ANOTHER WEEK AT SPRUCE MOOSE

Here I am in "the last frontier" on May 30th wearing 2 pair of socks, a long sleeve shirt, sweatshirt, jeans (and a jacket - if I go outside) hoping that the sun will come out today and that it will be warm enough to work outside without freezing. At the same time I think of all our family and friends in Arizona, running around in shorts or floating in the pool, trying to keep cool. Don't get me wrong, this is the most amazing area. The scenery around the chalets changes on a daily basis depending on the weather. We may have rain in this valley and snow on all the mountain peaks around us and IF the sun ventures out on occasion, the snow may melt a little on the peaks and we start to see green part way up. Some mornings the clouds "hang" on the peaks for the majority of the day. Other days we can watch them move gradually to the tops. I can't even begin to describe the magic of it - a new day every day! When we arrived at Spruce Moose, we parked the 5th wheel on a gravel "pad" in what we called the "sticks". In a few short days the "sticks" started to bud and each day we have watched the"sticks" blossom into birch and aspen trees with beautiful green foliage. Now we are tucked into a marvelous area with trees on three sides and birds visiting our feeder on a daily basis. The grass is beginning to turn green and the flower garden, that I have been working diligently on, has started to grow. We are hoping that spring is finally going to come. Now if we could only get the temperatures above the 50's to low 60's during the day, we would be in heaven. We can handle the 30's at night. The people here think it is hot, if it gets into the 50's and 60's and run around in shorts and short sleeve shirts, while Bob and I are still bundle up in layers of clothes. Good bye Arizona tan!!Our friendly bunny was snow white when we arrived and he has slowly been changing to his summer coat to blend in the the grass and trees now. He comes by every day and nibbles on the green shoots that are popping up.
We have been keeping steadily busy since we have been here, but not overworked. We have been trying to get some "major" jobs done before the chalets get really busy. We stained the deck on Wild Rose, the big chalet, before Gary installed a new hot tub on the deck. That was quite a job. You should have seen the 6 guys moving this 800lb hot tub off a trailer and across the old part of the deck to the new. It was quite an engineering feat and a back-breaking project. It took most of an afternoon. Bob got it wired up and filled by the evening, but the water temperature was 53 degrees at that time and the guests in the chalet opted to not try it that evening. Gary usually keeps it at around 104 degrees, which sounds hot until you think of the air temperature of around 40 in the evening. We built a new railing for the section of the deck with the hot tub on it. We built that on Monday (our one sunny day) and now we are patiently waiting for dry day to stain it before we install it. Gary said that this is an "arid" region of Alaska, but how come it rains every day. We have a 325 gallon water tank in the bed of the truck - I guess we are real natives now.
fascinating marine wildlife from puffins to sea lions, to octopus, sea otters, star fish, etc. We totally enjoyed and learned so much about the marine life and ecosystem of the oceans around Alaska. Do you know how deep a duck or a puffin can dive in the water for food? We now know and it is deeper than you ever imagined. The water tanks are at least two stories high and you can observe the natural habitats at the top and bottom. They pump in 4,500 gallons of fresh water every minute just to keep the Stellar Sea Lions happy. I can't begin to comprehend how much they pump into all the other tanks. I would highly recommend it to anyone. In fact, I told the group of hikers that were here for a week at Wild Rose about it and they headed there also and loved it. We felt sorry for them, they all flew into Anchorage from New York City and New Jersey, and one even from Singapore primarily to hike and it rained everyday that they were here except for one day. They were troopers though and headed out every day and hiked various trails in the area and had a great time, despite the weather. They headed out of here today, they said "to somewhere warmer" before heading back to the East coast.

Guess that is about it. Our friends, Randy and Chris, from Quesnel, BC are leaving on Tuesday and heading our way for about a week to do some fishing. It will take them a week to drive up here and Bob warned him that he better bring his long johns and rain suit. Oh, one last thing, well maybe a couple of last things.
The Internet is still up and down. That is why we have not been able to keep up the blog very well. We saw moose tracks in the road going up to Stellar Jay Chalet last week. We have not seen any moose, but apparently they are still around here. This guy had big feet. I hope that we have a chance to see him. We did find out from our neighbor that there are bears that use the power pole line right behind us as "their highway". I've been walking up there by myself without realizing it. I guess I'll have to be a little more careful and watchful. We were under the impression that there were not any bears in our area here. It may be hard to believe, but I think I have talked Bob into going on a few "easy" hikes with me. Dr. Porter will be proud of him!