When I was a kid, we never took summer vacations. The crowds! The driving! It was all too much for my dad to take. So, while my pals were going on family road trips to Florida or Cape Cod, I got to run wild around my hometown.

I've spent the rest of my life making up for this. Anyone who's tried to get a hold of me this week knows I'm "out of office."

That's because I've been in Juneau, Alaska. Yes, Alaska, where the odds (men) are notoriously good, but the good are odd; where Sarah Palin is governor, but only for about three more weeks; and where a bear really did amble through my boyfriend's mother's back yard.

I was inside and too slow to see the bear, but, to give you a sense of the mighty Alaskan Brown Bear, here's a picture of me in the State Office Building standing next to a much safer bear.

Oh, and, though I'm famously the laziest person on the face of the earth, here's a shot of me at the top of an actual mountain. Yes, I did haul myself up a trail to get there...though I did take the Mount Roberts Tram first. That's Juneau in the background.

I'm leaving Alaska tomorrow, but I'll have more shots for you to see before I leave, including some of Lucia's Adventures in a Float Plane.