Wales - 1

Tryying to figure out how to post about Wales, I've decided to let my pictures structure the story and go in chronological order. There are lots of overlapping stories here, but rather than isolate them out, I'll let them unfold (or not) as I experienced them. For the beginning of this Wales trip including maps go to July 18, 2007.

We got the flight go-ahead at 11am on Friday and flew into the Wales airport on a new Beechcraft. Here we are at the airstrip in Wales with our luggage out. Four-wheelers were out at the airport to pick up luggage and we walked the ten minutes to the community center, passing grassy marsh land.


We had to decide where to stay. People had sleeping bags to put in offices in the Community Center, several of us brought tents. Alice, who's from Bethel, wanted to sleep out on the beach, so I went along to see if that would work for Joan too.





On the way we passed Marie who was going a little out of town to a large pond to fill up on water. Wales doesn't have running water. People said they did, but it was chlorinated and the State health people said that wasn't safe. So now they get the same unsafe water, but they have to get it in buckets. Or so that is what I was told.





Alice gave a warm hello to everyone we passed and the warmth was returned by all. A group of kids followed us to the beach. Shawna, the one in the hooded sweatshirt, became a buddy She's also the daughter of Joanne and Tony who were both participants in the writing workshop. Alice got her tent up on the beach, despite warnings by locals that it would get extremely windy and blow away. She piled rocks on all the stakes and in the tent.





Walking back through town to the Community Center after Alice's tent was up. In the end, Tony convinced me to put our tent just behind the community center so we wouldn't have to walk so far.