Moose and sheep...not!

So, I came up with an idea to go try for some sheep and moose down near Seward. We saw a goat. And a small black bear. And one single moose turd (no photographic proof of any of them).

We stayed one night and it rained about 80% of the time. It was fun anyway, and like Eric said, now we can cross this place off the list. This is the end of the trail, we're somewhere around 4000 ft elevation. There is a gold claim on the other side of this bowl that is near the two little white spots of snow on the right side of the picture. There's a huge yellow generator on a cliff. You'd have to open the picture to see it. We hiked nearly another 1000 ft to the top of the mountain to our right and saw the one goat across the next valley. Goat season starts in November. He's safe.

This is my first ptarmigan with a bow. These are the white birds I've posted before. This one is in its summer color phase. We cooked these over our camp fire on a stick. DANG! It was good! Better than anyway I've cooked them in the comfort of my own home. I was shocked.
This is the view from the trail. You can see the trail below, it's just switch-back after another all the way up the mountain. The big lake is Kenai Lake. The little one is Trails Lake. There s a town between the two called Moose Pass. I think because the moose passed it up and kept on walkin' by. Nice view.

As requested

He watches everyone coming through the door. No one sees him unless

I point him out.

I put this one on to show the size of his teeth.

Meg's crash

Some days we can't get her to read, this was not one of those days. She was supposed to be sleeping, but she crashed into this book mid page I suppose. She was pretty anxious about school for some reason this year. Things are going fine though.

Final attemp...this year

We made one last trip to the Russian/Kenai for a shot at some reds. And they were red! We fought many fish. Unfortunately they all looked like this one. We don't eat them when they're like this but they still have a heck of a lot of fight in them, and that's a big fish. I could see a chrome one every now and then, but couldn't get my line in to them. They were mixed in with stacks of the blushed. It was a good time though. Lots of catchin' and we had the water to ourselves for the most part.

We weren't the only ones fishing though, we saw this brownie on the way down. We also saw two black bears on the way out. It's always cool to see the bears. I don't think there were any negative encounters this year. Seeing them makes a good day even better.

Colt is six.

This was taken on his birthday. We gathered at Grandma Young's house a week or two earlier and he got all of his presents. He knew that wasn't his birthday then, but when his birthday came around and people called him, he told them he already had his birthday. He's a good boy. I think his favorite gift was his fish, its a red and blue Beta that he named Spider-fish. It's still alive and swimming with out listing to one side or the other.

Humpy's out of Hope

We decided to try our luck at the pink salmon in Hope, and it turned out to be one of the best family day trips we've had. To start with, look at the weather and view we were blessed with. Incredible. Hope is about 2 hrs from Anchorage. We're looking north-west in this picture and Anchorage is just over the end of the mountains in the distance. The creek is Resurection Creek. The big body of water in front of the mountains is Turnagain Arm.

This is the view up stream. Meg's got a snag and Colt is about to snag his brother, but he didn't. We had a black bear come out and snoop around the cleaning tables that are just out of this picture. They are behind the person farthest up stream. It sniffed around the tables for a while then carried a plastic bag off that someone had left on the table.

Colt is holding up his third fish here. I helped him with his first two fish so he'd get the hang of flippin'. He caught this one completely on his own to "limit out". He would not give up. He was shaking from being so cold, I tried to get him to take a break and warm up. He wouldn't do it, he was having fun and he wanted to catch that last fish. I was so happy for him, and proud.

Meg was a sort of veteran at flipping. She learned last year on the Russian, but she had a hard time here with the snags-rocks. She still did her part in filling the freezer.
Justice was opposed at first to hurting the fish. I told him we couldn't eat them unless we hurt them. He quickly got over that and wanted to string 'em all up. This one, being a fair hook, went on the stringer. When we got home at 0120 a.m., he woke up just enough to tell his mama, "I like going fishing", then he went back to sleep in her arms.
On the drive home, I had to pull over for another picture. We're about 6 miles from hope, 2 hrs from home. The truck heater was on high to thaw our bones, it got cold when the sun went below the mountains. The water here is the Turnagain Arm again. The mountains are the beloved Chugach. The flowers are Fireweed.

The one thing missing in these pictures is Chase. He was in Canada on a 300+ mile canoe trip down the Yukon. That's canoe miles! We missed him, but know he was on an unforgettable journey. I stated earlier that we got home at around 0120. My neighbor told me we had a brown bear in our drive way at midnight. Just missed it. And I still had fish to clean. Ah Alaska...

Sunset from Homer

I saw this photo while looking through my pictures and I don't know why I didn't post it earlier. It was taken when Mom was here and we went down to Homer around the 2nd of August. We're on the spit looking north-west. The water is Kachemak Bay.

Colton's birthday party

Well it wasn't his birthday, that's still a couple days away. We went to Grandma Young's house for a shared party with cousin Joshua.

Meg took her turn with the newest cousin in the family, Jacob. She won't pass up on an opportunity to mother hen a baby. That's Riley, Dustin and Justice with her.

To say he was partied out would be an understatement. I don't know what he was doing, but he fell asleep mid process. He's sitting in his car seat on the way home.

Visitors From Below

We had a wonderful, but way too short, visit early this month. Mom, Andrea and Tim came up and we made the most of every minute. On one day we walked to the summit of Mount Baldy.

We took this picture at the top, the weather held out for us but we were constantly watching clouds roll over. At times we couldn't see the mountain from low clouds blowing through. It was pretty neat.

This angle is pretty cool. It looks like Justice is way up there, but it's actually only about 30 feet...or was that 3?

No this isn't me, I'd have fallen.

We tried our hand at some salmon fishing and we caught a bunch of Dolly Varden. This was at Bing's Landing in the Kenai River. If we'd have moved up stream 30 ft we'd have done better with the salmon. We had fun anyway.

After we left Bing's, we went to the Russian River and saw this big black bear. He never really threatened the fishermen, but I bet he's not too confident standing there waist deep in water with 300 pounds of teeth and attitude standing there. We didn't see many big animals that week, but it's always good to see bears. We saw one young bull moose too.