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Here Comes Peter Cottontail

Pizza Partay

Beautiful night last night for the first campfire of the year for a "going away" partay for my daughter. She left this morning for a new job in Southeast Alaska. I'm going to miss her but she won't be more than a ferry ride away for me to go visit. Which I look forward to already. Tor, when you read this, know that I love you and I am really happy for you and wish you a great summer!

I made the pizzas' the easy way. Bought ready made frozen DiGiorno pepperoni pizza and added more cheese, pepperoni, mushrooms and black olives. Everybody said "good pizza" and we all had fun with DiGiorno jokes around the campfire.

Wild Blue Yonder

Sounds like a war is going on around here because Visiting pilots get taste of battle We have been hearing a lot of the action of the jets flying around but they are hard to see or take a picture of. So I photoshopped the above picture. So far in my photos the jets look like mosquitos flying high in the sky.

Operation Red Flag combat exercise goes on until April 21 with two more slated for this year. I will try and get a good picture.

Excerpt from the ADN story:

If you happen to see a dark gray jet take flight on the north side over the next couple weeks, and it looks, well, maybe a little more bumblebee than wasp, don't worry. Your eyes are OK.
That's a U.S. Navy Prowler, not a U.S. Air Force F-15.

Starting today, Alaska is playing home base to Red Flag, a big air-combat exercise that this year is bringing units from six states and two foreign countries to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage and Eielson near Fairbanks. As well as the EA-6B Prowlers -- a wide-bodied fighter-size jet that seats a pilot and three weapons specialists -- Elmendorf will host a dozen or so additional F-15s and an E-3 AWACs.

Eight French Mirage 2000 fighters and four Navy F-18 Hornets will fly out of Eielson, and a couple of C-130s from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona will fly out of Kulis Air National Guard Base. The exercise also will put a couple of B-1 bombers, a few KC-10 tankers and other aircraft into the vast 67,000-square-mile military airspace over Alaska for two-a-day simulated war games.

St. Ignatius Mission

Forty miles north of Missoula, Montana, off of highway 93, is the home of the St. Ignatius Mission. On my Road Trip 2006 we went to the town of St. Ignatius just to see the inside of this beautiful, historic church. My friends husband had been there before years ago and told us we had to see it. Not being Catholic, did not matter, he said. It was late fall and we had the place to ourselves. There was an honor system inside for donations and postcard fees but always open and unlocked to the public during the day.

I felt like I was walking into the Sistine Chapel though I have never been there. Coincidently, while I was there, my sister was in Italy, at the Sistine Chapel. Only she wasn't allowed to take pictures while I snapped away.

The history is quite a story. The mission cook painted the 58 murals on the ceiling and walls. This gifted man was Brother Joseph Carignano (1853-1919), an Italian Jesuit who served the mission as cook and handyman. Although he had no formal training in art, he undertook to paint the church with murals of scenes from the Old and New Testaments, as well as paintings of some of the saints. When you stand inside the church, it is extremely difficult to believe that this was done by an amateur who painted in what little time he could spare from his primary duties as a cook and a custodian.

It was worth the side trip and I was very happy I got to see the St. Ignatius Mission. From there we headed to the National Bison Range.

Here Comes Peter Cottontail

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