Alaska's Winter Horizon

Alaska's Winter Horizon

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Our long Thanksgiving weekend

We both have enjoyed our 4 day Thanksgiving weekend! Greg started a new job with BLM as a land law examiner!  He was able to take the Friday after Thanksgiving off for the first time in several years. We had a great Thanksgiving with our friends, Doris and Wes. They treated us to a fantastic dinner and then we spent the rest of the evening playing games and having a good time. We didn't do much at all on Friday.
Saturday morning, we woke up to new snow for the first time in several weeks.
We probably got around 3 inches of fresh snow and the ground was fresh and white as it should be at the end of November.
The temperatures have been pretty nice as far as it goes.
Our highs have been in the mid 20s and low 30s. Saturday afternoon we got out to enjoy a walk in the beautiful snow.
 I got out to shop for Small Business Saturday and met a friend for a quick snack and chat.

Walking back home after dark, I did notice how much brighter the snow makes everything appear at night. That's about it for now. More summer bear pictures soon.





Sunday, November 9, 2014

Greg's Summer Bear Adventure End of Day 1 McNeil River

This first afternoon at the falls, turned off very warm.

 Greg ended up with a pretty bad sunburn. The bag containing his sunscreen and other important items was accidentally loaded back on the float plane when it left last night.
Even the bears seemed to take notice and when they weren't actually fishing,
 many of them just laid in the cool waters of McNeil River.
 The later and later it got, the more bears arrived at the falls. By the time we left around 8 p.m., there were 29 bears gathered at the falls.
It was truly unbelievable.
 I can only imagine how awed they must have all been when their record of 74 bears at one time was set a few years ago.
Our trip to and from the falls was tide dependent. Tonight, however, we only had to hike about halfway back as the high tide allowed a boat to pick us up and return us to camp. It was quite an amazing day!