Sadly, I have not seen bigfoot or zombies, so that title is the tiniest bit deceiving. I do have bigfoot and zombie stories though!
But first a quick mundane update. While I am hearing about all this wet weather happening in Colorado, it is quickly turning to fall here. We have some pretty nice leaf colors and its getting darker at night. We even saw a little hint of northern lights driving home from the airport after Michigan. During the two weeks I'm up north, the days will get two hours shorter. The darkness will be great for sleeping better. Right now my north slope sleeping tactic is an eyemask with earplugs in. Sensory deprivation while hoping I don't sleep through my alarm or a fire drill or whatever. But other than that I don't have any exciting polar bear stories or anything so far this hitch. On the other hand, I had some good times in Fairbanks on my two off weeks.
I have recently stumbled upon my new favorite place in Fairbanks. It is a combination restaurant, bar, and movie theater. And it is as awesome as it sounds. We went to go see World War Z. As a zombie and scary movie fan, I thought it was quite good. I read the book after seeing the movie and was impressed by that as well. However, they are really nothing alike which surprised me a bit. But somehow they both were entertaining and enjoyable. Zombie movie watching has led to my conclusion that the ideal number of children for maximum zombie apocalypse survival is two. One for each parent and then, if you happen across an orphan, you can still feasibly take one or two in easily without too much extra hassle. Travis told me that plan was fine as long as we limited to a reasonable amount of orphans because too many would just be harmful for everyone. But I confirmed that Travis passes the "Has a good heart AND realistic logistical planning skills even in the midst of zombie apocalypse," marriageablity test.
Perhaps the most unique adventure on the list recently was the trip to Barnes and Noble for the presentation on cryptozoology. Mainly bigfoot with a splash of other creatures, extraterrestrials and UFOs, and paranormal happenings. I was intrigued to see so many people show up. I was also surprised to realize the depth of my bigtlfoot knowledge when I knew a lot of the information presented. I did get to see some cool bigfoot track plaster casts in person though. While the jury is still out as far as how much I believe any of this, I am extremely entertained by the aforementioned subjects. Travis is definitely less entertained but puts up with me and my interests to win brownie points. He also uses my interests in monsters and any other sort of oddity to his advantage to try and convince me to move to new places. Washington is prime bigfoot country, Australia has the Tasmanian tiger (an extinct wolfish creature that very well could exist still) and the yowie (bigfoot's Aussie cousin), Ecuador has head shrinking tribes and ghosts, and so on and so forth. Travis also made sure to tell tales about the Michigan dog man early on in our relationship. We even had a few interesting haunted monster adventures while he lived in Victor, Colorado for a summer internship. The house he lived in was rumored to contain a secret underground tunnel to the mine. With a ghoulish old miner. Or something like that. His roommates joined in on a late night search of the basement after a few beers but we never found any haunted tunnels. The heater made horrendous rattling noises and there might have been some type of animal haunting the dining room bench though. But if anyplace would have real ghosts, it would be that old ghost town. I have not managed to find much in Alaska thus far but a trip to some haunted hot springs may soon be in order.
The only regular adventure we went on was to the racetrack. Furthest north dirt track in the world! And my first time watching car races in person. We saw everything from stock cars to sprint cars and budget cars. I was pretty entertained. Not to mention the nerdy high I got contemplating sprint car physics. Travis better watch out, driving large, fast pieces of heavy machinery in my spare time sounds like a good hobby for this adrenaline junkie.
