December 1st, Christmas is coming!!

I am so excited! We finally got some real good snow and everyone is in good spirits as the Holiday season approaches! Best of all with my new AWD SUV I don't have to shovel the driveway!!! Not yet anyway. The following photos are looking out at our little lake and by the cabin. Someone asked me once if we ice skated on our lake, the ice is plenty thick enough that we could. Moose walk across it so I'm sure we could as well, but Mark & I don't skate.

I will post again in a few days and include some photos of decorations in town. Also the schools up here provide some interesting winter fun for the kids. Can you guess what that might be?

Winter Wonderland

As you might have guessed, winters in Alaska are cold! As the temperature drops to 0 and below the whore frost begins to grow. The air is so cold that any moisture present freezes into tiny white ice crystals and clings to virtually everything. As a result nature's Christmas lights are turned on! Everything sparkles with brilliant bits of color as if the world has been sprinkled with diamond dust!
Miniature crystal castles spring up all across the ice laden lake.

Long tendrils of delicate white arms hang from the roof of the deck only to drop silently to the waiting snow below. The naked Birch & aspen trees are now dressed in their winter finery. And then a most amazing thing happens! A slight breeze picks up and the air it's self sparkles and shimmers in a microscopic light display.








Unfortunately, my camera's eye is blind to some of the mystical beauty here. Perhaps that is a good thing, sometimes the magic is in the experience.

Cold, Slopy Weather

Todays weather is crazy! Switching back & forth from rain to snow. Most of the snow that was already on the ground is still frozen, but the rain/snow that is falling now is not freezing (yet) so it is extremely slick! By 4 or 5 this evening the whole thing will freeze again and unless we get some real snow tonight, tomorrow is going to be a real mess! This is bad for me because I have an appointment to get my studded tires on.





These pictures were taken just after sunrise on October 25th after the first real snowfall of this season. It didn't get quite cold enough to freeze the lake yet, but in spite of all the slush we have right now, the lake is frozen now.














I have been worried about the turkeys with the temperature dropping down to the high teens, surprisingly they don't seem to be to effected by the cold. The young toms are starting to be more confident and are strutting (and gobbling) more all the time! Hopefully I can get some good pics soon! Oh, also, good news! Looks like they are finally making their way back to the barn! That is a real good thing because it is heated.

You might want to think twice before calling someone a "turkey", they are alot smarter than you think!!

Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. Photos: Tackling more of life's unexpected Twists & Turns

Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. Photos: Tackling more of life's unexpected Twists & Turns

Alaskan Turkeys

We had a new group of 30+ birds show up in the yard the other day. That makes a total of over 60 birds going through our yard now. Thankfully not all at the same time! The strays come through twice a day, morning & evening, in small groups of 15 to 30. Only our resident 15 or so stay close to the house during the day. When they do happen to all come in at the same time, you would not believe the ruckus they cause!


Each group has a dominate hen that watches over them and keeps the group together. She also will not tolerate birds from other groups getting to close. When two groups do meet the lead hens go through a ritual of chasing, intimidation & strutting with sometimes some body slams, but other than being noisy they don't really hurt each other. Then either one will back off and run away (taking her group with her) or one will submit and the two groups will merge.
That is what happened here, and in this case these two groups of 15 or so each merged to one flock of more that 30 birds.

The group in these pictures were on their way down to the lake when the new group came in so thankfully there was no confrontation and I didn't get any photos. I wish I had because you can't imagine how overwhelming of a sight it is! These are big birds and to see over 60 of them in more or less the same place is, well unless you happen to be a turkey farmer, it's just scary!

The Turkey Wars begin!
A few days after these photos were taken the two groups did meet. The lead hens were chasing everyone all over the place, the young toms were strutting, the younger birds were in a total state of confusion, the noise was nearly deafening! Over 60 birds in our yard were darting here & there, gobbling, calling, strutting, screeching, and down right fighting! Two bloody hens had each other by the beak and I swear they were going to kill each other! When I saw how bad it was (and that one of the hens was Little Bits mom I will explain later) I tentatively tried to intervene. When they wouldn't come apart I got real worried thinking they were somehow stuck. That wasn't the case however, I got between them and they did let go but only long enough to get around me then they were right back at it! Beak to beak!! I continued to separate them but they just kept going back to the fight! At one point one of the hens wrapped her neck around the other in what looked like an attempt to strangle the other!

Somewhere in the midst of all this chaos, I realised that I was standing smack-dab in the middle of 60 very unhappy, fighting, LARGRE birds! In the back of my mind, popped up the memory of a scary movie and a little girl who got pecked by Grandma's old tom. A small voice latterly screamed "What are you doing!!" To late, "Mother Bear" had already taken over!

Anyway, I finally got the two separated and the other lead hens got the group more or less separated and with in a few minutes everyone had calmed down. (except for a small group of young toms off to the side) Little Bits found her mom (who was a little bloody but otherwise ok) which calmed me down. Little Bits and it's mom joined our resident group about a month or so ago, Little Bits was hatched way to late in the season and is still very small. In reality it has a slim chance of surviving the winter but I have become sort of partial to it because all the other birds in this group really watch over it! It's really pretty amazing to see how caring they are to each other, well with in their own group anyway.

With the war over, peace settles once again in our little corner of the world!

Lori's New Toy

These are not the best pictures, I just brought it home last night and this morning it was foggy & rainy. Not a good day to have the vacuum out or to take good photos. It isn't a truck or a van, but it's in good shape (except for the front fenders) and runs better than anything I've had in a long time, so considering the rest of the car I can put up with a little rust for now. It's a 94 Bravodo AWD with ALL the bells and whistles! AND so far as I can tell, everything works!


I think I will start with the only thing I really DON'T like about the car, the spare tire thingy! As you can see it takes up most of the back window! I almost didn't get it because of this feature, BUT the good news is that I can take the tire off and store it in the back. An inconvenience but do-able. Visibility other wise is good. It sits a little lower than I like but I will get use to it and it will be ok.


OK now for the cool stuff ;o)
This thing has so many gizmo's & gadgets, it will take a long time to get them all figured out! Most of you probably already know what all this stuff is but it's all new to me! One of these little box thingy's is a remote start! I can actually start the car from INSIDE the house!! Not a bad thing to have when it's -40 outside and you don't have a garage!

The other box is your standard alarm/door lock thingy. I think it unlocks the rear window too.


Like I said these are not the best pictures but this shows the condition of the inside. The seats are real leather and EVERYTHING is electric! (no CD player :o/ It also shows the inside & outside temperature on a counsel above the rear view mirror. The drivers counsel is all electronic It has cruse control & fog lights. And all kinds of little cubby holes to put/store things.



The rear seat folds down, this will be it's standard position while I'm driving. I will have to find something to cover the carpet with though, as you can see it's a light color and between the livestock feed, fishing and hunting equipment, kayaks and stuff, oh and the
spare tire, it's likely to get messy!


All in all it's a pretty cool car and I will be content with it for some time ;o)

Turkeys in Alaska?

There is an abundance and wide range of wildlife here on the Kenai Peninsula. Moose are among the most common site. This photo was taken May 10th, 06. It was still very cold and if you look close you will see there is still ice & snow on the lake in the background. This cow has a baby with her but in this pic it is off to the side out of the photo.

These animals are very curious and HUGE!! To give you a size comparison, the table behind her is just over 4 foot tall. My office window is about that same height, imagine sitting here when this big cow stands at the window looking in? It has happened several times and it still surprises me!

As for the turkeys, well first off turkeys are not native to Alaska. The first time we looked at our house (Labor Day week-end 2005) a hen & her brood darted out of the woods and ran across the road in front of us. We were so surprised, excited and confused about seeing them that we almost missed the house! ANYWAY, They are not wild birds after all, our neighbors across the street raise them. This photo was taken March 14th, 2006. Four months after we moved in. As it turns out, these exact 3 hens (and 3 others) nested in our woods this spring and now call our deck "Home" All together now, between the 6 hens and all their babies we have over 30 birds hanging around.
This photo was taken 4/25/06. Three months later, mid July, the first hen appeared with her babies. During the breeding season the toms are almost always "puffed up" They display like this to entice the hens and to intimidate the other toms. They also make a kind of deep drumming sound, and just about anything will set off a bout of gobbles! They are way more interesting than I ever imagined! They have a wide range of chirps, purrs and calls. They are intelligent , weary but very curious. AND they DO fly!!
***Did you know? Turkey hens display like this too. They also gobble (not as well as the toms) When the birds are young it's hard to tell the toms from the hens!

Fall in Alaska

Fall in Alaska is incredable! These photos were taken September 24th, 2006. By October 10th all the leaves are on the ground and ice is forming on the edge of the lake. By Halloween, we will have snow and the trees will be once again, dressed in white!