The hot tub, the danger bear and the birthday moose

Day 8

After the day out shooting, we realised that we needed to check some of the archery shops around. I own a recurve bow in Greece, but I have been looking for a takedown recurve for a long time because you can break them down to three small pieces and travel with them.

We spent the first half of the day helping out with some work in the back yard – sealing the hot tub from water splashes! Then we did some training on the deck to refresh our forms and after that we jumped into the hot tub to the disappointment of C\’s 7 month old malamute, Sonya, who lives in a sectioned part of the garden and couldn\’t come play with the hot water.

C came back from work and drove us to a local archery shop. Since my birthday was coming up, I had an excuse to buy a bow I\’d spotted back in the UK but found a much better deal here. Here is my birthday present to myself – a Samick Sage and three carbon arrows with a belt quiver:

I AM SO EXCITED!!!

After that exciting birthday buy, C drove us and our fellow couchsurfer to Beluga Point, an area with one of the highest tides in the world. People come to Beluga Point to see, well, Belugas. C told us stories of Belugas that come here to chase Hooligan fish.

He then drove us to Crow Creek in Chugach State Park. A place up on the mountain that looked as much like bear-land as anything I\’ve seen so far. We stopped at the view point where cars are parked and backpackers are dropped off to take the hiking trail up to the mountain. What a beautiful place.

The insect attack commenced the moment we got out of the car.

We walked to a stream that flows straight from the glacier. Ice cold water surrounded by bear land!

We didn\’t have enough time to do the trail obviously, but even if we did there was the small issue of a Grizzly bear protecting it\’s moose kill 1.5 miles up the trail..

 

On the way back WE SAW OUR FIRST BALD EAGLE!!!! Despite the unimpressed C (meh, another bald eagle), we were pretty excited. There was no place to stop for pictures, but Bert managed to get a 50 mph passing snap of the raptor\’s silhouette right before a truck blocked the shot! They are very common here, so hopefully we\’ll get some better photos later on..

 

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Day 9

This is the longest birthday ever! With 11 hours difference to home, I started getting messages quite early the night before!

We went to the centre of town to meet A, our post-conference travel friend! When the conference ends, A, Bert and I will drive to Denali Highway and other beautiful areas for a few days. Our kind couchsurfing friends lent us their bikes and we cycled to town through the most amazing parkland cycle path ever. Aha.

Oh, and on the way back, we saw a MOOSE!! My birthday moose – which couldn\’t care less about us to be honest.. Beautiful animals (in their own way).