Aaahhh! Sweet home sand bar?

So here I am Getting used to the pace of things in Florida. So far it’s been interesting crusing around and getting used to my new surroundings. I tend to tell stories better in captions than in novel form so here we go.

I am temporarily living in a vacation condo until Tuesday and it’s pretty nice. Thanks to my bosses for hooking me up with good places to stay while I’m here.
Here is my living room (the room im in right now)

And my kitchen

There is a balcony in the back that looks out over a canal called the Middle River, which you can canoe in.
Here is a view from my little chair on the balcony.

Just a couple miles from my place is the beach and downtown Ft. Lauderdale.

I went down there yesterday, rode my bike all over town actually, and saw some people kite boarding right off the beach. This guy was really good!

Today I went to a state park just off of Sunrise ave, where I live. If you ride a bike in it’s only $1.00 (I had to drive today though) after in I rented a Canoe for $5.00 and cruised around the swamp for a while. There is tons of wildlife out there including this guy. He let me get winthin a foot of him.

Paddling through a swamp is like trying to swim through oatmeal, however, there were a couple of places with open water. The water was very clear too; I could see the bottom and lots of fish!

After the swamp I took to the bike and rode around the parks road loop. I found a big iguana like the ones that live in the bushes around the condo… Welcome to the tropics!

And to top it off I ran into everyone’s favorite… And it was about the size of a man’s palm just to give you a scale.

Oh yeah!

I hope you’ve enjoyed my little pictorial trip. I plan to take many more in the future, so stay tuned.

Well the journey begins?/Ends?… continues!

I am writing this post form Ft. Lauderdale Florida. That’s right, I made it. 1,500 miles and three days from my new New york home. everything went great, like a textbook.
The first day I made it all the way to Massaponax, VA and boy howdy them verginie woods is spooky after the sun goes down! Walkin down a deserted forest road alone is not something I suggest. there’s bugs that soung like they will rip off a limb. And every step I was waiting for a rerun of deliverance. However, I made it safely back to the KOA Kampground… Just as evil, but for different reasons. I have many Komplaints about the Kampgrounds of America, being someone that likes to backpack and enjoy camping; these people sit outside of thier buses and watch T.V. If you would like a full Kritique of the Kamps gimmie a Kall, cause that is a rant for sure. Here is my humble abode:

and here are some of the specters and spooks that graced me with thier presence:

Day two was just another day of driving, but I somehow made it all the way to Fla. without speeding too much too. Driving through St. Augustine I saw a cool boat going through the drawbridge:

I wound up staying in northern Fla. at a place called Flagler Beach. Thanks to Gretchen for pointing out where to go, she really helped me. In Flagler I saw an ugly bird:

nothing much cooler there than that.
Today I made it all the way from there down the coast to here! along the way I found the first natural food shop I’d seen since I left, so I went in and got lots of good food. It was a great store, nice people and good food. If youre ever Here check it out:

and finally after dodging a giant rainstorm and some speed deamons I’m here. Ft. Lauderdale!

On a more serious note I’m sorry my post isn’t more exciting, but I’m in a fairly meloncholy mood tonight. I’m starting to realize how hard it’s going to be spending ths much time away from Gretch. Everything is starting to kind of sink in. It’s hard to explain the feeling and I think you can only know what it’s like if you’ve been through it. I’m sure it’ll be fine, just tough. I am starting the first step of work tomorrow and will do what I can to get done with it as fast as possible. Things will pick up… I’m just far from where I want to be right now. Sorry for the nugget of sadness. Listen to some G-Love you’ll feel better abd so will I.
Dennis

Fort Lauderdale and Flagstaff

Howdy friends.

Hope you are all excellent on this beautiful August day! Dennis is lacking any sort of internet service right now, although he is ready and wanting to blog…so since I do have some access, I wanted to post an update.

Dennis is making great time and is safe! He has pics and the full story, so I won’t spoil it for him. Right now he is a couple hours outside of Fort Lauderdale.

I am in Flagstaff…it is beautiful!!! The big puffy white clouds are rolling in and the monsoons are about to open up on this fair city. Last night my dad and I headed downtown for sushi and on the walk home we caught a glimpse of the Perseid meteor shower…I saw the biggest shooting star ever!!! It was bright orange and shot all the way accross the sky. But it’s no surprise as Flagstaff is the International Dark Sky City…you can see every star up here. Scorpio is in full view this time of year and Mars was on the horizon. Here’s a photo I took during spring break in front of my folks’ house at dusk…

I am currently at one of my FAV coffee shops, Macy’s (not the department store…but an ecclectic shop that is owned by the one and only Tim Macy) here’s a pic from last year when I was at Macy’s with my DEAR friend Dianne (miss you!) she was so sweetly trying to get out of the pic

…I am waiting for my friend Joe to bring me a townie bike to ride while I”m in town. I have a cruiser that I bought for the sole purpose of riding when I’m home, but my mom has taken a liking to it My friend Heather is also meeing me soon with my godson and I might do a ’shift’ in the ER tonight with my pal Dr. Peterson. Life is good. Once I unpack my card reader I’ll post some pics. Hope you are all rockin it. Much love. xoxo

Miami, New York, Arizona?!? Boston?

A quick update y’all…

Tonight, Friday, finds me (Gretch) in Boston. Not quite by choice, but as a default. I flew out of Watertown NY today on my way to Logan Airport in Boston…from there, I was supposed to fly to JFK in NYC and THEN to Phoenix. Well, with so many connections, there was bound to be some sort of glitch…but no problemo. My plane was delayed so late in Boston, that I would have missed my connection in NYC so Delta put me on another flight leaving tomorrow morning at 6am to get into AZ at 9ish (AZ time) am. I found a hotel near the airport…my bags are somewhere…either Boston, JFK or maybe even half way to Phx already. But for now, the passenger is in Boston. Give a gal a hotel room, wireless, and no Dennis to hang out with, and you get a blog entry…voila!

The blog will begin to transform over the next few months into communication between Dennis and I…it’s weird. I’ll be checking the blog to see if Dennis has posted pics from Miami, and I will be posting from AZ. Dennis leaves tomorrow morning and will drive down (about 3 days).

We have lots of photos from exploring the Watertown area the last week or so. We LOVE our apartment…it is really nice for the money, and lots of room! I can walk 2 blocks to the hospital, and orientation was awesome. I can’t wait to get started. I love the group of students that are in Watertown and hope to get a pic of everyone. We have also been really exploring the Adirondack Mountains….as well as Sacket’s Harbor and Canada!

I hope to post some pics soon….and I want to give D a chance to write a post…I know that he has been wanting to.

MUCH LOVE YOU ALL. Please keep in touch and take care.
G

Wanna Laugh??

We will post stories from our move very very soon….for now…watch these Conan clips….

Continued…..