Bear poop

Thursday, June 16th

My dream job - "Mowing Engineer"

WooooHoooo !!! Another weekend. After working all week (if that's what you want to call it) we got 2 days off with nothing important to do. It was a good week...worked my way up to mowing with the John Deer and didn't hit any sprinklers. Next week, who knows...weed whacker?? We did have to move the MLS across the park before we could have any fun. We switch sites every 2 weeks so the grass can recover and get mowed. It takes about 2 hours to pack up, move and set up.

After that, we headed out the road (actually the Haines Hwy.) to talk with Bud Stewart about possibly doing some survey work for him. Bud is a true Alaskan and a real "ax man". He owns 63 acres with a beautiful home 17 miles from town and he wants to split a lot out from it. Bud is retired from a life of logging in Alaska and at 75 years old, still has a crushing handshake. He owned and flew his own bush plane from his grass air strip (on the left of his house in the photo) until last year and has plenty of stories about logging in remote places of Alaska. He said if we do the survey we will need a bear guard armed with a shotgun and that last night from his deck, he watched a grizzly whose "head was too big to fit in a 5 gallon bucket" (about 600 lbs. by his estimate) amble along the runway.

We kept heading "out the road" until we got to Porcupine crossing where we turned off the highway and crossed the Chilkat river. You might recognize the name "Porcupine crossing" if you watch the reality TV show about gold mining in Alaska because they film it out here. Today, we took the less traveled fork in the road and headed toward "the farm", otherwise known as the religious community called "Covenant Life, Alaska" (check it out with this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_Life,_Alaska ). It is a beautiful place, quite a farm and is where the 155 flowers we planted at the Hitch Up came from.

Question : Does a bear crap in the woods??
Answer : No, they seem to crap in the road.
You see, bears like to eat lots of dandelions (high in sugar for energy) and dandelions grow best along the road (where they get more sun than in the forest) so the bears spend lots of time on the roads eating and then crapping dandelions. I know, fascinating right?
Question : Does black crap come from black bears?
Answer : Yes, butt it also comes from brown bears. 
I know, go figure, fascinating right? (and you thought reading this blog was a waste of time)

We ended the day at "33 mile" (a roadhouse at...33 mile marker) where they were supposed to have one of the best cheeseburgers in the state of Alaska. Lets hope that's not true cause it wasn't that great for such a great state ( 5 guys is waaaay better...mmmmmm 5 guys). We did have some reindeer chowder that was pretty good (sorry Santa) while being buzzed by small crazy birds.