Happy Valentine's Day

It is hard to believe it is already the middle of February. This has been a month of warm weather and even warmer winds and snow thrown in just to remind us that yes it is still winter and not springtime just yet.  My husband and I are busy building our house.  We are at the property daily, we started framing the walls for the second story yesterday!  It is very exciting to watch it go up, and knowing we built it ourselves with wood from our property. 

Moose are continuing to be a common occurrence here at the end of the road.  At the very least we see one moose but usually we see more.  There are at least ten cows and calves hanging out in the flats in front of the house and lodge.  Several of the cows have collars, those cows are part of a study that the AK Dept. of Fish and Game is doing on the moose population out here.  Just last night moose 14 and her twins were in our front yard.  They decided to use our little foot bridge to cross the creek instead of getting their hooves wet.

Below are some of the photos from the first ten days in February, enjoy and please feel free to leave comments.

And I thought I would add a couple pictures of our building project as well.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. I hope you check it out again sometime  Have a wonderful day.

R.A. Chunn



January's Pictures

Well it isn't Monday but here are some of the best pictures from the last half of January for your viewing pleasure.  Please feel free to leave comments.  In fact I want to know which photos people like the best and then at the end of the year I will post the twelve most popular photos of the year, but that will only work if people let me know which photos they like the best.

This was the sunrise here the morning before I got on the ferry. It was a cold morning with a beautiful sunrise that made some of the clouds appear to be on fire.

I took the top photo while I was on the ferry. It stopped in Hoonah on our way to Juneau. The sun had already slipped below the mountains by the time the ferry docked. The other photo is the sunrise from the airplane window shortly after take off from Juneau. The colors were so intense and vivid up in the air, this photo does not do the sunrise justice but it is hard to get a great photo from a small airplane window.

The top two photos were taken on the lake ice in southern Minnesota. I had to get a picture of one of the many shanty towns that pop up in MN during the winter.  Ice fishing is a popular past time. There was an oak leaf trapped in the snow and ice that was just begging to be photographed. With some software I played with the lighting a little bit and removed the color. I really like the effect that created for that photo. The large fox squirrel was in my Mom's backyard one morning. Mom calls him the sumo squirrel because he is quite fat and lumbers around instead of scurries. He probably makes the rounds to all the local birdfeeders.

These photos were all taken at the Blank Park Zoo which is located in Des Moines Iowa. It is a nice little zoo, although since it was winter a lot of the animals were not in their exhibits. In the summer it would be a great place to spend half the day with family. Because these pictures were taken in the Blank Park Zoo they will not be added to my portfolio of photos for sale, but I did want to share these photos.

Here are the last of the pictures. Flying home that was my flight from Seattle to Juneau. I was pleased to see blue sky. The weather in both Seattle and Juneau was very cloudy and wet so it was nice to see the blue sky along the way. The last two are of the many moose wandering around Gustavus this time of year. I see moose daily, in fact almost every time I look out the living room picture window I spot at least one moose out in the flats out in front of the house.

I hope you enjoy the photos don't foroget to let me know your favorites for the month.  This weekend I will post some of the best from the first week of February.

Week 5 - Home Sweet Home

     After traveling for three days on three different modes of transportation I finally made it home on Monday.  When I left Gustavus there was hardly any snow on the ground, two weeks later I come home to find there is around four feet of snow on the ground, more than normal around here.  So once I got done unloading the six months worth of groceries from my loaded down can, I had enough time to put away the cold and frozen foods, grab a quite bite for lunch and then it was off to shovel snow off of the house (it is lacking a roof so the floor needs to be shoveled when it snows, and the back stairs at the lodge so they don't collapse under the weight of the snow.  Since Monday the temps have been in the upper 30s to low 40s with no snow but rain.  Now there is lots of slush, puddles, and very little snow left. 
     I do have some pictures of my trip south and some since returning home.  I have been playing catch up all week with house chores and building our house so I have not had lots of time to go through those yet.  But hopefully I can get to them this weekend so I can post a batch of pictures by Monday for your enjoyment.