Early Morning Visitor - March 20, 2012

When Doug got up at 6:00 this morning, he looked out the bedroom window and saw this moose resting right outside our back steps. About 30 minutes later, I spotted the calf just below the other bedroom window. He munched on our tree for a minute and then also settled down to rest. It finally got light enough to take some pictures. We tried to be quiet in the house and not turn on many lights so we didn't disturb mama. She and the calf stayed for about two hours.

Moose calf munching on our tree just before he left our yard.

Moose calf going past our family room window, headed for our trees.

Mama getting ready to leave.

We live on a hill. Although that perspective is hard to see in this photo, our yard goes downhill and our trees go to the bottom of the hill. As I was watching the moose, I saw the dog in the neighbor's yard below (just over the back of the moose calf). The dog headed toward our trees at the bottom of the hill. Very shortly I saw the dog turn around and go back home. Good choice, Fido!

X-Country Skiing - February 18, 2012

We went cross country skiing for my birthday last weekend. Our plan was to try some different different trails. As you can see from the pictures, it was a gorgeous day. We drove about an hour and a half toward Talkeetna. We first stopped at Fish Lake. We talked to a lady in the parking lot who had just finished her ski. Fortunately, she was a local and could fill us in on the helpful hints. We pretty much surmised that she was a regular, since she had just finished her ski with a baby on her back. This was a "lazy ski". It was about three miles around, but it was all flat. We were actually skiing on the lake, not on the ground around the lake.

This photo was taken from the parking lot as we approached the lake. The next three photos were taken from beside the snow bank where you can see that the trails drops off toward the lake.

View of lake to the left.

View of center of lake .

View of right side of lake.

The friendly lady in the parking lot told us to ski in a clockwise direction around the lake. She said that it would be a pretty view. Holy cow! She failed to mention that the pretty view was of Mt. McKinley, Mount Hunter and Mt. Foraker. If we had skied in a counter clockwise direction, we most likely never would have noticed this view, as we would have been skiing with the mountains to our backs. By the time we would have gotten to the other side of the lake and faced the mountains, we would have been too close to the trees to get any view of the mountains.


The friendly parking lot lady had also told us that there were some brand new trails just 3 miles up the road toward Talkeetna. So after we finished at Fish Lake we headed to the X-Y trails. These new trails had just been put in last fall. They went around X Lake and Y Lake (but not around Z Lake).
This ski was not difficult, but it did have up and down slopes. We were skiing on trails that are used as hiking trails during the summer, so we were not on the flat lake.

These pictures of Denali (Mt. McKinley), taken from the X-Y trails.

After our ski we stopped at the local grocery store for a birthday dinner of peanut M&M's and Pepsi. Awesome! Actually we did have reservations Saturday evening at a very nice restaurant in Eagle River. But we were having such a great day, we completely forgot about it. We didn't remember until the next evening that we had missed our dinner reservations.

We have had a LOT of snow here this winter.
These pictures are of some of the mailboxes along the roads.

On Sunday we skied another new trail at what is called the Moose Range. We didn't have a map for this one. We skied and skied for more than 45 minutes and never did get turned in the direction of what we thought was heading back to where we parked. The good news is that we could just turn around and follow the trail backwards. We still got our exercise in. The trail was fun, but did not have the spectacular views from our Saturday trails.
Doug was off work on Monday so we skied at Independence Mine at Hatcher Pass. It was challenging because it was overcast and the light was what they call "flat light". There was no definition or shadow in the snow. You could not see the groomed area unless you were standing directly on the trail. The hillside looked like one big glaring white sheet.

One whole hill is the sledding hill and is really packed down from all the sledding. A guy in the parking lot asked us if there was a safe place to take his daughter sledding. We pointed out the sledding hill to him. The reason he was asking for a safe place is because they have avalanches in Hatcher Pass. You would not want to sled down any old hill if you could not tell that the snow was packed.

All in all it was a wonderful weekend!!

Week in Review January 16, 2012

Wildlife in the neighborhood in January

Last Saturday when Doug got out of the bed, he looked out the window (as we always do - looking for wildlife and/or Northern Lights) and spotted moose tracks in the snow in our yard. The tracks were right beside our deck and patio door and led around the side of the house. We went from window to window and finally decided that the moose was no longer in our yard. When Doug went out later to scoop snow. he discovered the tracks led to the corner of the house right outside our laundry room window. The young (judging from the size of the tracks) moose had munched on what was left of our flower barrel in the corner. While the moose was dining in the corner by the house, he apparently got tangled in the extension cords of our outside holiday lights which Doug had placed "out of the way" off the sidewalk by the flower barrel. Doug found quite a tangled mess of cords on the sidewalk and the snow on the sidewalk pretty trampled down. It looked like the moose had quite a time extricating himself from the cords. Sorry - lots of evidence, but no pictures!

*****

On Sunday when the sun came up we found new visitors to our bird feeders. These are Bohemian Wax Wings. As you can see they are much larger than our regular customers, the red polls, nuthatches and chickadees. Doug saw one that was orange-red from his head to his tail. He did not stick around for a photo- op. We see pictures of them in the Anchorage newspaper every winter, but have never actually had them at our house before this year. A couple of them have been back a few times this week.

You can really see the red breasts and red caps on the red polls.

At first when the red polls were at the feeder, the nut hatches and chickadees flew away. But they are now sharing the feeder more frequently.

******

We have had tons of birds, probably because we have had TONS of snow! Doug puts feed out every day. Sometimes we have 30-40 just on the porch feeders. They also feed on the ground under the deck. You can also see the red hanging feeder in these pictures.

Note the snow on the hanging feeder in the left center of this picture. The feeder is down the hill about 20' from the deck.

In this picture, between the porch railings, you can see the squirrel feed shelf on the tree about 40' down the hill. When the squirrel is not there, the birds help themselves to his feed.

******

We have had some resident eagles in the tree on a regular basis. The first couple of pictures were taken 2-3 weeks ago. We went through about 3 weeks of gray,
cloudy weather. As you can see by the snow on the house roof, this was taken before our last couple of weeks of snow, snow, snow. But we do count our blessings. We do not have anywhere near the amount of snow that has fallen at Valdez and Cordova.

*****

These photos were taken on Sunday, January 15, 2012. Doug was outside chipping away at the ice on the driveway when he heard the eagles "talking" to each other. It is kind of a chittering noise. This house is four houses away from ours. You can see that the sun is out and the sky is blue. But it comes at a price. It has been about -15* all week and that trend is to continue this next week. It is VERY beautiful weather (if viewed from the inside). :>) And it is gorgeous outside if you are dressed for it. I have been substituting this past week and since it is not exceeding -20*, the kids still go outside for recess. They all bring their "gear" and out they go. Fortunately (for me), my current position does not require me to go outside with them.

Since the winter solstice (big party time here) on December 21, we have gained back 4-6 minutes of daylight each day. Actual sunrise is currently at 9:55 AM (it starts getting light earlier than that), and sunset is at 4:23 PM - 6 hours and 28 minutes -- not much less than a normal winter day in Nebraska. Of course, we will keep gaining until we are almost at 24 hours of light by June.

*********

Speaking of "Wild Life"

These photos are of the spot where I slid into the ditch on the way home from school on Friday afternoon. It wasn't really a wild ride. It actually happened in kind of slow motion. Those of you who know me know that I can usually easily drive my way out of something like this. Not this time.

It was snowing like crazy and I met a car in our neighborhood just two blocks from our house who felt that his half of the road was the middle of the road. I moved over to the right, not worrying about going too far, as there was a monster snow berm on the side of the road where the maintainer had made a ridge when he cleared the road. I figured I would crunch in the hard berm and know when I was over far enough. I forgot what I have been telling you - that Alaska snow is light and fluffy. The berm was not hard and crunchy. I got over just far enough that I started to slide down into the ditch, and there was no driving out of it--just sliding down and sideways. I ended up with my front bumper in the snow on the passenger side, tilted so I had to crawl up out of the drivers door, and with my wheels completely packed in snow so that I could not turn them.

Thank goodness for cell phones. I called my Knight in Shining Armor (aka Doug) and told him of my predicament and told him if he wanted to pull me out while it was still light out, he should leave the office immediately. (Note that there was not an option given whether or not he would pull me out, just WHEN he would pull me out).

Doug shoveled on the passenger side and I shoveled on the drivers side. Then I got back in the car, ready to try again. Suddenly Doug knocked on the window and told me to look out the passenger window. There was a young moose munching on the tree in the yard beside us (picture #2, tree at the left side of the photo. You can see how close he was. The two-rail fence would not even have slowed him down if he headed for Doug.

As we were digging, the school bus arrived and dropped off kids. There was a mom waiting to pick up her kids from the bus. As often happens here, she had all the kids get in her car, in case the moose decided to attack. No "don't get in with strangers" in this case. The moose started walking toward the bus and her car. It apparently looked up and saw all the activity and turned around and went the other direction (Whew!) Sorry, no moose pictures here either.

Pictures, finally!!!!

When we got up this morning, Doug did the normal check out the window and not only saw moose tracks, but the actual moose! He was at the house next door. The tracks showed that he had been in our yard right beside our house earlier. I did get a few quick pictures before he disappeared down the hill.

Christmas Eve, 2011

Christmas Eve Treat

I arose early Christmas Eve morning to put some cinnamon rolls out to rise (since I had forgotten to put them out in the refrigerator to thaw the night before). Whenever we get up the in dark during the winter, we have looked out the windows to see if we can spot the Northern Lights. On my way back to bed I stopped by the bedroom which faces the Talkeetna Mountains to look, and THERE THEY WERE!!!! I hurried in and woke Doug and we went from one bedroom to the next looking out the windows. We could see the red, pink and green glow on the horizon in a 270* arc. They were not the large, dancing curtains which you see in photographs, or the ghostly swirls. They were just glowing area that grew brighter and then faded and changed locations on the horizon. After watching for just a few minutes we decided to get dressed and drive to a nearby hill to see if we could get a better view (the Schwabenhauf hill, for those of you who have visited us). We were at the hill in about 10 minutes. The reds had faded, and the greens were a little less. But we sat and watched them for another 20 minutes. Also, the range had diminished. We could only see them in one direction. As we sat facing the Lights, we could see an ice fog creeping up on us from the rear. It was still quite dark, but there were lots of highway and street lights that got fuzzier until they disappeared in the fog. Several hours after the fog passed the trees were beautiful, covered in a thick frost.

Sorry, I have no pictures of the lights.

A photo taken with our small cameras could not do them justice.

I do have a website, sent to me by a friend, that explains the phenomena of the Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis. What we have learned is that we should not just look to the north. They occur in any direction around us.

http://www.flixxy.com/aurora-borealis.htm

*************************************************

Later in the day we drove a little north of our house to scout a skiing trail that we had read about. We have a lot of snow at our house, but there was a LOT of snow just 20 minutes away from our house. The elevation is higher and the temperature was about 15* colder than at our house too.

Note the snow on the power lines

*************************************************

These pictures were taken from our house in late November. These are the mountains we can see from 3 separate sides of our house. For those of you who have visited, I have included the location from which the photo was taken, because the first one is the only view you can see in the summer. We can only see the other mountains once the leaves are off the trees.

Talkeetna Mountains

(photo taken from bedroom at the end of the upstairs hallway)

Chugach Mountains

(photo taken from our bedroom window, looking to your left)

Chugach Mountains

(photo taken from our bedroom window, looking to your left)

Pioneer Peak in the Chugach Mountains

(photo taken from our bedroom window, looking to your right)

Chugach Mountains

(photo taken from our bedroom window, looking straight ahead, toward Palmer)

You can see the fog which follows the Matanuska River in the picture - at the top of the tree line and the base of the mountains. The tall peak is Matanuska.