Not so much

The aurora borealis was a bust. We got up at 1 am and went outside. After ten minutes of nothing we went back to bed. Perhaps more patience was required, but we have to work today, so losing lots of sleep seemed unattractive.
Anyway, I had used up my patience looking for bears. I spent the late afternoon and early evening at Dyea. The salmon are shoving each other around vying for fertilization rights. The eagles are playing a game called "Juveniles Rule." The way it works is, a mature bald eagle catches a salmon and starts to eat it. Then a juvenile flies in, knocking the adult away, then takes the fish to a new place, where another juvie knocks him away, repeating the process, sometimes involving up to four juvies. Unfortunately, this all happens too far away to get video. The adults take all this activity tolerantly, following along as if to say, "You kids play nice, there is enough for everyone."

Aurora Borealis??

We're hopeful.

Greg sent us some news about solar activity and since then we've been getting more information so the plan is to go to bed, get up at 1:00 a.m. and drive up the road where we have some open sky. There are lots of Tweets on the internet that I've been following. It looks like the viewing will be good. Today was spectacular weather--clear skies, sunshine and high 70's, maybe low 80's.

Clear skies--hurray!!!

It's too exciting!

http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/08/02/2028228/The-Sun-Unleashes-Coronal-Mass-Ejection-At-Earth?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

I noticed the news story has a heading "News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters".

Our whole family is kind of nerdy and if you're reading about our adventures you're probably kind of nerdy too.

Nerds are great!

Bill says...

Today (Sunday) was devoted to bear hunting. I went out in the late morning. No bears, but found out later one had disappeared minutes before I arrived. I went out again after lunch and Peggie went with me. We stayed until supper time. No bears. After supper I decided to give it one more try. Success! A bear was fishing in the familiar waters just upstream from the foot bridge. About fifteen people were on or near the bridge taking pictures, including the town's night patrolman. That is his voice you hear telling someone to get back. I had been standing right at the railing off the far end of the bridge. This bear started downstream and it was clear he was not stopping, so we all exited stage right. As you can see on the video, he crossed over the exact spot where I had been. I was a lot closer to him while I shot this video than I ever wanted to be, or ever want to be again, without at least some vehicular steel between us.

Happy Birthday Don (Under)

Every day at work since 7/27 I have remembered Don's birthday as I write the date on something. I finally remembered when I was at home. It is easy to remember because it is exactly one month after Becky's.
Sorry we will miss you before you go down under. I envy you that trip. You really must take photos, and hold the camera upside down so the pictures will be right side up when they get here.
Karin, look for fabric. Peggie will send money.

The Salmon Are Running!

And that means: eagles, bear(s), people (and their dogs) and bugs! Bill goes bear "hunting" over in Dyea pretty frequently. We both worked late yesterday and took the night off. We decided to drive over tonight and we were rewarded with salmon, a whole bunch of eagles and a grizzly bear. He entertained us for quite a while. We watched an eagle family too--mama, papa and two babies. While the babies looked very big their coloring was quite mottled and their heads were mostly brown with a few white highlights. As we were leaving we saw an eagle perched on a stump by the water and one up in a tree (probably the closest we've seen) and they were calling back and forth. We didn't get to see their babies but I'll bet they were close by.

We've had a few great weather days and are expecting a few more so it will be a while before we get more pictures posted. We're too busy playing while the sun shines and will wait for the next cloudy day to upload albums. It will probably be this weekend.

Here's a sample from tonight:

Return from Haines.

Frequent readers are by now used to our plans changing. We intended to ferry back last night, but enjoyed the drive over so much, we decided to drive back. So we left at about noon and got home around seven thirty. The drive is beautiful in both directions, and not hard to do. The section of Alaska Highway between Whitehorse and Haines Junction is as rough as any we remember from the '95 trip. But the road to Haines is in excellent condition, even the ten miles currently being improved. Blogger is balking at uploading photos right now, so we will try again later.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

We're taking off first thing in the morning (notice I didn't say 'first light') and driving over to Haines. It's 359 miles by road, most of which we haven't driven and then 15 miles on the ferry coming home Sunday night. We're staying at a hotel that used to be the Fort Seward Officer quarters. The weather is expected to be cloudy and rainy but that's okay--It's A Road Trip!