Harvesting, little by little

We have been harvesting the garden a little at a time. Some folks in our area saw their first frost this week.  That's not too unusual, our average first frost is mid-September, but we're hoping to get a few more weeks out of Summer.

Some of our pumpkins.  Our seeds were local, and no variety was indicated on the package, but we think we got a pie pumpkin variety, resulting in the smaller size. But we should get some good pumpkin pies out of this group.

The boys have been busy pulling carrots and beets, and some greens.

The only cabbage we were able to salvage was the small heads the moose didn't eat, but just about everything else is still producing well.

We started our first canning efforts. Not too much this year, just some pickles and pickled carrots.  We also made refrigerator pickles with the large number of cucumbers that the outside beds produced.

Some nice silver (coho) salmon for the freezer.

Grayson's haul from a couple of weeks ago.

More fish for the freezer.

Grayson's caribou came back from the processor last week.  Polish sausage, summer sausage and Italian sausage.

We added it to the roasts we had processed ourselves.

Dino is in his twilight. He's moving slower and slower these days, and I got a little stuck down at the creek last week with him.  He walked down with me, but couldn't make it back by himself, and he needed a little help to get back home.  We took him on our Denali road trip with us, but he sat fairly still on his pillow most of the ride.  He's a good boy, and he's still enjoying life, but we know his time with us is limited.

A couple of funny videos.  First one, above, shows a calf moose that seems to like the fly paper trap I put out next to our compost pile.  Next video, below, is of the same calf, the next night, coming back to lick the fly paper again, but this time gets it stuck in its hair - then he does a little dance to try and get the paper off.  I thought it was funny.

Denali National Park - Driving the Denali Park Road

We won the lottery!!  Well, I guess I should clarify that we won the 'Road Lottery'. It's a lottery that, if you win, allows you to drive on a road. While that may not sound very exciting, this road is a seldom-traveled road through the Denali National Park, where normally only buses are allowed to travel while jam-packed with tourists.  When you "win the road lottery", it means you can drive your own car through, at your own pace and therefore have better odds of getting up close and personal with some of Denali's cool wildlife, like this bear, who casually strolled in front of our car.

This is a pic of the first bear we saw.  Kind of far away, but we got to watch while it scared up a pair of nesting birds and then proceeded to raid their nest.

We saw lots of caribou.  Most of the cows had migrated out of the valleys we were in, but the bulls remained, and they were magnificent.

Just massive antlers.

Hard to capture with a camera, but these bulls were huge, and had obviously been eating well.

An older bull, traveling with a younger bull, walked down from a hill onto the road in front of us, and proceeded to casually stroll towards us before heading back off the road to browse.

We spent a good half hour watching them browse, just yards away from the car.

Farther down the road, we saw three other bears. Bears #2 and #3 looked big, but the rest of our bear pics are of bear #4, because he was nice enough to walk right up to our car.

As he walked up to the car, he pretended like he was ignoring us. but we're pretty sure he was getting close on purpose.

After he crossed the road and started back towards our car, a park ranger drove up and honked until the bear wandered off. Not happy to have the bear scared off, but we still got some very close pictures of the bear.

Dall Sheep.

And of course you have to snap a picture or two of moose (but we can see them everywhere at home).

Snowshoe hare, keeping a lookout for bears.

We traveled 66 miles along the park road, and turned around at Mt. Eielson.  Here a couple of park rangers watch a bear slowly walk away from the turnaround point.

While in Denali, might as well stop and get some senior pictures of Landon.

A unique opportunity to get your senior pictures done in the middle of Denali National Park.

He'll get more senior pictures later, but these might end up being our favorite.

The lodges around the park are closed this year, due to COVID, and I'm hoping they are not being too optimistic that they'll be back open next year.  We can all hope.

Visit to Husky Homestead

We took a trip to Denali National Park, and spent one morning just outside the park at Jeff King's Husky Homestead.  Jeff is a four-time Iditarod champion, and Husky Homestead is his training facility where his sled dogs train for the race to Nome each year.  Here, Grayson holds one of this year's pups who will one day pull Jeff's sled in the 1,049 mile race, the 'last great race on earth'.

The entrance to Jeff's sled dog training homestead.

This pup had to know 'who was that masked man?', so she proceeded to rip my mask off.

The boys holding the next generation of Iditarod athletes.

This is Siris, who really likes to hang out on his rock.

Even the pups have a log doghouse, and running-wheel to practice on.

Jeff King describes to us how he uses a treadmill (under the black and red awning) where the entire team can run.  If you look closely, you can see the team hooked up to a four-wheeler running on the treadmill.

This is Thunder, one of his Iditarod-experienced leads.

The running wheel, a tool to let the dogs run out some of their energy.

Showing off his sled,with a rear seat he added (called the Iditarod barcalounger).

A demonstration of what a musher might have to wear on the trail.

Jeff posing with the boys.

Jeff helped hook up some of his team to an ATV so we could take a ride around the homestead, pulled along by his sled dog team.

Dino came with us, but had to stay in the car while we were on the tour, so Jeff signed a note to him, and told him he was a 'good boy'.

Being pulled along by Jeff's sled dog team.

Stopping for a water break.

Just outside the national park, there's an overlook with a view of the Nena river rapids.  On the shoreline of the river, we found this message.  Can't take credit for it (although I tried).  I guess there just happens to be someone local named Jolene whose friends put this on the beach shoreline, visible from the road.

Overlooking the Nenana River.

And I promised this Raven we would include his picture, he ate lunch with us one day in the Park. So here he is, in all his french-fry stealing glory.  Wearing my black raincoat, I think he mistook me for family.