Gone........Now

After eating brunch at the Prospector Hotel in downtown Juneau this very cold and windy Sunday morning, we stopped in the Valley on the way back Out the Road so that LC could drool over this.........

Beautiful truck and certainly drool-worthy.  Only $50,000.

Drool away Mountain Boy...........

While eating brunch we had surreptitiously stashed a handful of rib bones into a napkin, and on the way home stopped at Auke Village Recreation Area.

While Jamie enjoyed her own brunch I walked along the beach and took these pictures.

Auke Village Rec Area is a very accessible natural area.

The gravel and dirt trails are wide open, flat and easy to walk.

The beach is sandy.  The beach is beautiful, and so are the mountains surrounding it 360 degrees.

Also at this beach are a couple of beautifully constructed shelters than contain picnic tables, fire pits and fire places......

Two other hardy souls walking their dog on the beach.

Quiet.

These places are all quiet now.

No more helicopters or float planes or tourist buses or tourists or multiple picnickers or fishermen or power boats.........

I have been talking about it for a while now, but one of these days I want to sit here for many hours, keep a huge fire burning and sit under the shelter warmly looking out over the channel.........

As we were driving into town this morning we both noticed that there was a good deal of snow in the mountains - new snow that was not there only a few days ago.

The snow is slowly but definitely working its way down the mountains..........

One more local piece of work that I came across recently - a poem celebrating the end of the tourist season:

GONE

By Richard Stokes

Floating hotels taut-roped against docks

where wait flocks of buses, trolleys rickshaws, vans and taxis;

Bright-eyed greeters with clipboards and crackling radio holding

signs touting tours;

Mendenhall Glacier, hikes, dog sledding, helicopters, ziplines, whales and bikes.

Gone

Tourists carrying plastic bags of red and white

shuffling in and out of jewelry and trinket shops,

chasing discounts on diamonds and tanzanite.

Yellow-clad crossing guards with handheld stop signs,

dangling Raven and Eagle tramcars easing up and down the cabled incline,

even the black-bearded guy with the find-Jesus sign.

Gone

The mechanical miner, fake bears and snowbird merchants of South Franklin.

Windows now papered over, door locked, wares and sale staff boxed and shipped to the Caribbean.

Gone

Yellow plastic security fences along docks,

strolling men with badges and barking radios.

Docks again open for lunchtime lovers with interlocked fingers,

for knots of the homeless to philosophize and trade cigarette butts.

Now

Juneau rests in autumn's hesitation,

breathes deeply, gives in to weather's rule

Dims the livingroom lights,

puts its feet up on a stool

and awaits winter's politicians.