Bear Hunt

So, by now most everyone knows about our hunt/camp trip. I finally have the time to put some story behind the pictures, so here it goes.

Meg and I hiked to the top of a mountain to try to find some caribou sheds. When we got up there, we found this patch of snow and two caribou. One was actually laying down in it. You can see the tracks and bed. I think they like it up here for a few reasons. There were no bugs, it was nice. They lay in the snow to cool off. And there are no bushes or trees, so you can see for a long ways in all directions. So no predator is gonna sneak up on them.

Here you can see the two caribou. This picture will open up and you can see them better.

We took this picture on top of the same mountain. That's the Susitna River and the Alaska Mountain Range in the back ground.

11:30 at night on the Denali Highway.

 This was the morning we were driving out. We're looking north towards the Alaska Mountain Range. Those are trumpeter swans in the lake.

I had some time off and I want to go hunting. Chase was going to go with me but previous commitments wouldn't allow it. So Cathy asked me to take Megan so I wouldn't be alone. I had my reservations, but decided to take her on this 3 day 2 night trip.

By the end of the first day we  had seen 12 moose and some small game.

Nothing else. When we returned to my truck I found that I had a flat
tire. I decided to wait until a.m. to change the tire and evaluate
whether we stay or not. When I got up and changed the tire, my spare (original 8 yr old tire) was a bit low and I decided to try to limp it back to Cantwell with as much air as I could put in it with my little ATV pump. On the way back I pulled into The Gracious House at mile 82 and Butch took great care of us. He could have easily taken advantage of
my lack of planning out in the middle of nowhere, but he didn't. He fixed my tire and aired my spare for a cost I doubt I could have found
in Los Anchorage. With my faith renewed in my ability to get home, I asked what she wanted to do, and to my surprise and delight, she wanted to finish our trip. So we headed back to camp and unloaded
the ATV and went back to hunting.

We put another 15 miles on the trails and hiked to the top of the mountain
to look for caribou sheds. By 9 p.m. we returned to camp with no sheds,
but we saw 5 caribou for the day, and not a single moose!

As the day was winding down, I set up the tent and we were getting ready
for bed. I was brushing my teeth and walking toward my truck after
looking for the object that had flattened my tire. Meg was
walking toward the other side of the truck after emptying her bladder
when a cow moose came trotting towards camp not 30 ft from where she had just been. The cows head was raised high, eyes as big as
saucers, and I think you could have fit a softball in her nostrils. She
had a calf in tow and she was the definition of aggitated. I told Meg to get in the truck and I pulled my pistol and that's when I
saw the blonde fur trailing along behind the moose. I started for my
back seat to get my rifle and the griz stood up in the bushes and looked
at us. It dropped back down, trotted back in the direction it had come
from and stood again. I raised my gun with adrenaline pumping and the
scope cover was still on! The bear started running again and after I
removed my blinder, brought my gun to my shoulder and bleated, it
stopped and stood again and Barnes Triple Shock did fly.

By now Meg is standing on top of my truck as wide eyed as that
mother moose, smiling and clapping. So that's the story. It's not a big bear, but a killer none the less. And I couldn't have dreamed up a better experience to share with Meg.

Sprinkler Fun

Well we had a beautiful day and the kids were melting in our sweltering 60-70 degree temps and they wanted to get the sprinkler out and play in the water. I'll post more later.

BB gun malitia

Chase got his BB and airsoft guns out and had everyone shooting. He even had safety glasses for everyone. He's my little boy scout.

I don't know if they planned to wear camo or if that just happened .

I'm so proud.

This is at Lake Eklutna. I did a 2.5 mile hike (all up hill) and scoped out some full curl rams. Then back down hill. The pack is 55 lbs. I'm training for my sheep hunt in August. Beautiful day.

Dinner time in Alaska

Ptarmigan breast and black bear. 

Happy uno de Mayo!

Well it's the first of May and look at that sky. Today was my last of 4 days off and every day was like this. I think I have more sun now than when I went to Hawaii. So, I've been off all this time and haven't done much with it. I look up at the mountains around me and all I want to do is climb them. They call me. On my cell. They say, come climb me. I say, I got to go do this thing. They say, we ain't going anywhere, but you have to go back to work, go ahead and do that thing. So yesterday I told Chase we were going climbing after he got off school today. We did. The mountains are still calling but my legs keep hanging up on them. This is where we were heading, Blacktail. The tallest peak is the center one. Does that look like a lot of snow? Well, it is. We didn't quite make it to the summit. There's two little points sticking up between the tallest peak and the shortest one that's snow covered. That's as far as we got. I called it for safety. So close.

This is the ridge leading to Blacktail. You can see it in the background. That's Chase.

Here's the boy at the top. We were walking on snow as much as anything. Deep snow, on a slope that at times was close to 60 degrees. So, I called it. Guess we'll have to go back.

Yeah, we're cool.

I love my wife. She couldn't use a camera to save her life. This was supposed to be a picture of Chase before his band concert a couple days ago. When she turned on the camera, it was set to view. She said, and you have to read this in your best wife voice,"There's no picture." I said you have to turn the dial to the camera icon. She put it on the video camera icon and thought she took two pictures. One started the video, the other stopped it. I do love her.

Back To Reality

We've had some great views of McKinley lately. This was from our front porch. We can only see it when the leaves are off the trees. It won't last much longer.

This weekend, we did the annual father/son camp out at Bird Creek. The last third of the mountain was mostly snow. Pretty cool. Chase is just to the right of and behind the flag.

The traditional self photo of the Edlin mountain men. We're just over 3500 ft above sea level. We started walking at 100. Not bad for an "old guy"!

Hawaii under water

This is probably my last post on our Hawaii trip. It's fitting that it should be pictures of my favorite part of our trip. This is an Orange Band Surgeon Fish. The ring is some ones hair band.

This is a Slate Pencil Urchin. You can see smaller sea urchin in the holes around it.

Here's a bunch of Black Durgon and a Yellowtail Coris.

Bird Wrasse and Yellow Tang.

Saddle Wrasse in a bunch of coral. The coral looks like a bunch of funky rocks, but if you look real close at them, you can see little polyps on the surface. IT'S ALIVE! ALIVE!

A few Convict Tang, a Moorish Idol and an Orange Spine Unicorn Fish.

This is a very threatening looking urchin. You can handle them as long as you're gentle.

Parrotfish

Trigger Fish

Orange Spine Unicornfish

Well that's it. I have many more pictures of fish, but this is a pretty good representation of what we saw. I'm ready to go back.