Today was my sister’s (the one with the broken ribs and the two ginormous dogs) birthday. I had made arrangments with her son to have a surprise birthday dinner party for her. The surprise turned out to be not so much a surprise but the dinner party was still fun, once we actually got there that is.
Sis’s friend, Rosa, does not drive when it is snowing. Since she lives in Alaska that doesn’t really leave her much of a season for any kind of road trip. Knowing that Rosa’s presence is important to sis I agree to drive out to pick her up and then return her after dinner. Remind me never to agree before finding out just where I am agreeing to travel to will you?!
For some the term puckerbrush brings a blank stare. For others that are aware of it’s true meaning it causes a stare as well but not a blank one, more one of “oh piffle, fill up the tank”. The snow is still falling but the roads are pretty clear so the drive isn’t too bad. Until the moose crossing area.
Why the highway department puts up those silly signs will always remain a mystery. As if the moose are only going to cross right there, right where that one particular sign is. However, tonight, three of them decided that they would, indeed, cross right there at that sign. I slowed, they slowed, I went faster, they went faster…we paced each other for a few hundred miles and I decided these were moose punks and they enjoyed playing chicken with cars. Yes indeed…they were all snickering their little moosie snickers and giving signals to each other in moosie sign language. Finally the gang leader decided that the car coming up behind me looked like more fun and off they trotted.
On and on I drove until I was virtually at the base of the mountains and there was Rosa’s house. My initial thought was why on earth a woman that did not like to drive, let alone in the snow, would live this far out. My second thought was how late we were going to be for our reservation time. Have you ever tried to hurry two women that haven’t seen each other in a long time when one wants to show off the recent improvements to her home? I think it may have been the look of panic on my face or, perhaps, the ever so slightly even evil mention of the increasing snow volume but we were finally loaded up and headed to the lodge.
We arrived at Settler’s Bay Lodge and the empty parking lot had me a bit concerned. Had we taken that long to get there? Turned out that the place was open, just empty…not a good sign. We are seated, order our drinks and begin chatting and passing gifts and cards to the birthday girl. I have to say that Settler’s Bay makes a wicked George Washington Appletini but that is where the positive feedback stops. We all tried to laugh off the atrocious service, the undercooked and overcooked food and the king crab ‘’special”. What made it special was that they were trying to get rid of their left over crab! The baked potato was good but we did have to ask for butter and then hope there was enough residual heat in the potato to melt the frozen, as in rock hard, butter!
All in all we made the best of it and everyone enjoyed the evening, and hugged their goodbyes before setting off for the marathon road trip home. Back I drove, sans moose gang, and finally made it back to sis’s house just shy of midnight.
One might think that the end to this entry would be a nice bit about crawling into bed and drifting off to sleep….did I mention that sis has birds…birds that escaped and are currently at large?
Stay tuned for the great bird round up.
Tags: birthday, dinner, king crab, moose, mountains, puckerbrush
