Counting Down

It seems hard to believe, but our Alaskan adventure is almost over. We only have three more days left here at Spruce Moose Chalets and we will be on the road back to Arizona. It has been an amazing experience and one that I will cherish always. There are so many lasting memories that we will leave with – the ever changing scenery, watching the pontoon planes taking off and landing on Upper Trail Lake across from the chalets, watching the baby ravens grow until they tested their wings and took their first flight, the baby bear that visited us at the 5^th wheel one afternoon, watching the leaves sprout on the bare trees when we first arrived and eventually surround the 5^th wheel with lush green and now starting to turn yellow and fall as we get ready to leave. We especially enjoyed watching the birds that came to the feeders. They provided us with many hours of amusement and laughter. The Pine Siskins, the smallest birds, who tried to dominate the feeders and would fight among themselves for positions on the perches, the nuthatches and chickadees who zoomed in and out, the Stellar Jays and the Magpies who would tap on the windows when I was slow getting the food out, the squirrels who would chatter at us if he felt like he was left out of the food chain, and the rabbits who enjoyed munching my plants down to the nubbins. I know it sounds crazy but we even named a few. Gary and Treva arrived late Friday night with supplies to stock the chalets. On Saturday, Treva put out the fall decorations in the chalets and Gary and Bob worked on the “bladder” in the crawl space in Stellar Jay. That was one of the big projects that we had hoped to complete before we left, but it was not meant to be. It is a very complicated system for storing extra water in the crawl space for Stellar Jay to draw off of when the well is having difficulty keeping up with the volume of guest using water in the chalets. The guys had been back and forth all summer trying to come up with a functioning system with the equipment available. Gary and Treva invited us out to dinner at Summit Lake Lodge before they headed back to Anchorage Saturday evening. We had a wonderful time – enjoyed both the great company, the wealth of information Gary shared with us about Alaska and, of course, the food. They were a great couple to work for this summer and we will miss them. The only disappointment to the evening was that we forgot the camera, so we missed taking a picture of Treva and Gary for our blog. We also missed some spectacular pictures of the leaves changing color on the way to Summit Lake. They are changing much quicker in that area than around Moose Pass. As you can see from the pictures here, the leaves are just barely beginning to change to yellow. Maybe we can still catch some on our way to Denali National Park via Anchorage on Wednesday and get them posted on the blog. We spent the majority of today "buttoning up" the truck and the 5th wheel - trying to make everything fit again. You know something came out of a spot, but it never quite goes back in again!