Mud, Mushrooms and Moose...

 that was todays walk.  these are mostly from my niece's visit with her kids.

 our first trek was out to see this dead humpback whale on the beach.  it was pretty deflated and disgusting.  i hit the wrong wind and about puked...i'm gagging now just thinking about it...and about the dogs that got too close and got coated in decaying muck.

 still interesting.  i mean what kid doesn't want to hike to a dead and decaying whale corpse...am i the best aunt ever?  haha.  okay....kinda gross, i get it.  still we had fun and we had fun taking the dogs to the monster wash after this walk.  they needed baths big time

 here is Blossom taking a nice lay down right in the muck.

 pouring all day today so we headed out to Kincaid.  happy we went that way as apparently there was a dead human right off the road just past the Bivuoac trailheads.

 reading comments on  anything anymore is so pointless.  not sure why people sit around just spouting every sort of nastiness at each other in the comment sections of everything.  clearly they all need to get a life of some sort...deal with their unresolved issues and walk away from time to time.  all that trolling and nastiness is not changing anything or anyone.  it's pretty crazy though.

 the article was just saying the road had been closed as they investigated this body that was found.  sparks a debate on guns and also sparring back about whether saying something in the comments like "praying for the family" is ok or ridiculous and then of course, all liberals are idiots and think exactly alike.  simmer down people.

 my niece and her two cute kiddo's

 we ended up going on a different walk in kincaid the next day...like today we got some moose sightings in. Kincaid is usually a good place for that.

 we saw possibly a mom and a few calves or just 3 moose in close proximity. earlier i caught a glimpse of a moose bolting across where we had just been.

 the pups were pretty crazy. i just let them run most of hike until we saw the 3 moose near the Raspberry trailhead.  figured with the rain coming down we probably wouldn't run into too many others on the trail.

 syd was less than excited at the prospect of a walk in this weather but she warmed up as she got more and more soaked...once you are wet you are wet.  suddenly splashing in puddles became fun.  they have been working on the trails, widening them so it was a lot of mud.  we nearly lost a shoe or two.  loads of mushrooms to investigate i had my lens thingee from class so i pulled that out and she went mushroom to mushroom.

 i think we spotted one of those party ones, but the party on top had been wrecked.  we also found some of those cool aqua blue ones.  so cool

 these are out at Arctic Valley.  my nieces beau was feeling a bit better by afternoon so he joined us.  he'd wanted to go up and get a view.  i remember one brother had the same request when he came up...after living in Texas where there isn't necessarily the big up hikes with the views they all wanted to have that experience.

 the kids took a different trek up and did get views as well.  new boardwalks have been put in i noticed.

 nice.

 my niece and her boyfriend.  below...one of the kids gets some puppy love.  i think they really had a great time playing with the pups

 still some flowers to enjoy out there.

 the pups looked so cute with the fireweed.

 remnants from the cold war.  the silo's.

 up at the views....you can see quite a ways up there.  lots of bang for your buck...a fairly short walk really.

 lots of trails like that in these parts.

 got some fun art from a explore chatter.  there is a great group of folks that have fallen for the walrus.  one got her WARIS grocery bag and i have more to send off tomorrow. will pack those up tonight i think.

 love that the cliff cam is still up.  will be fun to keep an eye on that for a bit.

 a huge crack in the ice shelf in Antarctica is being watched.  the chunk that will probably break off is about the size of Delaware.  so fairly large.  as suspected the sections over the water are more prone for cracking off.  will the ice on the land be more prone to quicker retreat once the ice sheets over the water fall back.  we will have to watch...of course, this also brought on many annoying comments, this time all from folks who believe there is no global warming and that it's all some liberal plot.

 yet another seemingly simple article about road kill moose being harvested for meat for charity also brought out the nasty in folks. apparently, when the groups go out to harvest the meat they are finding some of it harvested already.  the chatters of course, felt this was some government intrusion and that anyone who wants should harvest the meat.  you can get permits to hunt moose here or there are subsistence hunts...stealing from charity...are those who steal poor and hungry as well?  that was the argument i guess.

 stealing is stealing.  if you are poor and hungry but able to drive many miles to get to a dead moose carcass, perhaps you aren't as bad off as those who may be waiting for the meat who don't have the means to hunt or even drive.  people forget that there are folks who are worse off, always.  it's not always about the feds or the government taking away from you personally.  the moose harvest program isn't a fed thing anyway. just a way to clear the road while helping some poor folks.

 need to clean up my WARIS desk..which is really just a card table.  bought some new file folders...need to clear out space in the file cabinet and get this stuff more organized.  i'm the queen of writing important stuff on tiny scrapes of paper. eventually i have to look at those little papers and determine which ones are just trash and which have value.

 loved these of C's Daughter with the pups.

 missing the Olympics...it's getting back to the usual news.  the election crap...for a few weeks it was easy to forget how nuts everyone is.

 got distracted getting a few packages ready to mail for WARIS.  love these grocery bags and i hope others do as well.

 we had fairly decent weather while my niece was here.  these are from another walk the next day out ARC Angel road.  always pretty and after that we headed over to Independence mine to explore there.

 pretty flowers.  Alaskan cotton and monks

 there were also some nice beaver dams out there to explore.

 Blossom was happy to just get in the water.  baths are not appreciated by Blossom.  she wants to smell like nature..even if it's dead and mucky nature.

 reminds me i really need to toss the big bed from the back of the car.  it still has that stink on it.  time for a bed rotation.

 the dogs all do appear fairly tired now.  one wrestle session this afternoon.  they did chase the tennis ball a fair amount again today...

 random iphone shot from Denali area below.  i'll get back to those mushroom shots soon...and bears too.  still more bears to share.

 another random shot of the dogs in an elementary school hockey rink.  good for training off leash.

 i need to get more training time in.  these guys are smart little pups, want them to reach their potential.

grateful for:  rain.  it's glorious.  always tough to convince yourself to get out in it, but once out it's lovely.  having a debit card.  they had to change mine out due to suspicious activity...there were those days without it that make you think what a mess it will all be when someone decides to cause that mess one day. mud, mushrooms and moose...all always appreciated.