Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  For most of the winter we've had an unwanted or at least uninvited guest. I have several feeders that I put out on the front porch for the birds, but obviously, birds aren't the only visitors we've had. In fact, when the birds dare to come to the feeders to grab a bite, the squirrel squeals and chatters and chases them off. He even gives the much larger crows what for. I don't mind having him so much, although maybe it's not a him and if that's the case, we may have mini- rodents running around here. That would not please me at all. A few years ago we had a squirrel in the house. He apparently liked the attic just fine, and every night I would be awakened to the little pitter-patter of tiny feet running across the bedroom ceiling. It was driving me nuts! I don't sleep good anyway, so I don't really relish an early morning wake up call from the local rodent. I bought some high pitch sound device that was supposed to scare them of...

   Jan and I grabbed up Jen and Kaylahni  and made a mad dash out to Freshwater Bay last Sunday. We wanted to take advantage of the sunshine. There has been darn little of it this year, even though the winter has been exceptionally mild. It was almost fifty degrees in the sun, so it felt great. It's hard to imagine the East coast suffering through record snow and cold, while here in Alaska, we hardly have enough snow for the Iditarod dog sled race. Simply amazing, but I'm not going to complain. The road out is all gravel and narrow with lots of blind spots and hills, to say nothing of potholes, so you can't really drive all that fast on it. I think it's about twenty seven miles to get out there, but it still takes over an hour to get there- sometimes longer depending on the condition of the road. When we got there, Jen wanted to build the fire. She had been out to Long Island the day before and had built a towering inferno, so I guess ...