Highlights

Would you believe that we are almost up to date with our blog?  There's another set of pictures to post from December 3rd, and then we will have a lot of pictures to set us far behind once again because of a trip we are taking to Michigan very soon.

Before we share more pictures, I wanted to share some Alaskan highlights we've had over the last couple of months.

Highlight #1: In mid-October we had a week with three really big storms that came through.  Our neighbors said it was the worst storm they had ever encountered here in Ketchikan.  When I say storm, I mean rain and wind. It's rare to have thunder and lightning here.  And I don't think it's possible to have a tornado.  But hurricane-like winds are very possible.  And that's just what we had.  For the most powerful storm we had 80 mph sustained winds up to 100 mph.  It knocked over trees, therefore knocking out our power.  We lost power for about 24 hours.  In the middle of the power outage, it was about midnight.  I awoke to Quent yelling at something out the window.  He was standing in our bedroom, looking out the window, with his headlamp on...in his underwear...shouting, "Get!  Get!  Go on!  Hey you!  Get!  Get!  Hey, hey you!  We happen to like our bird feeder."  I was really confused and so I asked him what he was doing.  He said, "There is a bear out here."  I flew out of bed and went to the window.  I couldn't see anything except a very black form rolling around on the ground sucking down bird seed from our feeder, like the feeder was a straw in a cup of Coca-Cola.  Quent threatened to go through rocks at it from our deck, and then 3 seconds later the bear ran off.  Then Quent told me that there had been a mother bear and her two cubs outside...about 6 feet from our house.  We had suspicions of a bear messing around with our bird feeder before, but we never had proof.  This was definitely proof.  We never did find parts of the feeder.  Hope that poor bear didn't have any bad indigestion...serves it right if it did!  Quent said that before he got up to scold the bear that he woke up to this growling sound from outside.  He thought it was dogs barking at the linemen working on the power lines.  He heard it again a little while later and thought that it could possibly be a bear.  Turns out it was the two bear cubs wrestling over the bird seed while mama bear watched from a few feet away.  It's a little disturbing knowing that there are bears getting that close to our house.

Highlight #2: A couple of months before this incident I heard something thrashing through the brush behind our house.  It was around the same time of night as the other incident occured.  I could tell it was bigger than a dog.  Sure enough!

Highlight #3: It was probably one of the first weekends in October when Quent and I drove out toward Ward Cove to take a hike on the Savage trail near Ward Lake.  It was a beautiful, sunny day, about 3:30 in the afternoon.  We weren't very far on the trail when I saw movement in front of us.  I thought it was a black lap taking a turn down the trail, making headway toward us, but I quickly realized that it was a black bear.  I stopped in my tracks, grabbed Quent's shirt, ducking behind him, and said, "There's a bear."  Quent hadn't noticed it at first because he was looking down.  We both stood there looking at the bear.  I had visions going through my head.  The bear turned sideways, then did this head bobbing movement while looking at us with its little eyes.  I think it was trying to get a good smell of us.  I'm not even sure if we had time to say, "Hey bear!" before it ran off in another direction into the woods.  I stood there, heart pounding, not wanting to move.  I was a little freaked out for awhile.  We ended up walking the rest of the way on the trail anyway.  And you can bet all of my senses were in high gear.

Highlight#4: We saw humpback whales.  It was awesome!!!  I love living in Alaska!