Moosetastic Weekend

This weekend was full of new animal friends.  First we saw a nice lady moose at Kincaid Park.  Kincaid Park is over by the airport on the west side of town.  It's full of excellent hiking trails (good for cross country skiing in the winter) and, according to something I read once (reliable, I know) it's home to more moose than anywhere else in the city.  In the summer we encountered a number of tourists out hunting moose with their cameras.  I think we've seen moose there almost every time we've been out there, and we've definitely seen more and more since it's gotten colder.  Here's one we saw on Saturday:

I took that picture from the car with my phone.  As much as I absolutely LOVE moose, I'm also quite afraid of them, so I'd never get that close to one without being in the car (or having Andy between me and the moose).

On the way out of the park, we saw some more - a mama and two babies.  Because we were driving on the road, I was only able to snap a quick photo of two of them, and the sun was in my eyes so...yeah, not the best picture:

Mama and one of the babies

So we saw four moose on Saturday, which was really cool because the most I'd ever seen before was two together.  I guess we're really getting to the time when they're coming out of the woods to look for food.

This morning we headed up to Flattop.  I had such a nice walk with Ripley on Thursday that I wanted to take Andy to see all the snow.  I'm really glad he suggested we take the camera.

Perfect (but VERY COLD) day with the sun just peeking over the mountains.

We made Ripley wear the coat:

As we walked down the powerline pass trail, we caught sight of a moose on the other side of the creek having a drink.  See?

Upon closer inspection, there were SIX of them.  Can you spot them all??

Since there was a small river between the moose and the three of us, I grabbed the camera and decided to head toward the river and see how close I could get.  Andy kept Ripley back by the trail so he wouldn't scare the moose away. (Though me crashing through the bushes was probably pretty terrifying).

On the way I followed some moose tracks and found a spot where one bedded down recently.  Doesn't look very comfortable, does it?

As I got closer, the two moose up the hill ran off, but I got a good view of the other four!

Moose make really cool footprints - they look like palmiers, don't they? (if you don't know what a palmier is, go here)  ...and now I want a cookie.

When I got back from checking out the moose, and reassured Ripley that I wasn't running away (he was very upset that I walked away from him), Andy got artsy with the camera.  As you can see, the light was amazing this morning:

See his little beardsicles? Isn't he handsome?  Also, do you see that his coat has a little collar that folds over? How unnecessarily adorable is that?

Hope you enjoyed the moose! Happy Sunday!

Alaska Day!

Today is Alaska Day, which means little more to me than the fact that I didn't have to go to work today.   Now, I originally thought that Alaska Day celebrates the day that Alaska became a state, but I googled that and Alaska became a state on January 3, 1959, so that isn't it.  Apparently, according to the Internet, Alaska Day commemorates the day that Alaska was officially transferred from Russia to the U.S. Alaska Day is not to be confused with Seward's Day, which is in March, and is another holiday I get off of work.  That celebrates the day that Seward signed the treaty to buy Alaska at bargain basement prices from Russia.  Seriously, two cents an acre?! Right now an acre of land in Anchorage with a hideous split level full of wood paneling from the 1970s will run you about $600,000.  I know because I've been spending a lot of time cruising the MLS.

Anyway, you can tell Seward's Day is totally invented by the state employees who want more holidays because it's floating and is always on a Monday.  Alaska Day is more legit because it's always on October 18.  What's awesome about both is that they occur in months where there are no other holidays, which is another sign that the days were made up by state workers.

Sadly, Andy is in D.C. for a brief business trip this week, so Ripley and I were left to our own devices to celebrate the day off.  When we woke up, we were in for an interesting surprise:

Yes, it was seriously 14.2 degrees outside.
I never bothered to set the clock on the thermometer; this picture was taken around 8 a.m.
Also, yes I set the thermostat to 61 in the house.  I really hate paying the gas bill. 

Despite me letting him run around and suffer in the yard in the cold, Ripley still wanted to go do something, so we bundled up and headed to Hilltop to walk around in the snow once it was light enough (nowadays that's about 9 a.m.).

I wasn't kidding when I said bundled.  We I decided Ripley would need to wear his new jacket as long as it was under 20 outside.  He acted like I was trying to kill him when I put it on, but it didn't seem to bother him once we started walking around, since he was free to pee on everything and it doesn't restrict his movement - except one time a dog without a coat passed us on the trail and he definitely seemed embarrassed.  I'm such an overprotective mother!  Don't worry, he got me back by rolling in horse poop THREE TIMES on our hour long walk.  He was rewarded with a bath.  

After the walk, we headed home to relax.  After a couple hours on the couch, Ripley started staring at me and whining, so I knew we needed to head out for another adventure.  Since school was in session today (seriously, Alaska Day is ONLY a holiday for state workers - it's such a made up holiday!) and we couldn't go to the middle school to play ball like we usually do, we went to Flattop, our other favorite spot.   

It was much snowier up there than last weekend and Ripley had a blast.  It was REALLY cold in the shade (probably in the teens), but the scenery was good and as long as we kept moving I didn't get too cold.  I didn't make Ripley wear the jacket this time.  

Sorry the pictures were bad, I just had my phone and I had to de-glove every time I wanted to take a photo, so I kept it limited.  

Not a cloud in the sky! So pretty! 

You can tell it's cold because Ripley has little icicles on his snout.  I'm thinking maybe he needed the jacket after all...(I worry!)

The second adventure of the day definitely did the trick.  He's looked like this since about 5 today.  

We had a good day off!  Tomorrow I have to go to work and then pick up Andy laaaaaaaate late from the airport (thank god it's only 10 minutes away).  Happy Alaska Day everyone! 

Snow day

My snow whining paid off! We got about two inches at the house - just enough to make the neighborhood look a little prettier.

Not much else to say, I just wanted to leave some pictures here from our chilly walk up around Flattop this morning...

I'm being taunted by a moose...

Every morning, first thing after we wake up, I take Ripley outside to pee while Andy takes a shower.  Lately I've been terrified joking that a moose will be in the yard greeting us when I take Ripley out in the dark in my sweats.  We (and our next door neighbors) have the only unfenced yards in the neighborhood, and our neighbors' almost foot-tall grass seems like appealing moose grub to me.  Three days a week, I drive home from work to have lunch with Ripley (a.k.a. let him out to pee and sit on the couch with him while he watches me eat something).  Basically all this means that I spend a lot of time outside in our crappy, tiny yard.

When I came home for lunch on Friday, I found this:

Now, I know it looks like someone spilled a box of junior mints in the grass, but even from my limited time up here, I can confidently identify that pile as "moose poop."  

Of course, this has me absolutely terrified, because now my totally irrational fears about moose being in our yard has been justified and I'm scared to go out in the yard in the dark.  Andy spent a good portion of Friday telling me it was a fluke and nothing to worry about.  So, I tried to relax.  

On Friday night, while whining about there being no snow (I love snow, I'm excited about it, and every day that it's 30 degrees outside and NOT snowing is sad to me), I also started whining about not seeing northern lights.  It's been all over the paper this week that the northern lights have been putting on spectacular displays in Alaska and we've either slept through them, or it's been too cloudy outside to see them.  Just as I said, for probably the 50th time, that I wanted to see some northern lights, I saw a strange green cloud out the window.  NORTHERN LIGHTS!! 

Andy and I bundled up (except I had no convenient shoes but flip flops by the door, which was unpleasant to say the least because it was only 26 degrees outside) and ran out to the deathtrap deck to watch the show.  I was really impressed that we could see them so well from our house and we spent a solid half hour outside just watching the green lights dance across the sky.  Here's a picture from the paper today: 

That was the view from flattop, which, having no lights up there, was much better than at our house, but we still saw the lights, which were incredible! Next time we're going up to the mountains to check out the view from there.  I've also subscribed to email alerts from the Geophysical institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, so I know when they're coming.  What's crazy is that last night's show was a level "2" out of 10 on the activity scale.  I'd love to see level-10 northern lights!

Today was a lazy day - we decided to take the car to get the snow tires put on for the winter.  We ended up just leaving it at the tire place and walking home.  It seemed kind of silly that we're putting on snow tires, when it's only snowed once and that stuck around for only a few hours, but the forecast was calling for snow next week and we felt like it was something we should do before it snows rather than after.  Also, we wanted to do our part to tear up the roads in town.

Putting the studs on turned out to be a good decision because it just started snowing about a half hour ago.  Despite the fact that the weather channel app on my phone says it's clear skies and 40 degrees outside...maybe at the airport?

When we got home from the tire place, guess what I found in the yard???

That's right, NEW MOOSE POOP!  So now I'm officially pissed that this moose is dumping all over our yard and doesn't even have the decency to do it when I'm home so I can take a picture of the stupid thing.  This means war.

So aside from me being absolutely 100% right about the fact that one morning I could walk outside in my slippers and sweatpants and come face to face with a moose (meaning my fears are NOT irrational and Andy was completely wrong),  this weekend taught me another important lesson - WHINING GETS RESULTS.  First I whined about the northern lights, and then they appeared, next I whined about the snow, and it's snowing buckets outside.  Now, I'm off to go whine about winning the lottery.   This one's going to be extra tough because they don't even have the lottery in Alaska.

Everyone have a great weekend!!

Snow in September?

Hey everyone! I know we've been MIA lately.  Three weeks ago, I went down to Oregon to attend my grandma's memorial service.  It was a really nice time with family and I actually got to see some of my favorite Oregon people while I was there, too, but I didn't have much blogging time with all the activities and with dealing with stuff with the house.  We decided to take it off the market and try to rent it, which involved visiting the house, cleaning stuff up and tending to the yard.  Just what you want to do on vacation - pull weeds!

Then, two weeks ago we had a really fun weekend planned in Talkeetna.  We've heard nothing but great things about the town, which is about two hours north of Anchorage.  We even booked a cabin and scoped out the restaurants (two of which had been on the Food Network, which is the most watched channel in the Naylor household).  Sadly, the day we planned to drive up, this happened:

you can find the original story at adn.com

Andy got a call around lunchtime on September 21 from the owner of the lodge where we were staying apologizing because the town was getting evacuated and she couldn't keep our reservation.  No need to apologize! And we promise we'll stay when we finally do go to Talkeetna.  The big pull of Talkeetna, aside from excellent restaurants and it's close proximity to Denali National Park, are the several breweries they have in town.  Of course we'll eventually make the trip.  In fact, they probably needed more time to prepare for our visit.  (Kidding aside, things were bad there, and we're happy to hear that there was no loss of life or any totally irreparable damage done by the horrible storms we've been having.  The town will recover and we'll be happy to spend some of our dollars to help make that happen when we eventually get to take the trip).

So with Talkeetna not happening, and probably not happening now until the springtime because there's not a whole lot going on up there in the winter from what we understand, we just hung out.  No need to blog about all the movies I watch on Netflix while Andy plays videogames, right?

Finally something exciting happened this weekend.  All week everyone was talking about it.  People were placing bets in my office, and mostly everyone was doubting the weatherman.  It was only September - sure it's Alaska, but it couldn't possibly snow already, could it?

It. Could.  Also, this means that Marni, who said it would snow "in September," (as a joke because she's mean like that) wins a prize.  I need to visit the tourist shops one day this week and pick her up something tacky fabulous.

On Friday night it started snowing along with the rain that was falling around 10 p.m.  By the time we woke up in the morning, we had more than an inch on the ground.  It was pretty and Ripley was loving it.  We decided it would be a fun adventure to head up to Flattop and check out the snow in the mountains.

As we headed up the hill, it started to stick.  As we approached Flattop the snow started to get deep.

No, I wasn't driving when I took this picture.
Unlike all the other people in this state I'm not totally enamored with my cell phone to the point that I would endanger the health and safety of everyone around me just so I can play with it.
CAN YOU TELL THIS IS A PET PEEVE OF MINE??

As we approached the turn to the parking lot for Flattop, we were met with a roadblock.  There was easily 6 inches of snow or more on the pavement and it continued to fall.  The subaru was handling it like a champ (thanks to the new $800 tires I put on her right before I flew to Oregon...ugh), but the turnoff was totally blocked by fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars.  We were not going to make it to Flattop that day.  As a consolation prize, we went to Hilltop - the little ski resort almost literally across the street from where Andy grew up.

When we got there, we were met by a large group of hardcore Alaskans ready to hit the trails.  We initially thought they were going to be skiing, which would have been impressive, but they were just meeting up to run...in the snow.  People here are crazy.  I can barely walk in the snow and I can barely run on dry pavement.

The scenery was pretty hard to beat up at Hilltop.  While we walked around, we even saw some blue sky.

Ripley discovered that the only thing more enjoyable than running aimlessly in the snow is catching snowballs with his mouth.  He's really good at it, too.

We spent the rest of the day hunkering down and avoiding the freezing temperatures.

When it's cold outside, Ripley likes to be wrapped up in a blanket.  He got off the couch to see what I was doing in the bedroom and took the blanket with him.  The picture was too cute not to share.  

At night, we were treated with a fantastic view of the Harvest Moon from right off our decaying deathtrap of a porch.  Yes, despite the snow, we did just experience the first full moon of Fall.

Happy Fall everyone!  I see that today in Salem it was 85.  Despite the advent of the early snow, we really are not sad to be "missing out" on that weather.  

Oh and we got some good news about the house this week - we have renters! Andy will be down this week to move out the rest of our stuff (observe the movers moving our stuff).  Aside from having some money coming in, the best news is that by the end of the month we'll have our bed back! I can't wait to be back in the king and not sleeping in a contorted mess to accommodate a sprawling dog and two cats in search of body heat as the outside temps drop into the 20s at night.