Birding with Five Year Olds

"Look at the geese!" "Look at the fish!" "Look at the eagle" "Hurry, quick, Look at the baby fish!" Birding with five year olds is birding with urgency. What passion, what fervor over ducks and fish! They peered through the cracks in the boardwalk to see the salmon and before long all the kids around were doing so too.

Humpies ( pink salmon)

Land humpies

Baby Spaghetti

YUM!

Mermaid in the Tub

Fun Family Camping

Wonderful family camping weekend with the Marley-Jester clan! No fish and two bear encounters- a griz and a black bear. Both a little hairy (bears and encounters)- griz popped out and Tim and Asa and Maren were on the same side as the griz about 100 yards away. David was about to escort Annette and I across the river with babies on our backs and he had to leave us and run to them and get them back to the non-bear side. Eventually griz hopped back into brush and disappeared. Then black bear shows up as we are trying to cross river back to shore from island at confluance of Kenai and Russian. Bear is eating fish carcasses, chasing seagulls away, seemingly irritated that there are people around- young, fiesty bear tries to climb onto boardwalk and over fence but gets frustrated and keeps walking own boardwalk towards us- crowds of backed-up people trying to get it to move along and it is getting more agitated- finally it disappeared into bushes and we could pass.

Fish were in between runs- folks in deep, fast moving water were catching fish ---but for a family fishing venture odds are not good. We had a blast with the Marleys---Maren and Asa piked crowberries- made "salad jam" (leaves and berries all mixed up) and made a shrine for a young aspen sapling that was bent over with moss and berries and sticks. They discovered a junco nest and baby junco bird, then built bird nests and "cabins" for any birds that may need a getaway. Man, they were busy. The four adults drank a bottle of wine in the screen shelter and had intelligent discussions. Sadie was awesome- my super hubby brought the air mattress- so Sadie and I slept like babies. We had some sun and some rain- feels like we have been gone for days but it was only about 36 hours.

Bright eyed and bushy-tailed!

I LOVE coffee in the morning!

Good morning Kenai Lake

Me catchy no salmon.

Russian River Technique

Dad shares red salmon techniques.

SALMON SLAYERS

If there were ANY salmon in the river for these guys to catch, they would've caught them ALL!

University Lake Hike

Our group hike this week led us around University Lake. We played in the rain, fed the ducks, ran into another kid hiking group, watched the beaver swim in the lake and missed the black bear that the other group ran into.

Hiker association meeting

Sitka rose (?)

Cow parsnip

Beautiful Beets

The first installment of amazing Alaska produce from the farmer's market. These beets got roasted and then tossed in oil and vinegar and onion and S&P to make a beet salad- DELISH!

The Salmon Project

Guess what I've been doing?

REPEAT!