Monday, April 16, 2012

Lucy

Our new house backs up to what we would call BLM land, here they call it Green Belt, either way it means no one can ever build there.  We did not know this when we bought the house, but had we known it would have been a huge selling point.
Moose are abundant here, they are everywhere, in our back yard and in the green belt live a mom and her baby, Staci named them Lucy and Brownie, they come to visit often so we have a lot of fun watching them from our window or the safety of the deck.
You can see little Brownie in this picture, Lucy was just off to the side and we needed to leave, since they were right by the truck Richard had to carefully walk down and start it in the hope it would scare them off (it worked) so the baby and I could come out of the house.
They are really interesting to watch, one morning we had five total all over our yard, they ate for awhile and then laid down under the trees, they could see me watching them and did not appear at all concerned with me, however I was being careful to stay far away and just watch them.
We also have two squirrels we can watch chase each other from tree to tree, Staci also named them, Bob and Emily, they give us much morning amusement.
A turkey wandered through yesterday, I did not know we had wild turkey here, turns out we don't it was one of the neighbors pets come to visit, I guess that would explain why it walked right up to Richard without any reservations.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Canada

We made it across Canada, it took four days, a pretty major snow storm and $1500 more than we had hoped (still within our Army move budget). 
I have been into Canada twice before but this was a whole new experience, we saw the little out of the way towns that are not tourist attractions, in fact several of them looked like gost towns, fairly deserted, building closed down and boarded up.
It appears the recessions has hurt them as well as us, with gas prices so high (about 7 a gallon there) people are traveling the Alcan/Alaskan Hwy less and less.
Hotels, food, everything is very expensive there, just to take the four of us out for hamburgers one night was 75.  We quickly learned to buy lunch at the grocery store and stop at a park for sandwiches etc. along the way, leaving a better budget for dinner.
Even at the high cost of food, gas and lodging it was a fun trip for us, I am lucky that the kids, Conner included travel well,t he girls read most of the way or we played the who can see what animal first game....I won :)
I suppose they are all memories that I hope the girls will think fondly of when they get older.