Another new addition to our family
With hurricanes and a really long trip through Alaska, September was something alright. But we have new cats, another hurricane and big plans in the works...
September was quite the month for our family and really for the whole Southeast. It’s always interesting sitting down to write my newsletter and reflecting on all that happened since the last one. Apparently taking a week off from a newsletter doubles up the life events and thoughts to share. Thank you for hanging with me while I let flow the stream of happenings in our world. I love hearing from people after I’ve shared, so always feel free to drop a line.
New on the blogs:
Travel to Alaska - everything you need to know before diving in
…and then MyAlaskaTrip.com is almost ready to launch!
Sometimes when life is getting crazy it really is nice to have the blogs to work on and separate the chaos in my world. If you don’t have a creative outlet, I strongly recommend finding one that you can retreat into when you need to calm you socks down.
Hurricane Season in Full Swing
While I was gone for 16 days to Alaska, Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida. Even though it didn’t hit us in St Augustine, it was wild to be so far away and see it all unravel. I was getting nervous as the storm grew and even when the track shifted it was still nerve-wracking. Our house and family was fine with just lots of wind and no real damage.
And now here we are with Hurricane Milton in the distance and this one will be paying a visit to St Augustine. We’ve done all our hurricane prep, our non-perishable grocery shopping, all things are charged and then on Tuesday we’ll put up our hurricane shutters. Although Milton is going to make landfall on the Gulf side, it’s supposed to keep a fair amount of its steam. We’re predicted to get CAT 1 or 2 winds and 8-12 inches of rain. No fun.
As this all lines up, I keep thinking about our friends on the Gulf side that I’ve been chatting with. They’re still in recovery mode from Hurricane Helene and their gutted-house trash still is sitting outside their homes, and now they are going to be getting a direct hit with a large storm surge. Yes, we all choose to live in Florida, we know and we don’t need to be reminded. For the one or two storms that may pass nearby or even come to our town, we all love it here.
Politicizing Hurricanes
Not that I would ever want to politicize a natural disaster, but that’s what’s happening right now in the worst way. With Hurricane Helene being devastating to Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, the congressmen who are yelling at Prez Biden for not giving enough to the people who’ve been effected, those are the same ones who literally just voted no to increase emergency response funds in advance of the storm. They’re all like “Biden/Harris are only giving $750 in relief to people” and yet it’s actually congress who approve all this. And the morons blabbing about it all voted no.
And here’s the other thing. Living in Florida we rely on NOAA and the hurricane center’s forecasts and information to be ready for major weather events. Guess what’s a part of the Republicans’ Project 2025… Disbanding NOAA, the EPA, Dept of Education and more. As we sit here, hanging on each update from the NHC (National Hurricane Center) there’s a whole swath of people rallying to put people in power that are looking to strike at Americans in any way they can, literally trying to control information, decision making abilities, and even personal rights. And yes, hurricanes and how they effect our communities are now on the ballot. Something as simple as providing free and accurate disaster information is on the chopping block. And this is one of the smallest elements of the Republican platform.
Happy News: Two New Kitties!
So, if you’ve been following the drama of our cat, Rocky, you may recall that he’s a handful. Bengals are always a lot, but Rocky had two other homes before us and brought with him all sorts of emotional baggage and an attitude. We’ve been loving him and working with him and can now hold him for short moments. But he’s lonely and it’s evident. He stares at his reflection and sometime just looks sad. So we talked and planned for a while and have now found a solution.
Yesterday we welcomed two brother cats and they’re getting acclimated to our family. Bruce and Pistachio are our new little guys. They’re Russian Blues, just like our old cat Duke, and they are the sweetest boys. We were planning on just getting Bruce (his original name was Poe) but he was so bonded with Pistachio (originally Ogden) that we couldn’t break them up. So now we have three cats and we’re excited to see them all grow up together.
This is the first time the kids have had cats small enough that they were comfortable holding, and they love it. They are really happy about the little dudes and I know that when we introduce them to Rocky it’ll be amazing. They’ve all met through a window and had their share of growling at each other, but with each sniff they’re better and better about it. We’ll keep y’all posted.
Cat Adoption Tips
If you’re thinking about bringing a pet into your world, ADOPT. There are so many wonderful young and adult animals in shelters and rescues that need homes. Do we really need to go to breeders for fancily bred animals? If you see value in it, you do you, but having brought three cats into our home this year from rescues, it feels great to give them forever homes.
“Rescues have so many fees.” Yes, adopting from a rescue or shelter does come with fees typically. It covers all sorts of costs for the organization that’s rehoming to you. For our guys it covered their neuters, shots and chipping, and then the rest goes to the org to cover the costs of taking care of animals (food, litter, carries, transportation…)
If you’re adopting a pet, there are a few key questions to ask:
what environment/family make-up does the animal come from?
do we know how large their parentage is? (size can matter)
when was their last flee/worm treatment? Shots?
If you can learn these things first you’ll save yourself stress and lots of doctors appointments later. And then you’re starting on the right foot!
My Alaska Trip - my actual 16 day adventure AND my project
This week I returned from a 16 day adventure in Alaska. This is the longest I’ve ever been away from my family, and by day 10 it was hard. I always enjoy the odd week away and truthfully, it helps me stay chill and feel like my own person. 16 days is a lot though. When I went to China I was gone for 11 days and that felt like forever. This time I came home to kids who had visibly grown (and Oliver’s voice is much deeper). My garden was in a state and the fam had been through the outskirts of a hurricane.
While all that was happening, I had an incredible time seeing friends in Alaska and reliving my old life in AK. I was doing some work with Travel Alaska (state tourism board), TBEX (conference group) and Alaska Travel Connections (travel planners) and got to experience some amazing things. Yes, I was hiking through the tundra, going off-trail alone in Denali National Park. Yes, I was up with the sunrise photographing the stillest lakes in the mountains. And yes, I was awake at 2am to watch the Northern Lights do their thing over the landscape in front of me. That was all WOW.
ALL OF THIS AND MORE COMING TO MYALASKATRIP.COM
During the 2+ weeks in AK I got to do some absolutely bucket list activities:
hiking on a glacier
hanging with Iditarod mushers
helicopter flights to mountain tops and more glaciers
two different glacier/wildlife cruises on Prince William Sound
I rode the Alaska Railroad
I saw 17 moose from Anchorage to Denali NP
hiked to waterfalls
and the ultimate Alaska bucket list item: seaplane to Lake Clark National Park for bear viewing. OMG.
I’ve been writing about all of these things and more for our new website. Yes, there are a few things making their way onto 2TravelDads.com, but the bulk is going on our Alaska trip planning site. It’s all so much fun to work on I’ll be sharing it all in time.
That’s all for this week. Next week hopefully we’ll be sharing that the hurricane wasn’t terrible here and that all the cats are getting along like the best of friends. We’ll see…
Have a great week, beautiful fall, and a happy October!