Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

 Photo Credit K.L. Caley I am writing this for the weekly #WritePhoto challenge by KL Caley at New2Writing.com. Read all about it and join in if you'd like! Kind of a fun challenge this time. It's exactly 1000 words. Past the Tower Tommy and Beth stood and gazed up at the tower-topped entrance to the castle grounds, their mouths slightly open. It looked just like they would expect a castle gate to look.    “You think we’re supposed to just walk in?” Tommy tried not to sound scared, but he wasn’t sure he’d managed. Bethy could always tell, anyway. His older sister put her arm around him.   “The letter said this is where we come, and we’ll be starting our new lives.” If Beth worried that the letter was all a fakement, she kept it to herself. Were there such a things as princes and princess these days? They didn’t have anywhere else to go, unless they stayed at the orphanage. The letter said they belonged here. What was the worst that could happen if they

Title: Sweet Home Alaska Author: Carole Estby Dagg Publication Info: Nancy Paulson Books, 2016. 298 pages, Kindle edition Source: Library digital resources (Overdrive) Publisher's Blurb: Terpsichore can’t wait to follow in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s footsteps . . . now she just has to convince her mom. It’s 1934, and times are tough for their family. To make a fresh start, Terpsichore’s father signs up for President Roosevelt’s Palmer Colony project, uprooting them from Wisconsin to become pioneers in Alaska. Their new home is a bit of a shock—it’s a town still under construction in the middle of the wilderness, where the residents live in tents and share a community outhouse. But Terpsichore’s not about to let first impressions get in the way of this grand adventure. Tackling its many unique challenges with her can-do attitude, she starts making things happen to make Alaska seem more like home. Soon, she and her family are able to start settling in and enjoying their new su

Read the complete TMB series :  Part 1    Part 2     Part 3    Part 4   Part 5   Part 6   TMB Day 1: Les Houches to Les Contamines This is it! July 3, the first day of the official TMB!  We began by taking the bus to Les Hoches, cutting out a bit of the actual trail that we'd hoped to do as a dayhike but skipped due to me feeling ill. We then did what we always did when possible: took a cable car up to start the hike at Bellevue. Happy hikers, ready to begin! I'm on the right.   The walk was a fairly easy and pleasant descending traverse until we dropped steeply to cross a glacial river. That marked the beginning of the climb to Col de Tricot. Only after the crossing did we see the sign about one hiker at a time on the bridge. We were having mixed sun and clouds, but still got good views of the glaciers coming off the south end of the Mt. Blanc massif. The climb to the pass proved to be easy, and we topped out shortly after 11, despite a relatively late start, unprepared for

Title: Pine Island Home Author: Polly Hovarth Publication Info: Kindle edition, 151 pages, Margaret Ferguson Books 2020. Source: Library Overdrive collection Publisher's Blurb: When the McCready sisters' parents are washed away in a tsunami, their Great Aunt Martha volunteers to have them live with her on her farm in British Columbia. But while they are traveling there, Martha dies unexpectedly, forcing Fiona, the eldest, to come up with a scheme to keep social services from separating the girls - a scheme that will only work if no one knows they are living on their own. Fiona approaches their grouchy and indifferent neighbor Al and asks if he will pretend to be their live-in legal guardian should papers need to be signed or if anyone comes snooping around. He reluctantly agrees, under the condition that they bring him dinner every night. As weeks pass, Fiona takes on more and more adult responsibilities, while each of the younger girls finds their own special role

Image credit KL Caley I am writing this for the weekly #WritePhoto challenge by KL Caley at New2Writing.com. Read all about it and join in if you'd like! I have decided to try my best to join in on this hop again, and while this photo is particularly challenging in my opinion (there's a lot of empty space there... what's that tractor up to?), I think I can pull off a bit of something, so here goes. Super short, just over 300 words. Farmer's Revolt Jane Amelia was bored. Bored, bored, bored, bored. She’d driven the tractor across this field a hundred times, trying hard to keep the rows straight and even, as her father had instructed her. And for what? She left neat rows of cut hay for the next bored driver with the rake, then the baler, while she moved on to the next field, and the next, and the next. World without end, amen. The house was just over there, behind the trees that kept the yard separate from the fields. She could go home, have a cup of coffee a

Read the complete TMB series :  Part 1    Part 2     Part 3    Part 4   Part 5   Part 6 Hiking around Chamonix Sit down, fasten your seatbelts, and prepare for a lot of photos, because I sure took a boatload of them on my hikes in the Alps! I was there for all of July (and a little bit of June and August), and did two major treks, all of it sleeping and eating in hotels and refuges (no camping this time) but still pretty strenuous at times. The TMB hike I did with my brother-in-law and his wife (Tom and Carol). This post shares photos from Chamonix and the hikes we did there while my companions got over jet lag and we all adjusted a bit to higher elevations. Some of the hiking was a matter of cherry-picking the good parts of the TMB through the valley, though we didn't achieve them all. First, a few shots of town. Mt. Blanc hovers over the town from almost every angle, First climbers to summit, I believe. Doing what we did in so many photos--pointing at the mountain. The River A