noticed that the Pinnacle Park website recommended visitors to arrive before 8:30AM to find parking, since shuttles weren't running due to Covid. It's an hour and a half away, so we got up at the nice bright hour of 6am in order to leave by 6:30.

Turns out, our friends over in Grand Canyon/Zion were already up an hour earlier for whatever reason and wished Becky a happy birthday.

Fortunately, leaving early turned out to not be a bad idea, because we got a spot in the innermost parking lot in Bear Gulch, and the remaining spots filled up within a few minutes.

We immediately saw several acorn woodpeckers. But we're mainly here to try to find the endangered California Condor.

Unfortunately I'm cold and whine to go further up where it's warmer. And as soon as we go further up, there are no longer any birds. It's hot.

We see lots of turkey vultures, which look similar to condors, but are smaller and black. There's no condor in sight.

The hike is good - we do a clockwise loop on High Peaks Trail, which is about 6 miles total. Around the middle, there's a steep, narrow section where pipes protect you from falling to the deeps.

The sights are great. The area lies on the San Andreas fault, so there are many large rising rocks (where the park name "Pinnacles" comes from) caused by the volcanic activity in years past.

Finally, towards the end, Becky spots a condor flying across the sky! It is huge (condors are the largest birds in North America, with a ~9 ft. wingspan!), but far away. But spotting one far-off condor is better than spotting none at all.

The high today is 96 though, so we're done by around noon. We arrive back in the parking lot, then drive back out to the Visitors Center for a quick rest stop and some ice cream. It's about 1:30 now, and we start the hour and a half car ride back. We need to make it back by 4, which is when Crepes of Brittany closes!

After Becky finishes a strawberry and cream cheese crepe (and I get Ziploc bags from Walgreens), we take a nap. It's now dinnertime, and we head to the pier. Becky wants oysters, so we're going to Old Fisherman's Grotto.

The wait is an hour and a half, so we walk all the way to Cannery Row and back. That burns about 45 minutes, so we plan to burn some more by going into a store to buy a cap for Becky's bird trip tomorrow. Turns out our table was ready before we even got to the cashier though - so we quickly purchase it and head over to the restaurant.

First are the appetizers - Pacific oysters for Becky, and fried calamari for - both of us.

Then the main courses - grilled scallops for me, and cioppino for Becky. Look at that cioppino - yum! Definitely not something that she would throw up right afterwards.

After dinner, Becky left her cap on the seat and we went back home. We did not realize this fact until tomorrow morning.

Becky will be on a boat for eight hours tomorrow. So she took a dramamine pill - you're supposed to take one the night before and one the day of. The side effect is drowsiness, so we promptly went to sleep.

Our friends pulled an all-nigher on the sofa. Here's Om Nom demonstrating his psychic "contact-less" pushing power on Patty.

[kevinychen]

Monterey (Friday, 9/3)

We left at 2pm to try to beat some traffic before the long weekend, but it didn't work. The traffic got lighter (according to Google Maps) a few hours later. But not by much.

We stayed at Hotel Pacific, which is a short 5-minute walk to Old Fisherman's Wharf. It's pretty outdoors-y.

But for dinner I wanted profiteroles, so I browsed on Yelp and found a French place called Bistro Moulin in Cannery Row with profiteroles on the menu. It was 5pm and the last OpenTable reservation for the evening was 5:45pm. The restaurant was about a 30-minute walk away from the hotel, so we quickly prepared to leave!

Becky ordered sea bass (Poisson du Marché) with Sparkling Brut Rosé wine, and I got onion soup (Gratinee a'L'Oignon) and spinach gnocchi (Gnocchi aux Épinards), which pathetically I only just learned is pronounced /njoki/ and not /not∫i/. I got 19 little gnocchi balls.

Normally I wouldn't get such a small entree, but today I wanted to ensure I had enough room for dessert! PROFITEROLES! (with vanilla ice cream and chocolate drizzle).

Afterwards we went to the nearby CVS to get some dramamine. Then walked back to the hotel. Then realized that the CVS was actually between our hotel and the Safeway (we needed to buy groceries for our day-trips for the next two days). So we drove back through the CVS (making sure that we didn't need anything else from the CVS) and to Safeway, for some hummus and PB&J ingredients. Finally we got back to Hotel Pacific.

We then realized we forgot Ziploc bags. So Plan B: we'll bring pita bread & hummus for tomorrow (which doesn't need Ziploc bags) and get those Ziploc bags tomorrow evening.

As we lay in bed, we discover the bad insulation of the walls as we listen to people singing songs outside on the main road.

[kevinychen]

New Haven (Saturday, 7/31)

It's our last full day in New Haven! Becky is sad BUT today we are supposed to go to the marsh and see cool wetland birds, now that Becky knows about all of them from California.

SO we first got a blueberry muffin just like yesterday. Then we went to Quinnipiac River Marsh Wildlife Area except there was nowhere to enter. So Becky found a small trail on the other side of the river. It was behind a Target.

There weren't that many types of birds but there were a lot of gulls and ospreys. Becky also saw a cool sandpiper that wiggled its butt a lot. She thinks it's a Solitary Sandpiper.

What was more strange was what we saw when we walked around the mud beach:

There were also dead fish floating in the river and the gulls all had their own shiny fish. We also saw some dead crabs.

That first trail was kind of strange and short so we also went to another place downriver. This one was in a neighborhood with signs that said "No regrets, slow down for egrets".

There were a ton of fiddler crabs, each with a giant claw (losmodafe in Perflantus). There were also a lot of ospreys and we saw a mourning dove sitting in its nest. We also saw a pair of flickers and a downy woodpecker, and a lot of catbirds. And some goldenrod.

The Car That Couldn't Back Up

Once again, we went back to pick up Natalle and Tommy at 1pm. They got in the car, and we drove to the exit.

Unfortunately, there was a white car at the exit. To exit, you need to either scan your resident badge, or in the case of guests (such as the white car), your parking ticket.

The driver of the white car was clearly having problems. His parking ticket wouldn't scan, and worse - he wasn't even offering to back up so that we could exit first with our (presumably working) badge.

After a while, he came to us and told us the bad news - his car couldn't go in reverse. So he was stuck and so were we.

The first problem was that his car had driven too far forward - the system had locked. So we put his car in neutral and pushed it back a bit.

Then we had to fix his parking ticket. We scanned our badge to allow him to exit, but a badge that has been scanned at the exit once can't be scanned again. So we had to trigger the sensor at the entrance with a little cart (offered by a friendly man nearby who seemed to have done this before) and scan the badge in, before badging out normally.

This ordeal put us back ~15 minutes, but luckily we weren't in a hurry. We got to our lunch place, Da Legna at Nolo. We got two pizzas (just like at One Six Three): The State and The Buttercup.

There, Becky taught us the 5 E's for effective teaching. I think they were: explore, evaluate, explain, entertain, and eject (bad students).

The afternoon was uneventful. We had considered going to a rope course - there's actually a big one in a furniture store, Jordan's Furniture. But instead, we relaxed in Natalle's apartment while doing Galactic puzzles and watching the Olympics.

For dinner, we ate at The Place. This was a cool outdoor restaurant specializing in seafood, where everything is ordered a-la-carte and cooked on an outdoor fire. Natalle was first introduced to The Place at a med event.

The specialty was the Clam Special, though it wasn't our favorite:

We also got mussels, lobster, salmon, and veggie kebabs:

And finally, for Becky, we got corn:

It was yummy!

For our last evening, we played Mah-Jong. I suggested we try playing in fast mode because, since we love Mah-Jong so much, and plan to play many many more hours of Mah-Jong in our lives, learning to play fast means we can play many more games! Doesn't that make sense?

In one game, Natalle tried Chow'ing my 5 sticks, but Becky Gong'ed it. Later Natalle, still going for sticks, called Chow on my 7 sticks discard. But Becky Gong'ed it again! When Natalle realized what happened, she sank and cried.

Then Becky gave me my winning tile. The final score was Becky -~50, Kevin +~50.

The final thing I should mention is that we all played 西 consecutively in one round, which according to Natalle means we're all going to die.

[kevinychen]

New Haven (Friday, 7/30)

This morning's park/green space is East Rock Park. It's a park on the northeast side of New Haven, and has a nice trail up to a monument commemorating soldiers, next to a great overlook of downtown.

The road forks early into a slightly narrower road and a small trail. Becky takes the trail to see more birds and I continue on the road. At the top, I see the monument:

The blue female statues at the corners near the base represent history, patriotism, prosperity, and victory. The one at the top represents peace. It was erected in the ~1880s and honors the soldiers in various wars.

From the top of the rock, you can see downtown New Haven, including Natalle's hospital which is near the center of this photo I took:

We drove back at 1pm to pick up Natalle, and then headed over to a French Crepe place called Choupette for brunch. I ordered a crepe with lavender honey, and the others all ordered the classic one with figs. I think the others enjoyed it, but I can't recommend this place because even the savory crepes were too sweet for a meal.

Since dessert is a great option after meals in vacations, we went to The Whale Tea afterwards, named after the size of their customers after constantly drinking their boba tea. This was a bit north of Choupette on Whitney Ave, one of Natalle's favorite streets in New Haven.

We went further north to Katahdin Furniture, which also sells toys (it seems like furniture stores in New Haven often have other fun things for kids...), because we were looking for a tambourine to use for karaoke this afternoon. But all we found were some maracas, which weren't that great, so we left.

Then

SNAKY!

BEARIE!

KARAOKE!

on Natalle's personal karaoke machine :)

It even supported arbitrary Youtube videos, so we sang with masterpieces such as Bad Project and The PCR Song.

For dinner we went to a nearby place, Mecha Noodle Bar. They had ramen (which Becky and Tommy got) and pho (which Natalle and I got).

But their biggest asset was the setting sun, which beamed through the west-facing window and completely blinded Becky and Natalle. With the reduced sense of vision came a heightened sense of taste, resulting in more happy customers.

After dinner, we played Pictionary. Although for some reason the game came with a whiteboard without an eraser (so we ended up with very black hands), we still had a ton of fun.

Tommy and I won best out of 3.

[kevinychen]

New Haven (Thursday, 7/29)

Becky insists that she woke up at 8am, but she was still in bed when I roused at 10am. So I have no proof.

There's really no concrete plans for us here in New Haven (this is supposed to be a chill weekend), but the rough idea is to visit a different park/green space each morning. Today's destination is Mosquito Park. I mean Edgewood Park.

We first walk to Rite Aid, a block away, for some insect repellant and an umbrella. We forgot both of those things because we never have a need for either in California.

Then we "borrow" Natalle's car. She's entrusted me with her car keys for the weekend, which is great because it means we don't need to rent one. Her Honda brakes much easier than my Toyota, resulting in Becky choking on her water when I first tried the brake (but felt like I slammed it).

Our second stop is Bella's Cafe, recommended by Jeff. I got a hash and Becky got grits.

We sit outside, overlooking my kitchen across the street.

After brunch we head south to Edgewood Park. There's a single north-south path along a creek, and we later realize the proximity to the creek meant even more mosquitoes. At one point I tried to get into a photogenic pose with an insect on my bottom lip. After a long while, Becky pointed out the insect was a mosquito.

"Aaaah!" I tried to scream as I swat it away. But the mosquito had been there so long that it had sucked all the blood from my head, and no noise came out.

Later we saw two arrows, one on the right side of the road pointing in one direction, and one on the left side pointing the other direction - signaling hikers to stay on the right.

We kept walking a bit, and this time I saw four arrows, two on each side of the road, but pointing in the other direction, as if to signal hikers to stay on the left!

This confused me, but we kept walking. A bit further, I saw two bear paws. Oh, the above set of four arrows were actually four bird footprints, pointing in the consistent direction.

"That's super confusing, that they use what looks like down arrows to actually represent footprints moving the opposite direction," I told Becky.

Becky rolled her eyes and told me that was obvious from the start.

Natalle picked up Tommy from Union Station at 5:30. Becky and I walked over to Natalle's to meet up. It had finally started raining so we opened the umbrella that we bought earlier today - to realize that the umbrella was like 2 feet wide.

We then had our first dinner together since COVID, pizza at One Six Three. They had some rather interesting ingredient combinations:

But we settled for the more standard "Fungus Among Us" (mushrooms) and the "Spinaki" (sautéed spinach). And Becky got something she's always wanted to try: fried cheese curds (zampaliswe fasibwe in Perflantu/Galactican).

After dinner, we went back to Natalle's apartment and played Everdell, a game for 1-4 that Natalle had been wanting to play. It involves deploying workers to collect resources/cards, which can be used to build constructions/critters, which improves resource/card collection rate and/or gives victory points. Game objective: whoever gets the most victory points wins.

I went for berry production/critters, Becky went for a construction engine, Natalle went for tech, and Tommy went for victory points. Tommy ended up with the most victory points, which maybe in retrospect sounds like the thing to go for given the Game objective.

Tommy won with 67 points to my 60, Becky's 47 and Natalle's 43.