Baby Snowy

 We got my car, generally referred to merely as "The RAV" in March, 2006.  Here he is brand new.

RAV's "baby Picture", March 2006

He was a very good car, but 17 years is a long time.  He only had 115,000 miles on his odometer and there was nothing wrong with him that we knew of.  However, we did not want to spend a lot of money fixing any problems that might arise.  With that in mind, we had been thinking about a replacement for some time.  Unfortunately the very very low car inventories due to chip shortages and other issues from the pandemic made getting a new car a serious challenge.  

There were no Toyota RAV4's at all in the area that we could find online, so we looked at the Lexus equivalent, the Lexus NX.  Those were also in very short supply,  Park Place Lexus Plano had two, both the same color green, while the Park Place Lexus Grapevine had six in a couple of different colors and trim levels.  With that in mind, we headed to Grapevine on President's Day to see what we could learn about the Lexus NX.  

Long story short--we drove home with a new Lexus NX 350 Luxury model, now tentatively named "Snowy".  Here are the required dealership pics with mega bow.

 

I was so tired by the time we got home, that I forgot to take pictures.  I did take some a few days later.  

 

Snowy's Baby Pic

 

I keep thinking that she doesn't look like an SUV, but she is.  She even opens automagically if you kick below the door and have the fob in your pocket!

 

In some ways she is more a computer on wheels than a car, with a big screen and a heads up display,  I have only scratched the surface in learning what she can do.  I can say she is always looking out for me.  She wouldn't let me back out into oncoming cross traffic from in between two large trucks at a local strip mall because she saw the oncoming traffic that I could not see.  She warns me if I am over the posted speed limit and fusses at me if I stray out of the traffic lane.  She also warms the steering wheel so my hands don't get cold.

 

Unfortunately the heads up display doesn't show up in this pic.

 

I am glad I got the pictures when I did.  One day later a gigantic dust storm blew across Texas.  Before it left here we had a very light rain which left brown dirt on everything.  As one local meteorologist explained, the rain did not wash off the dirt because the rain drops themselves were dirty.  Texas weather--it is always something.

Snowy covered in dirt from Lubbock

 I am waiting to take her for a bath until after the next storm blows through later today.

BTW, we followed the posting for the RAV online.  We traded him in on Monday and delivered the title to the dealer on Tuesday.  He sold on Saturday.  Hopefully he has found a good home.

Honey Bee Removal

Honey bees scouting for a new home.  I had not anticipated posting again so soon, but things just spring up unexpectedly at our house.  On Saturday morning I saw a steady stream of bees flying into and out of a crack in the bricks on the front porch.  Do they have a hive in there?  

A swarm arrives.  Fortunately I had called a bee removal company right away, because those few bees turned out to only be scouts.  When the Frog went out Saturday afternoon he discovered there was now a large swarm over the hole in the bricks that we had seen earlier.  

Swarm of honey bees on the front porch

The doorbell surveillance camera has terrible resolution, but I could still see that the entire swarm arrived in only a matter of minutes.  Below are screen captures of that video taken at one minute intervals.  I stopped after five minutes since the size of the swarm stopped growing and there no longer seemed to be bees flying around.  (The flying bees were visible in the video, but are not visible in these still pics.)

2:02:30 pm

2:03:30 pm

2:04:30

2:05:30

2:06:30

2:07:30

The bee removal guy showed up about 4:30.  It only took him a little more than half an hour to assess the situation, remove the swarm with the queen, and treat the area inside and out with insecticide.  

Bees decide to move in.  According to this site, when a bee colony becomes too crowded it sends out scouts to find a new home for a portion of the colony.  If they find an acceptable location, between a third and two thirds of the colony moves to the new location and begins to move in.  If they cannot quickly find an appropriate new home, the break-off group still moves out but they may just hang out in a temporary location.  In either case they hold together as a swarm, hovering around the queen to protect her.  In our case, an infrared picture of the fascia board above the brick indicated they were beginning to build a new hive.  They had apparently decided this would be their new long term home.

Infrared picture of the bricks below and fascia board above showing the beginnings of a hive behind the fascia board.

Removing the bees.  I did not necessarily want to kill the bees, but we couldn't have them living at the front door.  Fortunately without immature bees or honey to protect, this swarm of bees was relatively docile,  It was also early in the move--the queen was still outside of the cavity.  Getting her was the key.  Once the queen was in the box, most of the rest of the bees that were not already there quickly followed.

 

It was actually impressive how quickly the process went.  Of course, it may have helped that he had been doing this for 25 years.  He was quite the character, which you may be able to tell from some of the audio on the video below, but he seemed very good.
 

We were very fortunate to be able to remove these bees before they became established.  However, any trace of the beeswax from their nascent hive will attract future bees.  To prevent future invasions, we are to wait two weeks, then take the fascia board down and remove and clean the remnants of whatever is still there. 

The bee guy estimated there were probably about 3000 bees in this swarm.  That sounded like a lot to me at the time, but may actually be small as swarms go. They were to be picked up later that evening to be relocated to a beekeeper in Tyler.

What about the old colony?   Of course, while all of this is going on, a new queen and the remaining portion of the colony are likely at the original colony location.  Chances are that is not too far away.  I have not seen any bees hanging around the vegetable garden this week, but I may be on their black list.

Alaska 2022 Trip Day 12 -- Sitka to DFW and Future UnCruise Trips

Madhouse in tiny Sitka airport.  It is Sunday, August 7, day 12 of our epic Alaska adventure.  Our plane was scheduled to leave Sitka at 7:00 am.  We were on the early shuttle ride from the hotel (five minute ride) and arrived about 5:30 or so.  It was still rainy with lots of low clouds, but already getting light since sunrise was 5:10.  That is definitely an advantage of being this far north in the summer.  

We had been told repeatedly by multiple people that we did not need to arrive very early since the Sitka airport is a tiny, sleepy kind of place.  Not this morning!  Even at 5:30 am it was a chaotic mess with people going every direction.  Everyone seemed to have lots of baggage and many were pushing dollies piled high with boxes labelled "frozen fish".  We assumed Saturday was the end for many fishing trips, meaning Sunday was the day to fly out.  

We fought our way to one of the kiosks to print baggage tags.  An Alaska Airlines roving agent quickly helped us fasten the tags to our bags and whisked them away.  Then we moved to the even more chaotic line to go through security.  Thank goodness for PreCheck.  With only one TSA agent it was not clear that everyone in the normal line was going to get through in time to make the flight.  We finally made it to the passenger departure lounge which was worse--standing room only, already packed and getting worse by the minute as more people kept coming in. I found a place to sit on the floor and considered myself lucky.

SIT to SEA to DFW  All is well that ends well.  We made it on the plane. Sitting in first class, we got the breakfast that we missed since we left before anything was available in either the hotel or the airport.  It was actually quite good and very filling, given that it was billed as a continental breakfast.  

The plane arrived 20 minutes late, but that was not a problem since we were scheduled for a 2.5 hour layover and our connecting flight ended up leaving 40 minutes late.  As with the trip up, the Alaska Lounge made this quite pleasant.  However,we were very thankful that we were using the app Trip-it to monitor all of the flights.  It kept us up to date on the changes in times and gates better than the overhead boards in the Seattle airport.  At least one of those boards would have sent us off to another terminal!

There had been solid clouds from Sitka almost all the way to Seattle.  However Seattle was beautiful, with not a cloud in the sky. Unlike coming up the week before, we now got a good look at Mt. Ranier on the flight leaving Seattle.

Mt. Ranier from our airplane

We arrived in DFW almost an hour later than scheduled, but it was still light.  Being a Sunday evening there was no traffic, so it was a breeze making it home. 

Whales are moving on and so must I.  I saw today an article online from the Maui News that this year's first humpback whale was spotted off South Maui of the Hawaiian Islands on September 14.  This whale almost certainly is one of what will be an estimated 11,000 humpback whales that will make the 3000 mile migration from Alaska to Hawaii.  Although the peak season for whales in Hawaii is January to March (thinking of you, Ann and Sharon!), they are already starting to arrive.  

If the whales are ending this year's season in Alaska, then I guess I should wrap things up too.  As I have explained to some in person, this blog of our Alaska adventure is primarily for me. I have relived our adventures while putting together this online "scrapbook",and I will be able to revisit it in the future.  It is also a way for me to share with family members who are spread across the country.  

If you have been following along and made it through all of these many posts, thanks for following.  If you have stumbled into this by accident, the starting point with a directory to the various parts of the trip is here.   

What do we do for an encore?  It is hard to imagine that any trip could measure up to this epic adventure.  However, having had such a good time, we put down a deposit for another cruise with UnCruise Adventures.  The discount they were offering if we made the deposit before we disembarked was just too good to turn down.

We have not decided on which of UnCruise's many destinations we will choose,  We are very interested in the Galapagos Islands, but another trip to Alaska, perhaps with a different itinerary, would be great.  Even the Panama Canal/Costa Rica cruise sounds interesting.  Stay tuned!