Alaska Photos 9

OK, I know you've all been waiting with bated breath for photos of...

...THE STUCK TRUCK!
Well, wait no more. Here they are. We buried 'er good!

The Cold Hard Fact. (The wet squishy fact?)

The Ugliness.

The Humiliation.

Unfortunately, I don't have the disk that shows us redeeming our wounded pride by ingeniously using materials at hand, such as trees and stumps, to extricate the poor diesel beast from the clutches of Alaska's defrosting earth. Alas, you'll have to wait again. Don't cry.

THE GWIN'S BEAR

Remember I wrote about our evening on Fly Bob's trailer porch and how our old friend Mike stopped by to pick up his gun from Fly Bob, and how Mike was only there about 5 minutes but he's the one that spotted the bear sneaking up on us through the woods at the edge of the lodge property? Well, here's the bear. And he was a big boy, too!

(That's one of the rental cabins and it's porch, not Fly Bob's porch.)

Here's the next door dog, Kenai, barking up a storm at the nonchalant grizzly.

TRACKS

Years ago I began taking pictures of animal tracks we'd see along the way. The Fisherman suggested I put my foot in the photo to add some perspective to the size of the prints.

Good idea, smarty.

Here's a giant bear track we found on our property, right on the road.

That little two-pointed indentation right next to the toe of The Fisherman's shoe, I believe is the print of a tiny moose calf. We got a two-fer!

To give even more of an idea of how big this bear print was, I put my foot parallel to it and it's almost as wide as my foot is long! (I wear a size 6.5 to 7.) I'm very glad we didn't see this track's maker.

We also saw a giant moose track. It's the biggest one I've ever seen.

The horizontal impressions at the bottom are the moose's "dew claw", so to speak.

I really love coming across animal tracks. But I must say, while it's exciting to know that these big, beautiful and intimidating creatures walk our very own land, it's also kind of unsettling. Especially as regards the bears. A couple weeks ago, The Fisherman was at the cabin working. He took some time out to go up to the loft and lay down on the bed. He glanced out the window at the forest ground below, and saw a black bear walk quietly on through. I imagine this will be a fairly common occurance for us whenever the time comes that we spend extended periods of time living on our land up there. Everybody in Alaska has a bear story. We don't even live there and we have a couple already.