February 2017

February 2017 in a nutshell:

Obligatory Mt. Drum photo:

02/03/2017
4:09PM

Crock potted some moose, then used the leftovers to make soup.  The noodles were reindeer shaped, so I called it Moose & Reindeer soup:

leftovers were a bit thicker than soup...

Took a drive south for a view and then some dinner:

the view from Willow Lake
02/04/2017
4:37PM

February was the month of the moose!  Jeff kept seeing moose - a mama and her twins were eating right out in front of the phone company - and finally he called me to say that there was a mama and her baby eating in the open field near the house!  I grabbed the camera and made my way there, less than 1 mile away!

02/07/2017

And here she is, knelt down where she's cleared out the snow, having lunch.

And then, on Valentine's Day, Jeff was getting ready for work and he said, "Honey!  Don't move!  Come over here."  To which I asked "Which is it?  Don't move or come over there?"  :-)
He had noticed a couple of dark lumps in our backyard!  It was a mama moose and her baby!  Whoa my gosh, I was so excited!  The kind of excited where Homer jumps from one foot to the other saying "oh my god oh my god oh my god!"

Look at the moose in my backyard!!!

 And I proceeded to take many pictures of moose from our back door...

This is when they started to move their ears around - they had heard something....

Mama in front, baby in back...

They must have decided the noise they heard wasn't too alarming, and they went on to having breakfast...

Do you see how close she is to the back porch?!?!?!?!?!?  I was freaking out it was so cool!!!

I so badly wished to open the door and go out on the back porch but I knew better.  She would be to me in one second flat, and even though she's a vegetarian, she would have gotten me!

When they were done with our "salad bar", they walked along the side of the house to the road out front.  I raced to the bathroom window and then out the front door to watch them.  Man, it was so exciting!!!

Baby moose looking back at me to make sure I wasn't up to something fishy....

That was the most exciting thing to happen around here, and I just wish they would come back.  I am worried that they'll come back once I have the garden planted and they think it's open for business....

We had some warm weather on Valentine's Day too.....

pay no attention to the outside humidity...

On the 25th we headed to Chistochina (Chisto for short) to watch Jeff's co-worker (Dennis) run his dogs in the sled races at Chistochina Fun Days.  He was running his puppies, just born this past summer.

Dennis's lead dogs - I met the one on the left the day prior when we dropped off a bunch of caribou meat (yuck, I won't eat it and I won't cook it.  I prefer moose).  She's very low-key, kinda timid, and smelled like dog.

If you think there's too  many people at the Iditarod, go and watch the Copper Basin 300.  If you think there are too many people at the Copper Basin 300, go to Chistochina Fun Days.  :-)

Dennis having a final word with his lead dogs.

Go Dennis!

This team had fancy harnesses.

These were sprints.  We watched the 6-dog team races, and they only went 6 miles.  The quickest finish was less than 20 minutes.

It was cool to get to see finishes.  I hadn't seen a sled dog race finish before, just the starts.

Here comes Dennis and his team!  Whoa, they're not going very fast...
In fact, he had to encourage the team to cross the finish line!  They stopped before his sled crossed the line!
Those puppies were tired...

 It was a beautiful day and beautiful scenery for the event...