Sunny days in Rotterdam

I am in the Netherlands and have had another set of very busy days here, lots of meetings, mainly in the Hague. I'm relaxing with my nephew in Rotterdam today, and then heading to Paris tomorrow. It's nice to have a lazy day where I could sleep in and get reorganized.

A few more pictures from Brussels

...I couldn't resist posting a few more...

I'm in Brussels and had to get off to a running start. My plane was about an hour and a half late getting into Brussels so I only had about an hour to hang out at my hotel before heading to my meeting at the European Parliament. The meeting was being sponsored by the Socialists in the European Parliament and the Helsinki Commission which is chaired by Congressman Alcee Hastings. He is very interested in the situation for people of African descent in Europe and helping to get them mobilized politically. The title of the conference was "The Transatlantic Minority Political Leadership Conference." It was very interesting for me, since two of the topics, antidiscrimination policy and immigration, are what I'm here to study. I also met one of my hero's a former Member of the European Parliament who was one of the driving forces behind antidiscrimination policy in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s. He actually offered to give me some of the materials he has saved from that time period to use for my book project! This is a very exciting development.

It's a beautiful evening in Brussels and I'm glad I got a chance to walk around and take some pictures. Heading to Rotterdam for more meetings tomorrow.

Prelude to a European adventure

It's time to start blogging again, as the school year ends and we prepare for our next great adventure: Europe! It has been four years since the whole family visited Europe, so it will be interesting to see how the boys react this time. I'm leaving for a conference in Brussels on Monday, then Mike and the boys will meet me in Paris on June 7th. I'll post pictures once I get to Brussels, and I'll also be visiting my nephew Alfonso in the Netherlands before heading to Paris on the 6th.

In Seattle

Ravens -- an important bird in Tlinglit culture, raven brought light to man
Quaking aspen trees -- they sound really cool when the breeze blows through them
The Copper River -- home of great salmon


Liberty Falls in Wrangell-St. Elias
At Pioneer Park in Fairbanks
Wrangell Mountains as seen from the Glenn Highway.

We're currently hanging out in Seattle and looking forward to getting home to Austin on Sunday. Brandon is excited to be starting kindergarten and Andrew will be in 3rd grade. Our departure from Anchorage was uneventful. The final drive between Wrangell-St. Elias and Anchorage was another nice drive, with glaciers and high mountains along the way. I didn't take many pictures -- I think I got burnt out after taking around 1600 pictures. It will take me a while to sort through them all and find my favorites, but I thought I would post a few here, in my last post for our Alaska trip.

Fairbanks to Wrangell-St. Elias

Princess Wilderness Lodge
If it were clear, a view of the Wrangell Mountains

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline
Another glacier...
More mountains...
A beautiful lake along the way to Wrangell-St. Elias
Visiting the Christmas House in North Pole, Alaska
In Pioneer Park, Fairbanks

It was a nice drive from Denali, but rainy, so I didn't take any pictures along the way. We passed by some of the burned forest from recent forest fires. We got to Fairbanks around lunch time. We went to the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska, which was very similar to the Anchorage Museum. Lots of history on various indigenous groups, gold rush history, natural history and Fairbanks history. It was a nice museum and since the kids were so patient, we took them to the playground at Pioneer Park afterwards. They had a great time playing with the local kids, who were starting school the next day.

The next morning we made our first stop at North Pole. The have the world's largest Santa along the side of the freeway, and the Christmas House. Unfortunately Santa wasn't there on Mondays, but we looked around and bought a couple of ornaments. We also spent some time looking at Santa's reindeer.

The drive was another spectacular one, particularly going through Isabelle pass. The pictures really don't do it justice. We got to the park's visitor center late in the afternoon and got some info on hikes. We stayed at the Princess Wilderness Lodge, which is run by the cruise line, and is very nice. It was actually the cheapest lodging option in the area when I looked online, only $99/night. They had great views of the mountains, and a great restaurant. I thought the food was the best we had during the entire trip, with the exception of our cruise.

More later...

Denali

Caribou (aka Reindeer)
Ptarmigan
Along savage river

with the Park sled dogs
Taking the Junior Ranger pledge

It rained while we drove to Denali, so there was no chance we would see Mt. McKinley along the way. We later learned that it is visible only 20% of the time, so we weren't surprised that we didn't see it at all. However, it was still a beautiful park and we really enjoyed seeing all of the great vistas and wildlife. We were lucky that it didn't rain and the sun even came out during most of our hikes. The hard part about Denali is that you can only drive in about 15 miles, then you have to schedule a ride in a shuttle bus to go in farther. Our first evening there we took a hike near the visitor center. The next day we had scheduled a rafting trip on the Nenanna river -- it was great fun, we had to get dressed up in dry suits, and the boys got to experience some mild rapids. The only problem was that is was still cold, and my feet were numb by the time we finished, despite the fact that I wore my skiing socks.

That afternoon we went to see the park sled dogs, then we drove in as far as we could and took a hike along Savage river. It was sunny and beautiful and we saw some cool wildlife including moose, a weasel that took a liking to Mike, eagles, falcons, caribou, and a big group of ptarmigan, the state bird.

The next day we had scheduled an 8:30 bus to Eielson ranger station. The ride would take about 3 hours, and the drivers are good about stopping to look at wildlife along the way. The ride takes so long because they have to go about 25-30 miles per hour, and some parts of the road go along steep cliffs. Along the way we saw fox, snow hares, a grizzly bear mom with 2 cubs, and lots of birds. When we got to Eielson, I told them that Brandon wanted to get his junior ranger badge (you have to fill out a little booklet), so the ranger made a special announcement and everyone watched as Brandon took his junior ranger pledge. We took a hike with a ranger and learned all about the tundra and the plants that manage to live on it. Then we hiked up a rather steep hill -- Brandon practically ran up the hill and we had to slow him down to take a look at the sites along the way. We took the shuttle back to the park entrance after some lunch and saw lots more wildlife along the way, including a beaver that Mike spotted in his pond.

We ate at the local Salmon Bake restaurant -- Salmon was a recurring theme (and dinner) throughout the trip. We also had some fabulous berry pie -- blueberries and other berries grow very well in the tundra.

The next day we headed up to Fairbanks. We decided that if we were to come back to Denali we would camp inside of the park so that we could spend more time inside the park, and less time on shuttle buses.