Sunshine and Two Bears

Before I share our weekend, I need to post an update.  From what I had read before we drove away from Sunny San Diego, this island was literally crawling with black bears.  We were excited to be able to see them so easily and often.  Well, we've seen them, but not nearly as often as I expected.  I still believe there are many bears here, but I have another view of sighting them.  As one Alaska Native recently told me, grizzly bears may eat your arm, but black bears will kill you.  I didn't realize they were so dangerous.  I do know the cities won't put up with them marauding through their boundaries.  So, if you were wondering either why I haven't written more about them, now you know.  


While I'm on the subject of wildlife, the river otter picture in a previous post, well, that was actually a seal.  I've seen lots of seals, only a few river otters; guess I jumped to a conclusion.  Hey, these were well up the river, too, so that helped fool me.
See a closeup of the head-only pose at:  Seals of Alaska


This weekend was spectacular, with nothing but sunshine.  We had a crazy low pressure on Thursday which brought winds gusts of more than 30 mph, then left as abruptly as it came, so we were spared the much higher winds that Anchorage experienced.

We had a two-bear Sunday, pretty rare.  First, our neighbor came over and told us there was a bear up a tree between our houses.  This explained why the dogs were acting strange.  He told us he was keeping his dog Daisy inside.  He wanted to give the bear a chance to wander off safely and stay out of trouble.  Of course I had to go check this out.  At first I couldn't see or hear him.  Then I heard loud huffing and claws on bark, and there he was, six feet up a tree in the middle of a small grove, about 20 feet away from me!  He seemed to be very agitated, so I backed off and hid behind a bush, hoping he would soon come down and run away, with me snapping pictures like crazy.  That didn't happen.  He stayed put, occasionally huffing and puffing, but staying up the tree.  I got impatient, and went back around to our yard, on the opposite side of the grove of trees.  I was getting a good look at him, but it was dark in the trees, so getting a picture was going to be tough.  Finally, he came down the tree and took about three steps in my direction!  He hadn't noticed me standing there.  As soon as I took off at a dead run up the path, it startled him, and he quickly turned around and climbed back up the tree! I decided to leave him alone, and that was the last I saw of him.  

An anxious bear gets trapped between our house and our neighbors, in broad daylight.

Later in the afternoon, we drove to Balls Lake Picnic Area.  On the way, we caught sight of another bear crossing the road.  Once at the picnic area, we had a nice warm walk, out in the sunshine for much of the time, and made it about half way around the lake.  There was plenty of boardwalk on the trail, this being a rain forest and so plenty of muddy trail.  There were several bridges across creeks, too.  There was one couple having a picnic at the trailhead, and a couple came in as we were returning, and so the rest of the time, we had the trail to ourselves, pretty nice.  Kathy let the dogs go for a swim, which they need very little prompting to do!  About the only wildlife we saw were several dragonflies, which were very interested in our furry beasts.

Update:  Terrible when one writes a blog post and then never posts it.  The story above was from last weekend.

We had a 'summer' all this week, gorgeous warm sunshine!  Wow, it was soooo nice!  Today, Saturday the 22nd, it's back to full cloud cover.  At least it's not raining.

Hope a fun weekend is in store for everyone.  Happy first day of autumn.  I know Henry is starting it out with a field hockey game.  Have fun, Henry!