Just as important as catching all the State's welcome signs as we crossed borders (see below) was capturing the dogs' benevolent stares throughout the trip.  Four days is a long time in the car for a dog (it's a long time in the car for a human) and I'd like to think that when they got here they realized how sweet this move really was for them.   Thousands upon thousands of acres of public land for their roaming pleasure.  Ahh, a dogs dream. 

On the drive though, clearly, they weren't quite seeing the possiblities.

Finally, internet at home - YAHOO!  I'm going to do a little backlogging of posts to be able to show some of the images from the ride out and our first week here in Idaho. 

This image is made of the many state welcome signs we passed during the four day journey out.  Crossing state lines encited a riot in the car of "Where is the camera?!" and "Can you slow down?" and "Thank goodness, Nebraska was sooo boring..."

Our moving van arrived this morning!  And all of our stuff!  I am so excited, let the unpacking begin.

We have made it!  Mike and I actually arrived on late Friday evening, and have been keeping ourselves busy ever since.  There was the Wagon Days Parade, our first night on the town, a nice long hike, big walkies with the dogs, SNOW, and today - my first day on the new job! 

The apartment is great, but I don't have internet there yet.  So, though I have all sorts of pictures to share, I can't quite upload.  Keep your eyes peeled though, they are coming ASAP!

Last night, on very short notice, we rustled up our friends that could make it and headed to the Route 7 Grill, Mike and I's favorite restaurant in town, for drinks and some food.  Our friend Allie offered to drive us there and back which was awesome.  It was made even more awesome by the fact that we could pour the beers we had left in the fridge into Nalgenes and drink away happily as we walked our dogs one last time in Massachusetts. 

It was fantastic to while away the evening laughing, drinking, and telling stories with friends.  You always hear that "it's not where you are but who you're with that really matters," and that has been especially true for me here in the Berkshires.  It's the people I have met and befriended that really make this place special.  It's always hard to leave, yet I am so excited for the future.  Sun Valley seems like a dreamland of activities, landscapes, and opportunites that I can't wait to be a part of.  So as Mike and I start our journey this afternoon I do so with a twinge of sadness, and the fluttering of excitement for what's to come.

(Image quality is poor, I didn't bring a camera, so these were taken with cell phone!)

I recently registered my blog with Verve Earth, a virtual map blog service.  I'm the first and only blog registered in the Wood River Valley!  Well, aren't I a trendsetter?

Check it out here.

"Take this crap out of here!" was our general war cry yesterday.  The movers came around 9:30am...and there were only two of them!  I'm not sure why I envisioned this little army of movers coming to get everything, but I was sorely mistaken.  Which is okay, it just took a lot longer than I anticipated.  The mover arrived, we argued over whether or not the guy could get the big-ass truck in the driveway (I still contend that he could of, but he wasn't having it).  Our nice neighbor Winthrop who owns Barrett Tree Service let us back up the monster truck into his lumber yard.  What a guy. 

After we got the truck all set the driver, Andre,

started the task of inventorying all our stuff.  Basically, he took little numbered yellow stickers and put them on everything, then corresponded the stickers with what the item was.  Quite a tedious task, but since he is picking up four other households before driving west, it's a good idea.  Unless of course, the other four households have cooler furniture then us, at which point it wouldn't matter if our stuff got lost.  :)

After everything was inventoried, the mover, Danny, set to the task of bringing everything out to the van, while Andre arranged it.  I felt sorry for him, doing all the moving by himself, but we were busy with other tasks, and besides, we paid a premium to not move the stuff ourselves.  If Mayflower is cheap and doesn't hire enough movers, it's unfortunately not my immediate role to change.  Argh.  Anyway, everything got in the truck, and the driver and mover were actually head back to Boston (from where they came) to pick up the other houses.  Weirdly enough, all the other houses are moving to Seattle.  What are the odds?  So we're the first drop off, probably sometime over this weekend.  Hopefully we'll be there by then!

Mike's parents John and Buz (and their dog Mac) traveled down to say their goodbyes, and arrived just as the movers were finishing up.  We ate some lunch, then headed to Lenox to see Shakespeare and Co.'s production of Othello.  It was absolutely stellar.  It might have been a little much to go to a three hour play on our last weekend in town, but we have to squeeze the culture in someway, right?

 

After the play we met up with Mike's sister and brother-in-law, Kristin and Bruce, and the six of us went to dinner at the White Hart in Salisbury.  After dinner we said some sad goodbyes, and took on the ridiculous task of trying to get four hyper-active dogs together in the same picture.  It's nearly impossible.  This is the best we could do.  And they are only looking relatively non-spastic because I'm dangling a delicious treat above their noses.  My goodness.

So...Mike's at work today, and I'm packing up things for the car, and will eventually get to washing the rest of the walls, vaccuuming the floor, cleaning the bathroom, the kitchen, etc.  None of which sounds too exciting, but someone's got to do it! 

 

I can't believe we leave tomorrow.  Mike is working in the morning (and attending his last volunteer lunch at Schumacher), then we are hitting the road.  I am in some sort of state of shock, I think...it's tomorrow!!

We ate an intensely delicious meal at John Andrews.  It was, without a doubt, the most expensive meal I've ever eaten, and one of the best.  The atmosphere was classy without being pretensious, the food selections well thought out, and the portions perfect enough that I could eat appetizer, main course AND dessert without being too full.  It was awesome.  Though I may appear to be a little tipsy in this picture...well, okay, maybe a little.  But a fleeting moment.  And don't worry, Mike drove us home.  :)

Things are starting to look a little less frantic around here.  Thank goodness.  I learned yesterday that the movers are coming tomorrow between 8am and 10am, a much smaller window than the original "somewhere between Friday and Tuesday" I got when I scheduled.  Phew.  So today was full of runs to the transfer station (no garbage pickup here), the collection of things to give away (originally destined for Goodwill, but the nearest dropoff point is an hour from here and we couldn't take the time...however, putting them on the side of the road with a big "FREE!" sign works just as well!), and shoving the last items into boxes.  After having been at it since 7:30 this morning, we are both exhausted.  The dogs too. 

As part of Mike's going away present, the director of the organization he works for gave him Berkshares to go out to John Andrews.  John Andrews is a fancy-schmancy restuarant in South Egremont that we've been meaning to check out for the past three years.  Well, tonight's the night!  It's our only free evening before we leave.  It took a little bit of rooting around in already-packed boxes to find clothes (JA isn't the jeans and sneakers type crowd), but we succeeded. 

Tonight and tomorrow early morning will be the final frantic "this goes in a box!" to ensure we aren't taking anything in the Subaru that we don't absolutely need.  We're getting there, one tiring day at a time. 

My co-worker Jess, is a gardener.  Not like a "Hey, I've got some plants in the ground and I call it a garden" kind of gardener, but an "I study the organic seed catalog and I've planted eleven different types of cucumbers" kind of gardener.

Back in late Spring we made a simple deal.  Jess grows too many vegetables for her and her husband to eat.  I happen to take some photographs that people tend to like.  Veggies for images.  That's my kind of bargain.

The garden is in full swing now, and with time of the essence (I can't, as she pointed out, take pictures of her garden from Idaho), I spent the last hour of sunlight delicately tramping through her masterpiece garden to tell the story of her plants.  It's really quite spectacular.  I took about 250 images, and I am realistic enough to realize that the multiple hours of processing time needed for that number isn't going to happen before our move.

With that in mind I thought I'd share this one, with the promise of more to come.

Just in case some of you East Coasters don't know, Syd is back on tour with a full band.  Syd's full band includes my two high school buds, Greg and Dylan.  The music rocks, the concerts are fun, and if they are playing near you, you should definitely go.

Yup, shameless plug.  But not so shameless, because a) they didn't ask me to do it and b) it's not plugging myself.  So...ha! 

Ahem.  But, uh, yeah, check out a show, and if you need more incentive other than my meandering recommendation, check out their MySpace page.

Oh boy, where do I begin?  Our life is a bit topsy turvy at the moment, there is a lot to do, and no clear path to get to the end.  One of the big things I'm waiting on is finding out when the movers are coming.  When you hire professional movers to haul your crap across the country, they originally give you a five day window of when they may arrive.  At first, when you're booking it, you think "hey, no sweat, five day window is great."  Then, you get to NOW, and you think "holy moly, five days? how the heck am I supposed to plan my moving life around a five day window?!?"  So what we're basically waiting for now is the call that says "we are coming on x day."  I was hoping that "x" day would be Friday, but it's looking to be more like Sunday or Monday.  Bugger.

As you can see here, our house is a disaster.  A full on tornado nightmare.  My allergies are going bananas.  Oh, and I pulled a muscle in my chest wall.  Ever done it?  No?  Ouch.  That's all I've got.  Ouch.

After the movers come, it's pell mell cleaning this huge house so we aren't deadbeat tenants.  Our landlord has luckily already rented out the place, so we don't have to worry about showing it again to prospective tenants.  After  trying to extract as much dog hair as humanly possible from the floor, walls, baseboards, windows, etc., we will be saying our goodbyes to friends and co-workers, perhaps getting together for a night or two of drinking, and then hitting the road early in the morning on Wednesday the 27th to start the amazingly long 2800 mile drive to Sun Valley.  Just Mike, me, two big dogs and our new Forester.  Yahoo!

When I was at my mom's a couple weeks ago she persuaded me to clean out the boxes I had in the attic.  Always a dangerous endeavor.  I ended up getting rid of a lot of things, but some items I just couldn't throw away (much to Mike's chagrin).  These two puppets were childhood favorites - Jenn and Becky, do they look familiar? 

Every since coming back from Idaho this week, we have been working hard to get things ready for the move.  Our nearest moving milestone is a big tag sale we have going tomorrow from 8am-1pm.  The local newspaper screwed up our tag sale ad, and didn't run it.  So Mike spent this afternoon tacking up fliers around town that I made, and we hand wrote some obsecenely flourescant "TAG SALE" signs to put up tomorrow morning on Route 7, which is right by our house.  Our hope is to attract a smattering of people to our lawn to look over our wares.  We are optimistically looking at this tag sale as a way to get rid of our crap short of plain giving it away.  Everything is priced super low, and whatever doesn't sell goes straight to Goodwill.  So much for a nice relaxing weekend, our estimated time of alarm (ETA, if you will) is 6am tomorrow.  No rest for the sleepy.

Also tomorrow Mike's parents are coming down to deliver two important things - our dogs (they have been in New Hampshire since two weekends ago when we left for Idaho), and our new Subaru Forester, which we hope will safely deliver us, the dogs, and our "survival kit" of stuff to Ketchum in a week and a half. 

Yesterday my co-workers at The Nature Conservancy threw myself and Angela (another co-worker who is leaving for grad school in Syracuse) a going-away bowling trip.  It was quite the scene, fifteen environmental workers scarfing pizza and playing atrociously bad games of bowling while gulping down draught PBR's and rum and cokes.  I was flattered to receive a set of engraved beer glasses - with an enscription just for me.  They must like me, or something. 

A week and a half until departure.  Can you believe it?  Because I sure can't.

For the time being, I have changed my front page to my Blog.  I will be writing in my blog regularly, as well as posting images regularly, during my move.  Keep checking in for updates!

In the past nine days, Mike and I have took what was supposed to be a perfectly relaxing and carefree vacation and turned it into an apartment hunting, PO box getting, job interview work trip.  At first reaction, this seems like a pretty bad tradeoff.  But, in the near future, I'll be living a vacation for a life.  So...I guess all in all it'll be okay.  In addition to finding an apartment (and securing that PO Box, which was harder than you might think), we spent three days in Challis at the Braun Brothers Reunion festival.  Reckless Kelly?  Love them.  Micky and the Motorcars?  Ditto.  Etc, etc.  Three days of awesome music.  We also did two hikes, one in Fox Creek north of Sun Valley, and the other to Pioneer Cabin which, at 9600 feet, affords a pretty darn spectacular view of the Pioneer Mountains.

Images can be found in Recent Shoots (including, for those of you who are interested, photos of our new digs). 

Teaching and racing go together, right?

 All right, perhaps not.  On Friday evening I taught a Sunset Photography Workshop for the Trustees of Reservations at their Bartholomew's Cobble property.  I had a great time talking cameras and composition with the six participants.  To some of the participants images, as well as my own, go to the Participant Gallery page.

After the Workshop, I hopped in the car and drove to Saratoga Springs, New York.  Mike and I spent time with his parents, sister, brother in law, and grandmother.  We trotted away a beautiful afternoon at the Saratoga Springs Thoroughbred track.  We gambled (just a little) and watched the races.  I watched other people.  Venues like the Racetrack are such interesting places to see a wide variety of people, all engaged in the same activity.  You can see images from the Thoroughbred Track on my newly created Recent Shoots page.

I took a quick trip at the end of last week to the Ketchum/Sun Valley area of Idaho.  It's also called the Wood River Valley.  I don't quite know the right etiquette for what you call the area.  Hmm.  I guess I'll have to figure that out before...I move there!

Yup, that's right.  While out there, I interviewed and got a position as the Major Gifts Manager for The Nature Conservancy.  I couldn't be more excited.  Mike has a few leads on positions, and we are looking into this really great rental condo downtown.  We'll be leaving the Berkshires at the end of August, and making the long trek out there.  Oh boy oh boy oh boy!

Don't worry, I'll still be involved in photography.  Who wouldn't be in such a spectacular landscape?  I hope your eyes will follow me out there to see what images I'm able to capture during this new adventure.  For now, get a glimpse of the area by checking out my Sun Valley Gallery, compiled during my very short trip.

By tonight, I'll be sleeping soundly (or not-so-soundly, as the case may be) in Idaho.  I'm flying to Sun Valley for a brief trip, I'll be back by Sunday.  Keep your eyes tuned here for some pictures!

This weekend I was a bridesmaid in the wedding of Matthew Austin and Kristin Hastings.  I didn't take many pictures (I left that to the hired pro!), but here are a few of what I grabbed.  Congratulations to Kristin and Matt, and have a spectacular time on your honeymoon!  If you'd like to see more images from the beautiful day, check out their Flickr site - http://www.flickr.com/photos/27286435@N05/ - where many other guests have downloaded their pictures.

 

Yesterday I spent the day on the river photographing whitewater rafters and kayakers.  It was a great day for whitewater, and there were a lot of boats out.  You can see a full gallery of the images here. 

 I went to watch Mike and Greg (a friend) kayak, and to while away the day sitting by Zoar Gap waiting for some action to grab pictures.  What else did I do, you may ask?  Well, let me tell you.  I dropped (and lost forever) in the river the lens hood for my 18-200VR.  Then, I dropped (and also lost forever) my favorite pencil...it was a mechanical one, before you think I'm getting emotional about a wooden pencil.  Then again, you can continue to question getting emotional about a mechanical pencil.  Hmm.  Last, but certainly not least, I was standing on a rock on the edge of the river talking with Mike and Greg, just after they passed through Zoar Gap.  I take my hand out of my pocket and KERPLUNK, a very expensive CF card for my camera goes flying into the water.  Mike retrieved it by flipping his boat over (thanks Mike) but it was submerged for a good two minutes.  An idiot?  Yeah, that's me.  It's drying out, and I'm awaiting the prognosis on it's future.  Ugh.  

But, I talked to and saw a lot of great kayakers.  You'll see some of them in images here.

Are you one of the kayakers, rafters, or tubers in these pictures?  Email me if you'd like higher resolution copies of any of these images!