Seldovia

On the 5th I went out on the ferry to see Paul at work. I rode over to Seldovia on the Bridge as he was working. I wandered around Seldovia for an hour or so before returning to the ship and seeing how they load everything. On the way back, I received a full tour of the ship. I even got to the the parts where they store the water, sewage, etc.

Seldovia Park Sign 

 There’s a lot of wood sculptures around town. They do them with chainsaws.

Fun Bench

Thought this sculpture was cool.

An old Greek Orthodox church.

Thought this was a cool looking old boat. Glad I didn’t have to ride in it.

This is how they grow flowers on the board walk. I guess if you don’t have any ground you have to find another way to do it.

 I did realize that next time I need to bring my camera. A phone works, but only has so much memory.

Moose Encounters

Sometimes I don’t think I pay enough attention to the moose and wildlife I see up here - in more ways that one. The other day Paul drove me to the grocery store in Sterling and there in front of the doors were two moose. They were hanging out in the shrubs eating the plants. People were still going in and out the doors as if nothing special was going on. The customers were giving the moose their space, but didn’t seem to pay much attention to them.

A day or two later, we drove out to a hiking trail. On the way back, we saw easily over half a dozen moose on the side of the road. It was so common place that after the first three I didn’t even bother to count. I mean, why they’re everywhere and I was just going to see another in a few minutes.

Today I walked out my door and started walking to my car and as usual was not paying much attention to anything. A moose on the opposite side of my car, probably five yards away, starts running away and runs out of the parking area. Nothing too unusual. I see them all the time.

I didn’t think too much about it. Then I started thinking, there are two reasons I should probably pay more attention to the moose.

1 - They’re pretty cool. Not everyone gets the chance to see them everyday. I should appreciate what I get to see. I mean come on, it’s not everyone who gets to have a yard covered with moose poop and have the big guys hang out at their house. People from all over the world come here to see things like that and I get to do it everyday.

2 - (And probably most important.) Moose are big animals. If one of them decided to charge me, I’d end up flat as a pancake, with quite a few broken bones to boot. I should probably be more aware of what’s going on around me to avoid being trampled. Is it really smart to walk in a door a few yards from a moose or scare one out of the yard?

So, thanks to Paul, here some pictures of the moose at the store.





Ok, I took this one and now thinking that maybe getting this close wasn’t the smartest thing to do. But hey, at least I was in a car when I did it and didn’t just walk up to it.

Ring

This is for all of you who wanted a picture of the ring.

I told Paul I didn’t want a big diamond, so he got me a bunch of little ones instead.



Here’s how it looks on me.

Moose

There are a lot of wildlife all around where I live. You’d think that the people who live up here would be used to it. These last few weeks there have been quite a few moose around school and every time the students act like it’s the first time they’ve seem them.

Two weeks ago I was walking down the stairs with another teacher. Two female students some running into the school and tell us, “There’s two mooses outside.” Without missing a beat the other teacher turns to them and says, “The plural of moose is moose not mooses. There are two moose outside.” and continues to walk down the stairs. When she got down to the bottom of the stairs she told the girls that she would let the vice-principal know about them. I was just trying not to laugh.

I guess in school it’s not safety first, it’s education first.

Thanksgiving weekend

This Thanksgiving I went down to Sterling and learned to snowshoe. It was fun. I dressed in my Arctic gear thinking it was going to be cold. (It had been about −15 the week before.) However by the time we were done I was unzipping my coat and taking off my outer layer. I think it might have gotten all the way up to 10 degrees.

For Melissa

I was talking to Melissa the other day and she got on me for not updating my blog in forever. So this one’s for her. If you want to know what I’ve been up to lately, here it goes.



Hike up Flat Top in July



More Hiking



More Hiking in August


My Birthday


More Birthday


Canoeing


More from the canoe trip


More hiking in October

See any common threads so far?


So much for the Easter Bunny!


Rabbit Killing!

Let me know if you need more Melissa!

Bears

I’ve always known that there were a lot of bears here in Alaska. I’ve even gone out on purpose to look for polar bears. However, today I had my first completely unplanned encounter with a bear.

My friend Blanca invited me to go with her kids to hike Bald Mountain. However, when I got to her house she told me that she’s heard that there was a mother bear with a cub chasing people there. So we decided to go hike Thunderbird Falls instead. Neither of us had done it before, but it was close by and I’d heard it was pretty easy so we decided to go for it.

We had fun walking in. At the fork in the road we first took the one that went along the river and then came back and took the trail to the observation platform where there was a good view of the falls. Walking down my friend told me she was a little disappointed in the hike and had expected a little more. I also had to admit it was a lot shorter and easier than I’d been looking forward to.

Just over half way down the trail we saw a group of a few adults and a lot of kids we had passed coming back towards us. They were making a lot of noise and we could hear them saying, "just keep going back.” We got closer and they told us there was a black bear following them. They had seen a mom and two cubs. We didn’t stop to see anything, we just turned around and started going back the way we had come. As we were all walking along we were talking about what we should do. People were trying to call the troopers on their phones, but the reception was bad. There was no other way out. Luckily there were some houses with yards backing up to the train. So we decided to climb a fence. We found a place that would work and started handing kids over the fence. Then all rest of the adults climbed over. When we got to the front yard of the house we were finally able to get some reception for the phones. My friend got a hold of the troopers and we told them about the bears and that there were still people further up the trail. We walked down and around to get to the parking lot where the cars were. We hung around a while to see what would happen. Three cops, a wildlife employee, and a state trooper all eventually showed up with tranquilizer guns to try and scare the bear away. They did get all the hikers out safely, but we didn’t stay around to find out what happened to the bears.

Now that it’s over, I can look back and call it an exciting adventure.