Wordless Wednesday

104° F

Fahrenheit 104: The temperature at which Olligs melt...

Anyway, it's too bloody hot to post, today. Instead, you can watch these videos from our last winter in Seward playing in the snow.


A boring video of a mid-December blizzard.


Hiking with Sonja, Luna and Harvey on the Grayling Lake Trail north of Seward, Alaska, last Thanksgiving.

I'll post more when it's no longer in the triple digits.

Bleezzard!

Sonja officially said goodbye to the Alaska Sealife Center yesterday. As a special treat she got to help train the harbor seals yesterday. This is Shila and Qilak targetting and shaking for food. They train them to do all these tricks to make doing health checks easier and less stressful for the animals.

I don't think she's going to miss the monotony of the lab work too much, but there definitely were a few perks to working there. Such as getting sloppy sea lion kisses from the girls, Kiska and Sugar.

On the other hand, Woody, a 2,000 pound male Steller's sea lion, wasn't all that impressed.

We'll still be in town for another week, but the time is ticking away. Unfortunately, the weather today isn't quite cooperating. We've decided to postpone loading the trailer until the gale-force winds calm down a bit. We'd rather not carry a three foot snow drift all the way to Arizona with us.

The Christmas Bird Count was also postponed for a day. But the forecast isn't all that promising for tomorrow either. It wouldn't matter that much with either cold or snow, but birding in the wind is darn near impossible.

So Much for Winter...

It started raining today, beginning what may end up being a repeat of last year's soggy December. Hopefully not, though. I was rather enjoying the cold and snow. At any rate, I'm glad that we took advantage of yesterday's beautiful weather to take the dogs to the beach. Here are some pictures from our day.

This is a scene I don't think we'll be seeing the likes of in Arizona.

A rock. And some ice. Kind of a cool perspective, I think.

We spotted a lone Barrow's Goldeneye floating out in the bay. There was a raft of Common Mergansers behind him in the distance, and I think I remember seeing several Harlequin Ducks fly by. And of course there were the ever-present Glaucous-winged Gulls providing a nice chorus of cackles for our walk, but overall it was pretty quiet yesterday as far as the birding went.

As we left the beach at around 2pm, I turned around to snap a photo of the sun setting over the mountains and the bay to the south. The evidence left behind of our fun and energetic romp in the snow definitely put a smile on my face. While standing on the beach, with the gentle waves lapping at our feet and a solitary sea lion swimming by, Sonja asked if I was going to miss the ocean. Yeah, I think I am. I'll miss watching Harvey dive for rocks while an otter watches from offshore. I'll miss chasing Luna around the beach trying to prevent her from licking dead jellies. And I'll miss watching a Crested Auklet, a rare visitor from the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, looking like it's trying to cough up a hairball. So yeah, I think I'll miss living three blocks from the ocean.

At the same time, though, I am very excited to begin exploring the red-rock canyons and deserts of the Southwest. Arizona holds its own unique wilderness adventures for us to experience, and both Sonja and I are looking forward to seeing what lies ahead.