Weekend wood, wildlife and wonderful fun!

We had a very busy weekend here in Alaska. Much of our weekend was spent cutting wood from a huge pile of downed birch trees on Elmendorf AFB. The deal is that you cut a cord of wood from their downed trees for $20 per cord with a 3 cord limit. Pretty GOOD deal for here in Alaska. So Ralph, Kyle, Kyle's best friend BJ and I spent Saturday and Sunday cutting and hauling wood. One full bed of our truck equals about 1/2 cord so we had to make four trips. It is one hour each way and took us a lot of time cutting because we decided to go ahead and cut the big logs into 14" sections so we were ready to split them and get them stored in the wood shed. This is a huge blessing. We had no idea how were we going to get our wood for next winter with Ralph gone all summer long, so we are VERY thankful for the hard work this weekend. My biceps are sore and Ralph's back is tight, but overall we fared pretty well!


During this hard working weekend, we also enjoyed some amazing wildlife! LOTS of Bald Eagles and a few moose, but our favorite this weekend was a beautiful fox. We also took Saturday night to enjoy our church's production of Uncle Phil's Diner where our drama team transformed our church into a 1956 diner complete with meal, music, and lots of fun activities as you will see in the pictures to come.

Spring as SPRUNG here in Alaska. We hit 60 degrees yesterday for the first time and it was just beautiful! The snow has almost melted and the Sandhill cranes and Canada geese and Trumpeter swans have come back! Soon the Arctic terns will be here. The moose are retreating back up into the mountains some on the search for new buds and berries. The river is pretty well thawed and is very low at this point. Once the warm temps start hitting it will FILL with glacial melt and SALMON!! There are a few people attempting to fish the fishing hole already. Talked to my local resident salmon expert (Richard LOL) and he said we might give it a try about the 10th of May, just before Ralph leaves. Maybe Ralph will catch a King Salmon before his big deployment. That would be really nice. So, enjoy the sights of our weekend and our beautiful Alaska!

Here is a beautiful fox! We got to watch him play and jump and catch little chipmunks. At one point he had 3 in his mouth at one time!
Here he is catching another chipmunk.
He ran and jumped into this bush! Probably chasing prey, but we didn't see him come out with anything in his mouth that time. Great picture huh! I was so pleased to get it.
This is just one part of the wood pile!

Chainsaw repair is always a necessity with our wood cutting. Ralph's chainsaw is older than he is but he keeps it running pretty well. We purchased a new one at Christmas time, used it for 30 minutes Saturday morning before it quit running. Needless to say it went back to the store and Ralph went back to 'Old Faithful'
The wood pile is near the landing area on base. This C-17 landed right over our heads while we were cutting wood.
This is Della (dark red) and Harry. They are owned by a man cutting wood while we were there cutting wood. Della is 15 years old and completely deaf. She was a therapy dog most of her life working with babies and children who had bad experiences with dogs. They were a joy to have near us as we cut our wood.