Thursday, June 28, 2007

Alaskan Tour Guide Days Slowing Down

We had a fantastic week as tour guides for our niece and great nephew. Sadly they have left us and are almost home.

The first couple of days were a tad wet. We panned for gold on Sunday and spent part of Monday driving in rain to the white water rafting location. Prior to getting to the rafting spot, we stopped off at the Reindeer Farm. What a fantastic morning. We were able to go right in the fields with reindeer and hand fed them. There was Bruce the pet moose and a tame sitka deer. Dolly the moody buffalo (she wasn't interested in attention) but Eddy the bull Elk was more than willing to be scratched between his ear and antler.

During the trip north to Chikaloon it cleared off and turned sunny. Thank goodness for dry suits because the water was a crisp 34 degrees. Devin is ready to do class 5 rapids now!!! Our guide was great and the Lion's Head rapids fast and deep. A good time was had by all.

The weather behaved the rest of the week- even into shorts by Thursday. We got good shots of the animals at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center as the keepers had tossed all of the fresh branches right by the fence. Unfortunately, it was too hot for the black bears and they were in their house not wanting to play.

Sadly as we neared Seward, we came upon a wreck involving a motor home in which two people died in the crash and 3 others were taken to the hospital. It breaks my heart to think of someone's vacation ending like this.

The wreck blocked the road (south of our hotel) into Seward for the rest of the evening. Since it was still light (wait - maybe I should say early since the sun doesn't set until 11pm or so) we took the opportunity to go to Cooper Landing and decided to hike to the Russian River Falls to view the salmon jumping upstream. The hike was actually 6 miles though swarms of bug spray loving mosquitoes and we were ready for dinner when it was over!

Of course the Alaska Sealife Center was interesting as always but the day cruise was exceptional. There was a humpback whale lunging out of the water for food. At another spot there was a humpback momma and baby, Orcas (with a baby), sea lions, sea otters, puffins, murres, currants, eagles (chasing seagulls for lunch), seals and to cap it off, we saw Aialik Glacier calving in to the water (this is where Robert filled up the DVD with movies and I ran out of room on the still camera memory stick). They sound just like a good midwestern thunderstorm. It was amazing.


Before heading back north from Seward, we stopped by Bear Creek Weir to watch the salmon pile up in the stream waiting for their turn to jump up into the weir to be counted. (This is where the DVD batteries went dead. It takes a lot of juice to catch jumping salmon on film.) We also hiked to the Exit Glacier. (This 2 mile hike, while having many mosquitoes, wasn't near as grueling as the Russian River Trail.) Exit Glacier is a valley glacier which is much quieter than a tidewater glacier. We couldn't get close enough to touch ice but came within 20 feet of it for some great "man compared to glacier" shots.

As our trip was winding down, Robert and I took them to the Zoo and pointed out all of the cages we had been in working last week. (Lyu the Polar Bear performed nicely.) We sprinkled in some shopping here and there, a couple of Ship Creek runs to watch the fishermen and a tram ride to the top of Alyeska. We even managed to catch a clear view of Denali and Foraker.

But of course - as to be expected - the plane leaves in 8 hours and what have we not seen yet???


A moose. Our nephew was pretty sure there are no moose in the wild - only in zoos and they always lay down. This called for another hike! We went to the Glen Alps lot and hiked to Powerline Pass (a nice easy stroll) and there they were. All kinds of moose - from big bulls to frolicking yearlings irritating their mothers. (I am so glad we proved we do have moose in the wild that stand up.)

All in all I think we had a wonderful week. When they got on the plane, they were pretty darn tired but hopefully have some fantastic memories of what we call home.

Friday, June 22, 2007

Pics from last week's vacation

This guy had just eaten a hot dog. Bun included. I remember coming here to the North Pole in 1968 or so. Santa has diversified


One of the glaciers between Anchorage and Seward.
Moose by the side of the road.

Check out that rack on Daddy!

Special thanks to my sister for allowing me to share some of her pictures. They are the ones with out the date on them. Well done photographer!

Company Coming!

Our days as tour guides continue starting Saturday. More family coming to visit. I am so excited! We have a jammed pack week of gold panning, bay cruising, river rafting, wildlife refuge, Sea Life Center, etc. I just hope the rain stays away for a little while longer and the sun comes out as it did last week.

Unfortunately, right now the air quality is terrible as we are having horrible wild fires in the southern peninsula and it seems all of the smoke wants to visit us. We are now under an air quality advisory.

Luckily I am baking doggie cookies and that reeking is over powering the smoke in the air. Squirt really likes these!

Speaking of which, I don't know what the UPS driver ever did to Squirt but EVERY SINGLE TIME a brown truck rumbles by, Squirt is up defending the property as if his life depended on it. He has always done this. Maybe it's because the UPS drives never bring him biscuits. The mailman does and therefore the mailman is on Squirt's good list.

(I just realized I haven't posted any pics from last week yet....oops...maybe I can get to that today.)

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Happy Summer Solstice!

We had 19 hours and 42 minutes of between sunrise and sunset today. The rest was rather dusky.

Sadly the days are now getting shorter...winter is coming!

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

OK - Polar Bears are REALLY BIG

Many corporations in Anchorage are very community oriented and not only donate funds but do community service projects. I was lucky to be invited to participate in one of the projects today. It was Zoo Day. We got there at 7:00am and the animals were out enjoying the weather. The red fox was surveying the entrance; the arctic fox came to the bars and stretched his front legs; the wolverine was watching; yaks were stomping; musk ox were standing (although, I don't know what else they do). All were active except the porcupines. They appear to be late sleepers.

The weather could not have been better. Sunny, 75-80 degrees, slight breeze. Perfect for outdoor work. Robert and I started off on a project sealing the administration building. (Yes - with all of the potential animal projects, we are on the building with humans.) This consisted of painting two log cabins with the equivalent of baby oil. Slightly messy but when finished, they looked much better.

Since the team zipped through our project (8 people to do the 2 - one story cabins) we proceeded to the Polar Bear Cage Painting Project. This required the team to paint the very tall bars of the cage with primer and then with white enamel. Sounds easy except the bars had to be 18 feet high and we couldn't use ladders. Everything had to be done with paint brushes, small rollers and small rollers on really long handles.

Lyu was not happy. Lyu is the very big, fully grown, male polar bear. There were strangers in his cage along with nasty paint smells and he couldn't protect. The bear sat at the gate of his inside pen and smacked it hard with both paws for what seemed like hours. He has really big paws (probably 4 times the size of my hand) and big teeth which he gladly showed us when trying to gnaw through the bars. I was amazed at how large he is. I have seen lots of polar bears in zoos before and there is something about being on the other side of the pen, fence, moat, glass, etc. that diminishes their enormous girth when compared to standing three feet away from them.

Ahpun the female was much quieter and more patient. She seemed to be shedding more and I grabbed a handful of hair to bring home with me. (Squirt wasn't that interested.)

Needless to say, there was hair in the paint by the time it was finished. For what it's worth, there was paint in hair (workers) also.

To see the Lyu and Ahpun, check out polar bear cam (if it is working)

We also had the privilege of working next to 2 baby moose. They are so cute and awkward. They were very "chatty" today. I kept hearing a noise and finally figured out it was them bleating. I think they were lonely and wanted to come out to play.

After the bear cage, we moved on to paint picnic tables and then home to clean up for the BBQ.

All in all - a two thumbs up day!

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Vacation in Alaska

Is GREAT!

My sister and brother-in-law have been here this week and we have had a great time. We went cruising in the Bay and had beautiful weather. We drove to Fairbanks and poked around and had beautiful weather. Took the train to Seward and has fantastic weather...Denali even decided to show up out of the clouds one day due to the exceptional weather....

OOOO....I hope summer isn't over!!!

It has to last two more weeks for the rest of our company to get here!!

Animal life was abundant this week....humpbacks in the bay, Dall porpoises, several moose, sand hill cranes, baby mountain goats, Dall sheep, but sadly no bears - yet. We still have today but since we are going shopping, I expect the only bears we will see are human ones.

Pictures to be posted as soon as we get them downloaded and minituraized!

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Hello from Bear Country!

We received neighborly e-mail today notifying us there is a black bear hanging around on a nearby deck. Not ours... NO more walking Squirt in the woods without his bear bells on!!!

Speaking of bears, this article (or portions of it) made it to several news wires yesterday.

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/wildlife/bears/story/8949935p-8849155c.html

This was withing a mile of our house. Note - this one was a brown bear instead of the "very large and fat black bear" which is hanging around here in our neighborhood.

Could be interesting walking tonight!!!

On a different note, the painters are almost finished! Only a little bit of trim left and the deck and - BONUS - the new railing around the deck should be almost done by tomorrow! The car gets detailed Friday and Squirt on Monday. If the weather holds out, all will be ready before company gets here Monday night. (I can't wait! I'm really looking forward to our visiting family!)

Monday, June 04, 2007

There they were...

On our evening walk tonight, we once again wandered into the Chugach forest from our neighborhood and just off of the last back yard we passed stood a momma and 2 moose calves. (If I hadn't said anything, Robert would have missed the whole thing.) They were enjoying snacks of leaves off of bushes. We stood there and watched for a few minutes - the babies are so very cute.

Of course, the camera is in the car.

And for some reason, I couldn't convince Robert to run back and get it.

We left before any of them made it to the path and while Momma watched us, she never flattened her ears and didn't appear to be agitated. We did the whole circuit and I doubt they are still there as that was 50 minutes ago.

That makes 3 moose babies this year for the neighborhood so far.

What are the chances we will go for a walk again without a camera?!? Any takers? Slim to none!